Matters of Interest

North-East Adelaide

The Hon. J.E. HANSON (15:23): The north-east in so many ways represents a microcosm of the City of Adelaide. There are education facilities, there are health facilities, transport facilities, commercial precincts and job opportunities, and they all form very much of what is part of a modern-day village. So I have viewed with increasing concern the growing list of cuts that the north-east seems to be expected to endure.

Recently, I had a beer in the north-east with a friend who lives near the park-and-ride. She wondered why the Liberal Party could not see how cancelling expansions of it would be a disaster for both local streets and public transport users. Furthermore, a good mate of mine from Valley View, who is not really all that political, wondered to me how he would get his daughter to school if the bus and bus stop he used to get there are both cut.

I have also met (and had many months to do so) many residents in the north-east about the proposed closing of their local Service SA. Many wondered how it can be an alleged saving if literally, to put it simply, it makes it harder for people to pay money for government if you close the facility that allows them to do it.

For a government that promised better services, lower costs and more jobs, they are zero for three in the north-east: from the bus services they have cut, to the park-and-ride services they have cancelled, to the TAFE they closed, to the Service SA that will be closed or privatised, to the hikes in fees and charges, some by as much as 40 per cent. The key things that allegedly were at the heart of the Liberals' reason for governing have not been delivered.

The way of life for many has been made harder as costs rise and the services that many rely on, especially in a post-COVID world, are being cut or cancelled. To use the words of the member for Newland in the other place, nothing was actually ever delivered. The only thing that was delivered was taxpayer-funded advertising, shiny brochures stuffed into letterboxes—including mine—the plastic wrap on the Messenger newspaper and various digital displays, whether it was in the Tea Tree Plaza or on bus stops. Had he been describing the current Marshall government, I could have agreed with the member for Newland.

But it gets so much worse. Like any sales job for a product that no-one wants to buy, you make it about something else. It is about selling something. The Liberals' core promises were about an idea that they had changed, that they no longer believed in cutting services, that they no longer believed in levying taxes on those who could least afford it, that they did not have a privatisation agenda, but the people of the north-east have found out that this sales job was nothing more than just that.

They found it out with the privatisation of the Adelaide Remand Centre. They found it out with the Liberals' privatisation of the trains and trams, and they found it out when the Liberals backflipped on the proposed privatisation of SA Pathology. They found it out once again. The Liberals are addicted to privatisation, with a report emerging that the Marshall Liberal government has a plan to privatise Modbury Hospital, privatise outpatient clinics to centres outside of Modbury Hospital.

The people of the north-east have found out that the leopard does not change its spots. People have found out that the Liberal Party was really saying this at the last election: they do not want scrutiny of their real agenda. They do not want to tell people that they do not have any new ideas from where we were almost two decades ago, when the current health minister worked for the former health minister when he privatised Modbury Hospital. They are at it once again, with the new health minister proposing exactly the same thing.

That is what this Liberal government is really saying. That is the product they are selling, and the people of the north-east are seeing through it. This sales job is a tragedy not only for the member for Newland in the other place, who probably legitimately thought that by getting elected here he might not have to explain to everyone that he would close their TAFE, that he would cut their transport, that he would cancel their park-and-ride, that he would privatise their local hospital services and that he would close their Service SA. This is also a tragedy for the people who live in the village that is the north-east of our city, who are subject to this unravelling disaster.