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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-09-23 Daily Xml
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Question Time

MAGILL TRAINING CENTRE

Mrs REDMOND (Heysen—Leader of the Opposition) (14:12): My question is to the Premier. Does the Premier admit that, rather than being motivated by a reconsideration of the government's financial circumstances, the government has today announced the upgrade of its Magill and Cavan facilities for youth detention because its polling is showing that the public knows this government is not listening?

The Hon. M.D. RANN (Ramsay—Premier, Minister for Economic Development, Minister for Social Inclusion, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Sustainability and Climate Change) (14:12): That is totally untrue. That might be the way the Liberal Party thinks. Can I say that the one thing I would not have expected today—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. M.D. RANN: The one thing I would not have expected today is for the Liberal Party leadership to be talking about its polling, because I think members opposite know what that polling shows. I can tell members opposite that the polling shows the Liberal Party in this state is seen as divided—totally and absolutely divided. That is the difference. What they see is a Liberal Party that is trying to paper over the cracks of their—

Mr WILLIAMS: I have a point of order, Mr Speaker.

The SPEAKER: Order! The Premier will take his seat.

Mr WILLIAMS: Mr Speaker, much as I might try, I cannot see any relevance between the question that was asked and the answer the Premier is giving.

The SPEAKER: The question is being answered in the spirit in which it was asked and is therefore orderly. The Premier.

The Hon. M.D. RANN: The Leader of the Opposition asked me about polling and I am replying about polling, because I have seen the Liberal Party's polling. The polling shows that the Liberal Party stands for nothing and spends more time fighting amongst themselves than they do fighting for South Australia, and that is the difference. People are not prepared to elect an opposition that spends all its time undermining its own leadership. That is the big difference, and that is the real difference.

Let us talk about infrastructure. The infrastructure spend is six times what it was when the opposition was in government, because we are getting out and doing things. We have thousands more nurses, more than 1,000 more doctors and record numbers of police. We have record jobs growth, record infrastructure spend and $2 billion more spent on health than did our predecessors.

What we said during a global financial crisis that has hit every government in the world is that we had to make some hard decisions. We said we were going to go ahead with projects such as a desalination plant for Adelaide. We were going to go ahead with rebuilding works on a whole series of projects such as the electrification of our train system, the extension of our tram system, and the new Royal Adelaide Hospital.

We said that we still had to make sure that we kept our AAA credit rating and, guess what? Members opposite said that would not happen. They said that we had not provisioned for the bad times. Within a day, our AAA credit rating was endorsed. What we had to cancel was a $600 million PPP project for prisons. I go out in the community and people say to me, 'You've got your priorities right. We'd rather have more doctors, more nurses and more police.' Can I just say this: we have said repeatedly that we believe Magill needs to be bowled over and replaced. So, what we have done—

Mr PENGILLY: On a point of order, I ask that the Premier address his answer through the chair.

The SPEAKER: He is addressing it through the chair. The Premier.

The Hon. M.D. RANN: We have said right from the start that we wanted to bowl over the Magill Training Centre, but what we had to do was unpick it from the arrangements for the $600 million worth of prisons. I have said in recent days—I have said all the way along—that, when it is financially possible and responsible to do so, we will build Magill. What you cannot stand today is that we are delivering. We are replacing Magill. I will ask members opposite to come and join me on the day the bulldozers move in, and I will ask members opposite to come and join me at the opening of this brand-new facility that will be top class.

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