Minister's Remarks

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (15:41): It was a sad day yesterday when minister Martin Hamilton-Smith, a man who used to be the leader of the Liberal Party in South Australia, ended up an object of ridicule, acting like an angry, petulant schoolchild unable to get his own way. What happened was that minister Hamilton-Smith said in his speech to parliament yesterday that he was going to take to cabinet a policy proposal to rip up a multimillion dollar contract that had been written between the government, the Treasurer and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

The reason was that this particular organisation had had the temerity to actually be critical of the government and its policy in relation to the new state bank tax. What we had was a senior minister—by his own description—in the Weatherill government cabinet responding with a kneejerk policy response formed out of spite and revenge because someone had had the temerity to criticise the government's position.

He had obviously done the work to look at page 42 of the contract between the government and the Commonwealth Bank which gives the power to the Treasurer to terminate, for convenience, the contract with the Commonwealth Bank. Notwithstanding any other provision in this contract, the Treasurer may terminate this contract with respect to the provision of any service to government or in toto by providing three months' written notice to the supplier. No reason has to be given. The treasurer of the day can just terminate for convenience that multimillion dollar long-term contract with the Commonwealth Bank.

That is the policy of the minister, who travels often and regularly and expensively interstate and overseas trying to attract investment and business to South Australia. He is actually saying, 'If you dare to criticise this government or its ministers, then we may well tear up your multimillion dollar long-term contracts that you've got with the state of South Australia.' Let us remember that his best and closest friends, as we are often reminded, are people like minister Maher and minister Malinauskas in this chamber and the Premier and the Treasurer in another chamber, who often say that they are very good friends with this minister and are great admirers of his capacity.

We have often heard—and I have seen reports in the other place—of minister Hamilton-Smith making threats in the assembly about tipping a bucket on some Liberal MPs during particular debates. I think that is unfortunate, but let me issue a warning to minister Hamilton-Smith that he is not the only person who can record, if so pushed, behaviour of former Liberal MPs—in this case, minister Hamilton-Smith. He is not the only person who has a record of documents and notes of meetings and discussions that were held from the mid-nineties, prior to minister Hamilton-Smith being a member of parliament, in terms of his attitudes and actions on a variety of issues. So, there is a warning shot for minister Hamilton Smith; if he wants to play the schoolyard bully there are others prepared to engage if he chooses to go down that particular path.

This is the man who, if we remember, was widely derided on the front page of The Advertiser as a traitor as a result of his actions. This is a man who sold out everything he said he believed in for 40 pieces of silver in terms of salary, for a lot more pieces of silver in terms of superannuation, for a government car, for a government driver and for the status of being a minister. This is a man who has been on the record, both in private and public discussions, who lobbied and argued for major policy changes to advantage childcare operators at the expense of funding for kindergartens, within the Liberal Party.

This is a man who said he believed in lower taxes right from his first days of being elected as a member, but who is now supporting a bank tax, a foreign investor tax and any other taxes the government might want to introduce. This is a man who said he believed that government should not spend money on picking winners, and often criticised the former Liberal administration and Labor administrations for picking winners, who is now supporting policy spending tens of millions of dollars on doing exactly that, as a minister and a proponent of Weatherill government policies at the moment.

Sadly, at this stage I indicate that, given the statements he made yesterday and his actions over the last period of time, there is really only one response which should occur: he should be sacked as a minister of the Weatherill Labor government.