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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-02-14 Daily Xml
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LABOR GOVERNMENT

Mr VENNING (Schubert) (15:31): The people of South Australia are not silly and they are beginning to realise that, since the 2002 election of Labor government here in South Australia, the government is not delivering the leadership, development and growth to the state that it should be or that it says it is delivering, despite having the largest ever state budget to work with.

Taxes have gone up since Premier Rann came into office and he has an extra $4 billion to spend every year compared to what we had just six years ago when we were in government, but what are South Australians getting for their money? Where is all the taxpayer-generated revenue going? There is one easy answer to that—spin. Labor's public relations outfit is ever expanding and swallowing up increasingly more taxpayer dollars as it grows out of control.

The people of South Australia are realising that they have a government that is not performing. They have a government that has provided insufficient leadership and solutions in dealing with the drought and subsequent water crisis facing our state. This is a government that is cutting jobs from rural areas and moving them to Adelaide, despite their claims that they are all for regional development. Shared services is a very cynical exercise. This is a government that has failed to provide an adequate public transport system. It is always breaking down. This government has closed public schools and hospital wards. South Australians have a government that is growing internally, burgeoning rapidly, at their expense—a cancer out of control.

Premier Rann is wasting about $40 million over four years with a rapid escalation in the number of staff employed in ministerial offices. The total number of staff employed in the Rann Labor government's ministerial offices as of 1 October 2007 was 294; that compares to 191 staff employed in ministerial offices under the former Liberal government. Put simply, it means that Premier Rann is employing 103 more spin doctors and other staff—an increase of almost 55 per cent on the previous Liberal government's staffing levels. That was too high anyway.

Not only has the government's staffing numbers increased but, in mid-2007, Premier Rann afforded some members of his staff massive wage increases, the largest increase being an extra $26,000 annually equating to a whopping 16.8 per cent. It is absolutely ridiculous. This ludicrous increase in the government's public relations outfit spending is a disgraceful waste of taxpayers' dollars and demonstrates that Premier Rann is treating South Australians with contempt.

Last week our leader unveiled the Liberals' vision for a master plan for Adelaide, a plan which demonstrates that we believe that the state government of the day must take the lead and set the agenda in the best interests of all South Australians for the long term—something that the current Labor government has failed to do. All the Rann Labor government can do is criticise our ideas and claimed the plan to be completely out of reach financially. Premier Rann and his team should not be so quick to criticise when they have not released a plan or vision of such significance after six years in power.

Where is the money going to come from? That question has been asked repeatedly since the plan was revealed last Friday. Mr Rann says he has his 'spend-o-meter' tracking the cost of our master plan, and the cost of implementing the vision is already $2 billion. The answer is quite simple. This is a long-term plan. It can easily be funded from the $355 billion in revenue that will be generated in the next 20 years. How can you plan if you do not have a plan? If you fail to plan, your plan will fail. One must look at one's own house before saying that objectives such as electrifying the rail system or upgrading the Royal Adelaide Hospital are out of reach.

If Premier Rann aimed his 'spend-o-meter' at his own team, he may find that he can make enormous savings, with the extra revenue being used to provide better services and facilities for all South Australians—long-lasting, tangible assets that will give people something back for their tax dollars instead of just losing them in the great bureaucratic abyss.

The state government has collected $30 billion in state taxes since being elected to power in 2002, including an estimated record tax of over $3.4 billion this year. And what does South Australia have to show for it? A water crisis threatening to completely destroy parts of our state, a deteriorating hospital system and a transport system in utter disrepair. But Premier Rann and his government must think that it is okay to forgo development of the state in order to have a massive, well-paid spin team. The benefit of the massive spin team is, of course, that the state Labor government can try to fool the people of South Australia into thinking that it is actually doing something. Well, actions speak louder than words. I must say that people are waking up.

It is quite clear that Premier Rann has a complete and utter disregard for the people of South Australia, who elected him to his position and who pay taxes to fund his excesses. The Rann Labor government's spin team is yet another example of an arrogant Premier and government increasingly getting more out of touch with the priorities and expectations of South Australians. I think after a while he actually believes himself. It is now over six years since the Rann Labor government took over the running of South Australia, and people cannot wait for 2010 to change the government.

Time expired.

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