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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
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SUPPLY BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 5 April 2011.)

Mr MARSHALL (Norwood) (12:15): As I was saying yesterday, the September 2010 budget was an extraordinarily unpopular budget, and there was actually no necessity for it to be an extraordinarily unpopular budget. The point is that this horror budget was necessary due only to fiscal mismanagement over the life of this government, and I will explain briefly why.

The Premier and the former treasurer have been the very fortunate recipients of massive unbudgeted revenues over an extended period of time. In fact, since coming to power, they have received more than $5.1 billion in excess of what they themselves even budgeted for—money coming into this state which was never accounted for, budgeted for, but which we received.

In fact, just in the last three years there has been in excess of $2 billion of unbudgeted money coming into South Australia. This is at the same time that the previous treasurer would have us believe we are suffering from a global financial crisis. Well, why is it that, in that same period of time (the last three financial years), over $2 billion worth of unbudgeted money came into this state?

Of course, that money, which has come into the state over the period of time that this government has been in power, is mainly, of course, due to the GST rivers of gold which have flowed into South Australia—legislation, of course, which was put in place by the Howard Liberal federal government and which was opposed, of course, by the Labor Party at the time and opposed by and spoken about vehemently by the current South Australian government at the time. But they have been the happy and fortunate recipients of this money, and, of course, also massive property tax increases in revenue.

Where has this money gone? Where has this additional $5.1 billion actually gone? Has it gone towards infrastructure? Has it gone towards supporting our country hospitals? Perhaps it has gone towards our state's roads in my electorate of Norwood, or maybe closing the gap of Indigenous disadvantage in this state. Has it gone to supporting small business or family business, the engine room of the South Australian economy?

Perhaps it has gone to adult education and supporting this important sector of our economy, or maybe public housing. The answer to all these questions is an emphatic no. It has not gone there whatsoever. It has gone to budget overruns in each and every single year of this government. This government has been on a spending spree.

I would like to read into Hansard the money that has been spent by this government over and above its budget each year. It is like it sort of sets the budget as a bit of a goal which it has exceeded every year. Usually in business we try to come in under budget for expenses, but, no, this government basically saw it as a target which it has actually overachieved. In the first year, $184 million overspent. In its second year,—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sorry, member for Norwood, far be it from me to stop you in full flight, but do you have a table there? Are you reading from a table?

Mr MARSHALL: I am just reading numbers.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is okay. No need to get defensive, because I am just saying that if you do, you could also seek leave to insert it into the Hansard.

Mr MARSHALL: Would I want to do that?

An honourable member: Yes.

Mr MARSHALL: Well, it is not really a table. What it shows, of course, is $3.6 billion worth of money spent by this government over and above the budget. It has had no ability to control its expenditure during the nine long years that it has been in power, and we are the worse off for it. We have had $3.6 billion worth of unbudgeted spending.

Of course, Madam Deputy Speaker, as I am sure you and members of this parliament are all too aware, we are the highest taxed state in Australia. Under this government there has been a 75 per cent increase in state taxes and charges over the past eight years. Not only are we the highest taxed state in Australia, but we also have the highest spending government pro rata in Australia. I am not against spending—although it seems to be a little bit of a theme with the Labor Party: higher taxes and higher spending. I am not opposed to higher spending but I am opposed to waste.

There are many examples I can give today but, with the 11 minutes remaining, I will give one example of this government's ineptitude, and that is the highways department building that was on Walkerville Terrace, which is just adjacent to my electorate. The Department for Transport, Energy and Infrastructure sold this building for $11 million because they said it was completely unsuitable. What did they do then? They spent an additional $13 million fitting out the old SA Water building at 77 Grenfell Street in the city. So they sold their building in Walkerville for $11 million and spent $13 million fitting out somebody else's building that is not owned by the state government.

Since then, they have signed up to a 12-year agreement to rent that building at $7.16 million per year plus GST plus 3.5 per cent indexation. The cost per square metre is $447 per year in rent. This is extraordinarily expensive by any measure. The net cost of this over the 12-year life of this agreement is $115 million of taxpayers' money on this folly. Quite frankly, I think we could have bought this building several times over rather than have this incredible government waste. Of course, this is just one example of where this government has taxed us extremely highly and wasted the money it has collected rather than spend it on priorities that have been very well communicated to them by the general public and, of course, by the Public Service union here in South Australia.

Recognising the anger in the community over this government wastage and the budget, the Premier was looking for a scapegoat and, of course, the previous treasurer had to go. Incredibly, when the new Treasurer was put in place, he looked like not overturning any of the previously toxic unpopular policies of the previous treasurer. In fact, almost on day one—certainly, the first day that he was asked questions in question time—he said, 'I share the previous treasurer's commitment to financial sustainability. That means we need to meet all the savings measures that have been set out in the previous budget.'

So, far from being the saviour of the Public Service in South Australia and ordinary South Australians who were shocked and dismayed at the 2010 budget, the new Treasurer comes in and confirms that he will implement all those policies. It makes you wonder why they had to go through the coup to get rid of the former treasurer if the new Treasurer was going to come in and support all of the previous toxic policies of this government.

The new Treasurer also said on his first day in question time, 'I will not allow this state to run up a credit card debt which gets left to our children to have to pay.' I do not know what set of books this guy is looking at but, quite frankly, we are massively running up our debt here in South Australia for our future generations to pay. Instead of driving down our state debt, we have been increasing debt. I find it extraordinarily worrying that the new Treasurer does not understand this very basic concept.

When I look at the projections for our debt in the forward estimates it shows that under this government we will peak at $7.5 billion. We have not had that level of debt in South Australia since the financial year of 1998-99. That was 13 years ago. We have all this extra money, all these rivers of gold, coming in from federal government money, but our debt is growing, back to levels we have not seen since 1998-99, when we were trying to recover from the State Bank crisis left to us by the previous Labor government.

When the Liberals took over in 1993, state debt stood at $11 billion; by the time we left office, it was closer to $3 billion. Now, under this new government, this new Treasurer is quite happy to clock up on the credit card, as he puts it, $7.5 billion. Of course, it would be much higher if the government was not considering selling our very valuable state forestry assets because the proceeds of the sale of the forward rotations is factored into that net debt figure.

On the debt issue, I think it is also important to recognise that debt is only one part of the liability picture that we should be looking at. There are other liabilities, which we would consider if we were in a commercial environment, which this state has which makes the $7.5 billion look pretty insignificant.

I do not have a huge amount of time remaining, but certainly I would like to put on the record that, if we include our other unfunded liabilities with regard to workers compensation, public sector workers compensation, public sector superannuation and the Motor Accident Commission, the liability factor we have in South Australia is much higher. I should also make the point right here that, when we look at that net debt figure, we really do need to take into account some of these contracts which the government is negotiating on our behalf, which are going to encumber our state for extensive periods into the future.

Of course, I am speaking about the desal contract, which we have no visibility of here in this parliament, and I am also talking about the PPP proposal for the Royal Adelaide Hospital. These numbers will not appear in our net debt figure, but they are unequivocally liabilities this state will have for the next 20, 30 or 35 years, and we have no visibility or scrutiny of those here in this parliament, yet we have a Treasurer who says, 'Well, this isn't really that hard'—and, again, I am quoting from Hansard. When asked the question, 'What is the Treasurer's position on state debt?', he said:

It is a simple financial concept. Anyone who runs a normal household budget would understand that if you live off your credit card on your day-to-day expenses and run up your credit card debt you are going to be in trouble.

Well, guess what, Mr Treasurer? We are in trouble—we are in monumental trouble—and it is not being helped by pithy quotes such as that in Hansard.

In the remaining minutes I have, I would like to discuss the important issue of GST revenue to this state because I do not know whether this has really been highlighted so far in the debate. The federal government has suggested that there will be a review of the method of allocating GST revenues to the individual states. For those of you who do not know, GST revenues are not applied back to a state based upon population; they are not based upon the fact of how much revenue is collected in your state. There is a complex equation, which is called the horizontal fiscal equalisation policy, which basically tries to spread the GST revenue or funds across Australia. South Australia receives $1.28 for every dollar collected in this state. Other states are receiving down to 60¢ in the dollar, and they have claimed that this is extraordinarily unfair. I see this as a massive danger for us here in South Australia.

In South Australia, we have 11 of the federal seats; Queensland has 37. They are screaming that this is unfair. I know what this minority Labor government is going to do: it is going to play to the tune of the larger states, and we are going to be left out, and this learner-plate Treasurer we have at the moment does not even have it on his radar. Well, he needs to get it on his radar. We are going to be looking very carefully at what he brings down in the budget that is coming up because the forward revenues received from GST make up a whopping proportion of our revenue in South Australia and, if they are affected in any negative way whatsoever, we will be left out of pocket, even more so than we have in the past.

I will be very reluctantly supporting the Supply Bill to allow the Treasurer $3.32 billion. My Liberal colleagues and I will be listening very intently at the next budget to see how this government plans to balance the books. The previous treasurer thought that we should actually build a monument in his honour. I think he was joking, although you can never be sure with the member for Port Adelaide. The simple fact of the matter is that he has left this state and the new Treasurer with a complete and utter mess and, for that reason, I shall be looking at the upcoming 2011 state budget very, very carefully.

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg) (12:30): I rise to speak on the Supply Bill. This important bill ensures that our public servants and our departments continue to be funded, pending the announcement and subsequent approval by this parliament of the 2011-12 budget. We do this annually. Last year, of course, we had to do it with a much more expanded amount because the then treasurer could not get his act together sufficiently to bring down the budget at the usual time, that is, before the end of the financial year, after the election. This year, hopefully, the new Treasurer will be able to attend to that—

An honourable member: In a more timely manner.

Ms CHAPMAN: —in a more timely manner, indeed—and we will have it before the end of the financial year. The provision of funds in this Supply Bill suggests that he intends to do just that. One department came under the significant scrutiny of the Sustainable Budget Commission, which was operating during 2009-10. The government appointed eminent members of the community to the Sustainable Budget Commission to find all of the areas in which cuts could be made. Given that the last of the Foley budgets was going to be announced and was going to be an absolute ripper, and that we needed to rein in the extraordinary debt and cost that got out of control under his regime, the Sustainable Budget Commission dealt with a number of areas, including the Department of Environment and Conservation.

I am going to address some of those areas today and, in particular, the provision for conservation and coastal and marine, which are important aspects of our environment budget. They are very pertinent because, in November last year, the Minister for Environment and Conservation (Hon. Paul Caica) announced that he was going to present for public consultation a number of what he described as sanctuary zones within an established 19 marine park structure. They have been known as no-go zones or exclusion zones by a number of people in the last six months that that this has been debated out in the community.

The minister said, 'I'm going to put this out for public consultation and I'm going to appoint local action groups for them to call public meetings in regional areas,' and then he stacked the LAGs. I think it is pretty clear if you read the publications in The Australian that people like Andy Gilfillan—who is in charge of the LAG, as it is known, on Kangaroo Island—have been caught up in what was a clear mandate by the government (in particular, the department of environment) and they are expected to tow the line. They are starting to break out on that.

However, the important thing I bring to your attention is that there was funding for the establishment of public meetings in regional areas. Over the summer break, there was no question that people in coastal towns—from the Western Australian border to Victoria—expressed concern at a number of public meetings mostly convened by local members from this side of the house and Independent members because the government did not do that. Apart from the LAG-appointed public meetings, that was it. So, local members got very active on this, and what became abundantly clear here in the city (where two-thirds of the state's population live) is that they were also concerned. Anyone who owned bathers, boats or beach houses understood that there was going to be a significant social and economic impact on their investment in lifestyle and livelihood, in addition to those who are living out in regional areas.

So, I asked the minister earlier this year to convene a meeting in the city so that people in the city who fish or who have leisure activity on the coast—and there are tens and tens of thousands of them—have a chance to find out a bit more about this. He wrote back to me saying, 'Look, it's on the website. These are the fact sheets that you can read and distribute, but if you have your meeting on the basis that I don't have one, then I will send members of the department along to provide that information.'

Yesterday, the day before the proposed Burnside public meeting, I received a letter from the minister saying, 'I am not attending.' He had never committed himself to attend—and that was fine, he does not have to—but his in writing confirmation that he would be pleased to send members of his department was withdrawn. In fact, he said that he had instructed his department not to attend. That is the level of transparency and the level of public consultation that we are getting from this government, which is indicative over a number of fields. If I stick to this one, he has now announced, after saying that that was not necessary, you just go to the website, that he is going to have his own public meetings—not here in the city, but at Hove, I think, and at Semaphore; not where other people might live in the metropolitan area. He is going to have some, nonetheless.

Let me tell you the ambit since I have been to so many of these public meetings. You have a public meeting, you have a controller—someone who is brought in to protect the department and the minister from any outcry—you have a very limited and very strict agenda, you have it over a sustained period so that people can drop in and drop out of it, so that you never get a crowd big enough to be angry; and if people do turn up who look like they are getting a bit angry or frustrated, they are broken up into groups. We all get butcher's paper, we all get a pencil and we all have to write down our concerns.

This is just utter nonsense. The consultation is a joke, so I have no confidence in that. Nevertheless, let me say, last night at the Burnside meeting, there were somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 people, I am told. I have counted a lot of sheep in my time and I could only count the thousand-odd that were inside the hall, but there were varying different hundreds outside the hall, and it was ably attended by a very good number of members over here, including our Independent members, both in here and in another place.

So, it was a very important meeting, and I say to the house—this is important—this is what consultation is all about. First of all, you invite everybody. Last night, young and old, people aged from 6 to 90, were there. We had male and female—I have to say, more male than female, but nevertheless male and female. We had people from the country and the city—my guess is about 30 to 40 per cent from the country, the rest from the city.

We had property owners, caravan park owners, people who had kids, grandchildren who fish, boaties, people who have beach houses or tents. You name it, everyone who owns an esky across the state was there in different groups: rich, poor, good cars, tinnies, owners. You name it, they were there. There were commercial fishermen, charter boat operators, fishermen and the recreational fishing area, people who have their leisure in the coastal towns.

Notwithstanding bleatings about it being a political meeting—as if there is anything wrong with that; it is a political matter; it is a government proposal, so of course it is going to be political—the people who were asked to speak were the minister and his department. They were given a commitment to speak and an opposition position as to what our position would be. In addition, the people from the Real Estate Institute were there to tell us about whether there would be an effect on property and investment for those who have beach houses, residences, businesses, employment, jobs, etc. in country regions.

We had Jim Raptis representing the food and tourism industry. Jim comes from a family who started out on the West Coast and is now a major exporter and food producer of magnificent, beautiful fish in this state. We also had Trevor Watts, who is the current president of the recreational fishers. Other commercial fishers came and also made statements on the night, as indeed did charter boat operators and other people who live in many of the regional towns.

There is a long list of questions that were presented, which I will be forwarding on to the minister. What they were really angry about was not just that he did not turn up or that he did not send anybody—that sort of, 'I'll take my bat and ball away because I haven't got control of this nonsense. It's not on my terms, so I am not going to do it'—but that he complained about a brochure that went out. On radio I heard he even insulted the chair of the recreational fishers, who said 'Well, you know you would be a brave bloke to go to a meeting'—and that was enough to make him too scared to go. I have never actually known the minister to be a scaredy-cat. I was handed a document last night that said, 'Caica is a coward.' This is how angry people are about the issue.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Point of order, member for Ashford.

The Hon. S.W. KEY: My point of order is that it was my understanding, and certainly my instructions, that when we contribute to this supply debate it needs to be in relation to the actual Supply Bill. I am just wondering why a public meeting, however important it is, and how making negative comments about the minister for environment is relevant to this particular debate.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: If people want to insult each other, that is fine. Member for Ashford, the reality is that supply bills are extremely wide ranging in debate, and I am afraid there is no point of order.

Ms CHAPMAN: Of the very long list of concerns raised and questions to be answered by the minister about his project and how it is to operate, one of the most critical was why there has not been an economic and social impact statement on the programs that have been proposed. We have heard the minister's explanation for that in other places: he says he is going to do it down the track. However, the point is that there is a major social and economic impact on these people; they know it and they know it is coming. They feel blamed and cheated by the process to date.

The financial aspect also raises another important question on the hypocrisy of the government's saying, 'This is not about fishing; this is about marine parks and the whole of the marine environment and protecting the biodiversity.' That sounds fine. It sounds to me like a power transfer from the fisheries department to the environment department actually, but let us assume that they are genuinely concerned about that, and this is why the budget allocation to this is important.

We have already seen the hypocrisy of this government: it has approved projects that pump pollution into the water; it has approved projects that have major environmental aspects associated with them; it has approved oil rigs in areas that are to be marine park zones; and it has approved the dynamiting of ships to make them into artificial reefs. It has been very controversial over the years as to whether you should create artificial reefs with old tyres, vessels past their use-by date, etc. I can remember the former minister for tourism standing here saying she was going to set alight or put air into something that was going to explode and put these things to the bottom of the ocean to create artificial reefs for people to dive on for tourism.

So, let's be honest here. If the government gives a tink about the marine environment, the first thing they would have done was made sure that we had a marine park right outside Adelaide, where hundreds of hectares of seagrass have been destroyed because they continue to fail to deal with all the stormwater rushing off metropolitan Adelaide and killing the seagrass. So, let's be honest about the hypocrisy of these things and let's understand why the anger and frustration is there.

The three resolutions last night were: first, that these no-go zones or sanctuary zones all be removed, that they never be approved by the minister, and they are currently in the draft process; secondly, that there be no identification (and approval particularly) of any other zone—smaller, bigger or anywhere—without a social and economic impact statement being undertaken on it; and, thirdly (this was a little more controversial, but I think it passed with the biggest shout last night), that, 'We'll fish where we bloody well want to.' That is how angry the meeting got.

Quite properly, our leader, Mrs Isobel Redmond, confirmed her commitment to the first two as the opposition's policy; that is, we will not tolerate what has been presented to us to date—that must go—and she will properly review that. For any application, particularly where it is supported by a local community who have been consulted, she insists that, where there is need to protect because of rarity, risk or threat, there be proper identification of that and proper consultation and social and economic impact statements undertaken. Of course, I would never ask her to ever endorse anything that was illegal—and I am sure she would not—but I was prompted, during our own consultations, when I had a call from a retired fisherman on the West Coast. He said, 'You know, Vickie, I think your father, Ted, would have really liked these marine parks, these new zones.' I said, 'Oh I don't think so,' and he said, 'He would have; they'd be the first place he'd go fishing!'

So, let me say that there was a level of anger and frustration last night. When you make bad laws, when governments impose unreasonable and inappropriate restrictions on people, you end up with a situation where good people break the law, where good people become criminals. We have amendments in the upper house which would ensure that a person who might breach a zone and fish in the wrong area, or their boat might drift into the zone, are given a warning in the first instance and can only be prosecuted on a second offence. These are modifications we have tried to make. Of course, we have also tried to move an amendment in the upper house—which the government has completely rejected—that the parliament should review these sanctuary zones.

All this is very important, because the government is hell-bent on going down a process of having what I call a preservationist proposal. That is, draw a line in the ocean, try to fence it off (although the fish will not notice that) and say, 'This is the area'—but then, do what? If we look at the budget there is no provision for policing, there is no provision for anything other than the development of these plans, which apparently has a $2 million a year budget.

Let me explain. When we look at the leaked Sustainable Budget Commission report, on coast and marine it recommends that there be reduced support for marine parks and that over the next four years up to $1.6 million a year be saved by reducing support to the marine parks program. Now, we are not even going to get the final program until 2012. This is out in forward estimates at roughly that. If that represents 40 per cent (which is what the report says) from 2012-13, that means there would be a saving of about $3.4 million over the budget estimates. That means that for this period of development alone there is an $8 million budget.

We are yet to see what happens in this year's budget, whether they actually follow this recommendation and cut it down, but what is very interesting is the question of what the government has to come clean on, not just in this budget but in this alleged consultation period. This government has to tell us how this will be paid for and who will pay for it. That is the reality of what has to happen here.

The report says, 'through adopting a minimalist approach to marine parks implementation, and the generation of a small revenue stream from the external sale of mapping and survey information'. Apparently we will now have to pay to get a map to find out where we cannot go; we have to pay that to the department, and it will be a revenue stream for them under the Sustainable Budget Commission. At least we get some inkling of what is coming. The other thing we find is that there is a proposal for a recreational fishing licence. This is interesting, because the government has previously claimed that it is not going to introduce that. We are yet to see what will happen in this year's budget (they did not in last year's budget) but I can tell you that the revenue stream expected from that, according to this commission report, is about $5.5 million a year. That is on the current recreational fishing licence proposal they are recommending.

The other thing they have recommended (this is all in the department of environment) is 'Nature Conservation—cease marine ecology function'. They currently provide advice when there is any coastal development application or fisheries or aquaculture operations; someone actually goes along and gets advice from the department of environment. That is a good thing, but the recommendation here is that that be cancelled. So, we could have a situation like that plus a recreational fishing licence, and/or their other recommendation (another pearler, and to be expected), which is that the aquaculture fees and charges go up—they want to get about another $1 million a year out of that—and that the commercial fishing fees and charges will go up.

We need to know the truth about how the government is going to pay for this, or is it simply going to do nothing except draw the lines on the map, put something on the website, publish a pamphlet, put out some survey maps that we have to pay for and, frankly, do bugger all else? That is not acceptable. That is not a commitment to the marine environment of South Australia; that is simply leaving it to be vandalised and not dealt with and protected as it should be. We need to know the truth.

What is this going to cost, who is going to be employed, are we going to have the environment police instead of the fisheries police, who is going to take control of this, and how we going to be charged for it? There is nothing surer than the fact that at the end of the day taxpayers are going to pay the price of this. If they muck it up or if they do it inappropriately, and if we are going to spend up good environment dollars on paying some peanut in a department to draw up yet another plan, prepare yet another website and create yet another pamphlet, then that is not acceptable to me and it should not be acceptable to this house.

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (12:51): I, too, rise to support the Supply Bill. I guess I do have a reluctance, standing here today, to watch South Australia slipping into a bottomless pit of debt. As a small business operator, I do wonder how we as a government are allowing this to happen. I look at some of the priorities that this government seem to be hell-bent on achieving through their term of government, and all I see is increased debt expected to go to $7.5 billion. I see increased taxes; they are the highest in the land and yet we are continually sliding into, as I say, a sea of debt.

We have the 2010 budget that has been read out this year, and it is having a detrimental impact on the regions of South Australia. Those regions are really what is driving most of South Australia's economy. We look at the mining sector, we look at the agriculture sector, and those two areas are the major drivers of South Australia's economy. Is this government looking a gift horse in the mouth? I look at the balance; there really is no balance. We see our spending is out of control. We are over budget by $3.5 billion since the '02-03 year. All of these numbers have been expressed by other members on the side, and I really do not need to go over them.

What I would like to see is some initiative, some incentives, for business to come to South Australia and stimulate our economy, to stimulate growth. I look at incentives, particularly in my region up in Chaffey, where we are looking at processing industries, we are looking at primary production that are looking for a hand to get up and get on with business.

Some of those short-term gains that those businesses need are for the long term. We look at power upgrades, and in particular we have the thriving almond industry at the moment. We see one particular business that is run as a cooperative, known as Almondco. They needed power upgrades to expand their business, and the government put them through years of red tape and barriers. It really just stifled the growth of that business.

Red tape seems to be the issue with any business that wants to come to South Australia. Any new business or any existing business that wants to expand continually has a barrier of red tape put up in front of them. That red tape is not about spending a lot of money; it is about costing money. It is about this government having bureaucrats, having people standing up and saying, 'You can't do that because an internal audit is telling us that we would like you to fill out another 600 forms and jump another mile of red tape.' It is about being proactive and showing investors that South Australia is a great place in which to invest and the state in which to build a new industry or expand on an existing industry.

Again, if we are looking at businesses coming into South Australia, we need to look at payroll tax. Payroll tax is one of the biggest driver-away incentives that I know of—and that includes land tax. We are one of the highest land tax states in the nation. We are a relatively small economy in the big picture of the national economy, and yet this state government stands up and proudly says that we are going to be the highest taxing state in the nation.

Why would businesses consider coming here? That is the question I am regularly asked by businesses coming to the region—in particular, the Riverland—that are looking to take up an opportunity. We have a fantastic asset with food production and also a fantastic opportunity for processing. We have a fantastic opportunity for grassroots marketing to come out of the region. Yet, people keep saying to me, 'Why do we come to South Australia? We are going to get continually belted with high taxes; decisions that the government is taking much too long to make. We are going elsewhere. We're going to other states because that government over there is prepared to stand up and help us, where your government is not.'

I see that from a hands-on approach. Being a small business operator, the barriers that I and my fellow business people have to face are displayed to me every day. It is such a frustrating exercise to try to generate interest from investors. It is a frustrating exercise to have fellow growers or fellow farmers saying, 'We're feeling confident that the government will support our wish or our want, and we want to get on with the job and invest in South Australia.'

However, I hear too often these businesses say, 'No, it's too hard. This government just gets in our way, we're going elsewhere.' It really shows what the Rann Labor government is doing: it is taking advantage of what it is like to live in Adelaide and the support that people are getting in Adelaide, but that is not the same strategy as we see in the regions within South Australia.

I would like to touch on what is in store for South Australia's water security future. Goodness gracious—we look at the desal plant and the potential $2.4 billion that is associated with its construction and the construction of the north-south interconnector pipe. We look at the $2.6 billion to run that monster for 20 years—a $2.6 billion bill to run that power-hungry, 100-gigalitre plant over that 20-year period. We look at the federal funding of $228 million for that extra 50 gigalitres that was agreed to by the government. At what cost is that to South Australia? First of all, we look at the $228 million that is going to be put up by the federal government for the extra 50 gigalitres at that plant. The federal government wants water. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.


[Sitting suspended from 13:00 to 14:00]


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