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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-09-28 Daily Xml
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APPROPRIATION BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 16 September 2010.)

Mrs REDMOND (Heysen—Leader of the Opposition) (11:02): It is my pleasure to rise and indicate to the house that I will be the lead speaker on this bill. It is a sad day for us, indeed, that we have this bill before us. This is not a budget about weathering the storm of a global financial crisis but about mismanagement, lies and deceit from a government that wants to do nothing more than stay in power. Sadly, after we went to an election in March, some people thought we could still trust this government. The election was fought mostly on trust, but sadly some people felt that they could still trust the government and they voted for this government in March, only to find out with this budget just how deceitful and how treacherous it could be. It has treated the people of this state in an absolutely shameful way, both in the budget and in the way it dealt with them before the election, misleading them as to what it was going to do and what it has truly done.

I want to go back and look at the budget process and go through this in some sort of orderly manner, although it is hard when members opposite have so shamelessly behaved in the way that they have. This budget, of course, was delayed until September, conveniently after both the state election in March and the federal election in August. Every year that this government has been in power, except in 2006 when we had an election, it has brought down its budget reasonably on time, but this year we had to wait until September, for no good reason. If we look at Tasmania, they went to an election on the same day we did. They indeed had somewhat more trouble forming a government in that state than we had here, yet they brought down their budget on 17 June.

In the UK, after 13 years of a Labour government, David Cameron brought down his budget within 50 days of that government taking power, and that was a budget of $1.2 trillion. They were able to bring down their budget within 50 days. This government had no excuse, and no explanation was ever given as to why it was not going to bring down its budget on time. Instead, in order to avoid the situation and to avoid the real truth of what the situation was in this state, what it did was set up the Sustainable Budget Commission. It did not even put a funding for that Sustainable Budget Commission into its budget last year when it formed the Sustainable Budget Commission on 4 June. There was no funding for it; so, in fact, its original spending was completely without any budget line.

Ultimately, at the halfway point, when it brought down the mid-year review, it put in $2.5 million; and, in due course, I will be interested to see how much it actually cost. It set up a Sustainable Budget Commission, and it asked that commission to find $750 million in savings, beginning with this year's budget. The government planned all along to disclose those cuts only after the election. The election was on 20 March. It knew that it was going to make massive cuts, and it planned to disclose them only after the election.

In my view, this was just a government trying to avoid the scrutiny that it deserved going into the election because it was so desperate to hang onto power in this state. The commission it set up consisted of Geoff Carmody, the founder of Access Economics (and, in the past, he has been engaged by both federal Liberal and Labor oppositions) and Bruce Carter. Now, Bruce is on a number of government boards, and he and his company have received over $1 million in consulting fees paid by the Rann government.

The commission also consists of David Cappo (this government's favourite person; he would know a lot about balancing billions of dollars in a budget), the social inclusion commissioner; Jennifer Westacott from KPMG, previously a career public servant in Victoria and New South Wales; Chris Eccles, the CEO of the Department of the Premier and Cabinet (cabinet got an increase, strangely) who has previously worked in other state public services; and Jim Wright, the Under Treasurer, who has, of course, since the establishment of the Sustainable Budget Commission, announced his retirement.

So, what did they do? From what I have read, I could have done what they did. They took a completely economic rationalist basis and said, 'If you close this, you'll save that much money. If you stop providing that service, you'll save that much money. If you withdraw this, you'll save that much money,' with no thought at all about what the consequences might be of doing each of those things.

If you close a hospital, there are still patients who need to be dealt with; if you close a school, there are still students who need to be taught; and if you withdraw services that does not make the need for the service go away; all it does is move the problem. But, surely, the fundamental thing that the Department of Treasury and Finance is here to do is to provide advice to the government on how to manage the economy and, if they are to be made, where savings should be made.

But not this government. This government appointed this Sustainable Budget Commission, who took all those extra months to come to some conclusions which were never going to be viable. Then we had the interesting situation in the week before the budget was released of the inexplicable release of the Sustainable Budget Commission's early report. We will never know the truth of whether that was put out by the Labor Party or whether it was a complete stuff-up.

Whichever way it was, the Labor Party—and I have to give it credit—used it to its best advantage, because by saying the day before the budget, 'Oh, look at how terrible this could be,' it was then able to make this appalling budget look a little better than it might otherwise have in the eyes of the people who were then about to hear the bad news. It is a disgraceful budget.

How have we got to the position where we even need to think about making the savings that we need to make, and how have we got to the position where a government needs to appoint a Sustainable Budget Commission to keep running its economy? When I came into this place in 2002 the budget was roughly $8 billion. It is now roughly $16 billion. It has doubled in that time. Every year the government spends more than it has budgeted.

The person preparing even the most basic household budget knows that you cannot keep spending more than you have budgeted. The result is that, this year, we not only have a $389 million deficit but we also have this massively increasing debt position.

So we have had windfall revenues, and then we have had a government that, nevertheless, has insisted on spending more and more money, to the point where the Auditor-General warned that it was relying on money coming in that it could not rely on. I refer to the 2008-09 Auditor-General's Report, which states:

Over the past six years, the state has received large amounts of unbudgeted revenues that enabled net operating surpluses.

So they had all this extra money flowing in, enabling them to have net operating surpluses. The Auditor-General states further:

Last year [that is, 2007-08], I commented that a possible risk attaching to the consistent record of net operating balance surpluses was that the state may have developed a culture of expecting growing revenues to continue to support increasing expenses.

He goes on to say:

Essentially, within 12 months there is more pressure on how to control expenses than has existed for many years. This is likely to test the public sector's commitment and/or ability to control expenses.

We will come shortly to what the government has done to the public sector, but suffice to say that this government, for all the years it has been in power, has had these unbudgeted streams of revenue coming in, largely because of the taxes it has imposed on the people of this state.

This state remains the highest taxing state in Australia. That has been confirmed by two independent authorities. Tax revenue has increased by 76 per cent since this government came into office. Land tax has gone up by over 300 per cent, so it has increased fourfold. The GST revenue has almost doubled in the last nine years and it now approaches $5 billion per annum. This government, that did not want the GST, opposed the GST, has become reliant on that stream of income. I would not mind all of this so much if we actually had something to show for it. What have we got? We have a tram that goes to the Entertainment Centre. That is brilliant.

In passing, I note that that never appeared in the Strategic Plan. It is strange how the government had a strategic plan but it never mentioned trams, it never mentioned putting in a new hospital, and it never mentioned extending the O-Bahn; yet, it requires public servants to spend hours and hours on everything it puts forward to make sure that every tiny point fits within the Strategic Plan.

Instead of having something to show for it, what we have to show for it is a great big debt. It is a bit like a great big tax from my friend Tony Abbott. In this state, we have a great big debt. This year, our true debt position will increase from $4.9 billion. We only have a $16 billion income for the whole budget, but we will have a debt of $4.9 billion this year. It gets worse: we are going out to $7.5 billion within the forward estimates. It will soon represent about 8 per cent of the state economy. This government is blowing out the debt to a point where we will be back where we were after the State Bank disaster, where the people of this state will be paying $2 million a day in interest, or near enough thereto.

I always invite people to think about what this state would look like if you could take that $2 million every day and put it somewhere—for instance, into the Parks Community Centre. Two million dollars would be a good start for them. You could put it into the Repat hospital; you could put it into a small school in Morialta; you could put it anywhere. You could have $2 million not just once but every single day, and not just for one year but on an ongoing basis. That is the position this government has got us into, despite the fact that it has had rivers of money flowing into this state for the whole time it has been in power. It is a disgrace.

Ms Chapman: And we have got pensioners' rent going up.

Mrs REDMOND: Yes, I will come to that. It gets worse. It is not just the $7.5 billion in debt. That is just the government debt. When you add on our unfunded superannuation and our workers compensation liability, that adds another $9.5 billion and $1.4 billion. Remember we had workers compensation unfunded liability down to about $59 million when we were last in power. Not only has this Labor government stripped workers' entitlements—and they all voted for it—but they have blown out the unfunded liability (under their excellent management model) from $59 million to over $1 billion; and when you add on the public sector, it is $1.4 billion in unfunded liability. And when you add that on to the superannuation unfunded liability, we are near enough to $20 billion of unfunded liability and debt facing this state—and that is about $11,000 for every man, woman and child in the state.

How could you have got us to this? How could you have got us to the position where we have to spend time and money employing people on a Sustainable Budget Commission to help you hide the fact that you are going to have to have a slash and burn budget and you are not going to tell anyone about it until after the state election. And that is where we get to real the deceit and treachery of this government.

This government has done unthinkable things before, but when it comes to their statements, remember Kevin Foley? Do you remember back in 2002, coming into the election, they gave a written promise about not increasing a certain tax. They wrote a letter saying, 'We are not going to increase a tax.' I have here a copy of what Kevin Foley said to this parliament on 15 June 2002. He said, 'You do not have the moral fibre to go back on your promise; I have.' What sort of person holds themselves up, puffs out their chest and boasts about having the moral fibre to go back on their promise?

It is extraordinary that not only did he do that but that people lapsed into a sense of faithfulness to this Labor government (which should hang itself in shame at calling itself a Labor government) and allowed it to deceive them again, because, once again, in this budget, this government went into an election in March promising that there would be no forced redundancies. They provided a letter on 1 February; well after we had provided a letter, by the way. In fact, I suspect it was only because we had provided a letter that they felt they were compelled to give that letter, but they knew all along that it was never going to be true.

They knew the whole time that there were going to be these drastic cuts all the while they were negotiating, the Public Service Association thought in good faith. The teachers were going through arbitration. They all thought they were going through this process in good faith, entering into new enterprise bargain agreements which said that there would be no cut to the current situation they were under, their current entitlements would be maintained. They thought that until this budget was delivered earlier this month.

Mr Williams: The cold, hard truth.

Mrs REDMOND: Yes, as my deputy says, the cold, hard truth emerged when the Treasurer said:

Madam Speaker, following the introduction of separation packages, if the required reduction in employee numbers is not achieved in 12 months through redeployment and voluntary separation packages—

'Redeployment'—it is not even just voluntary separation packages but redeployment and voluntary separation packages—

the government will reconsider its 'no forced redundancy' policy.

An honourable member: A broken promise.

Mrs REDMOND: Yes. Yet Mike Rann had the audacity to tweet (as his favourite medium, he tweets) that he had met all his election promises. Well, that is a pretty fundamental breach of a promise. That is a pretty fundamental breach to give a letter saying, 'No forced redundancies', and then, a few months later, to say, 'Well, we're going to revisit that.' I put it to you, Madam Speaker that for this to appear in the budget speech means to me that absolutely there will be some forced redundancies, because if the government thought for one moment that they were going to be able to get away with managing this economy without forced redundancies, they would not have put that in the budget speech. They would have let it slide under and then, if they were eventually forced to do that in year 2 or 3 of this next term, they might have done it. They have put it in the budget now because they know it is going to happen.

How do they face the people who supported them into government? All those unions and all those public sector employees who relied on this government, and negotiated in good faith with it, believing that the enterprise bargaining agreements and the arbitrations they were going through guaranteed that they would keep their existing entitlements, would then find that the government breached it, in three main ways: firstly, by saying, 'Oh yes, we are going to have no forced redundancies,' and then completely reversing that position in their very first budget, so soon after the election, and next, by cutting their 17½ per cent leaving loading. Mind you, the government says, 'We'll give you two days in lieu.'

I met with the Public Service Association yesterday, which is apparently something that the Premier has not done for years, and the Public Service Association told me that they have done their calculations. This government says, 'We are going to be very reasonable. We are going to take away your 17½ per cent loading, but we are going to give you two days leave in lieu,' which sounds fine, but when the calculation is done it equates to about 3½ or four days. So, in fact, they are cutting the conditions.

Furthermore, they are going to stop long service leave accumulating at the current rate of 15 days to nine days. I am not here to argue about the rightness or wrongness of those levels of accruals. What I am here to argue about is the fact that this government was so deceitful, in fact the word 'treachery' was used yesterday—not by me—in the meeting with the PSA and Unions SA. That is how they see it, and rightly so.

All of those people on the Labor side of the house should hang their heads in shame. They sat there through the debate on the WorkCover changes, and behind the scenes they were coming begging us to do something about this dreadful proposal by the government to reduce workers' entitlements, and voted for the changes, and you watch, they will vote for these changes as well.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mrs REDMOND: It does not matter to them that this government intends to find 3,740 public servants to get rid of. It does not matter to them, even though going into the election their government, their Premier, signed a letter saying, 'We promise there won't be any forced redundancies,' and coming out of the election it says, 'Well, we will reconsider that.' It does not matter to them and they will vote for this legislation.

Mr Williams: Outrageous! Every one of you should hang your heads in shame.

Mrs REDMOND: They should. It is appalling. They kept it hidden until after the election. In the meantime, this government still proceeds with the wondrous shared services plan. Now, isn't that a ripper! Amongst other things, the Auditor-General's Report reveals that up to June 2009, and his report of that year indicates as much, they had paid $2.2 million in dead rent, renting accommodation for shared services facilities that are not even in existence.

Mr Williams: They do that all the time.

Mrs REDMOND: They do it on more than that, but referring just to Shared Services, I have mentioned before on previous occasions in this house the number of jobs that are being taken out of rural and regional South Australia to facilitate this Shared Services. Let me give you some figures on it. In 2006-07, that is when they decided to start on this, they estimated that the Shared Services program would make ongoing savings of $60 million per annum from 2009-10. The program has now cost $113 million—this is all in the name of rationalising.

If there are any public servants in the audience today I am sure they are well aware of the effect of rationalising all those human resources and IT services. I have some examples. I know people in the medical sphere, for instance, dentists and so on, who do work for the public sector, who are threatening to withdraw their services from the public sector and walk away. They can earn their money in private enterprise and they can earn a lot more, but when they do not get paid that is when it really hurts.

Last night I was at the Bus and Coach Association and, after I had spoken, I was approached by some people who said, 'We have trouble getting paid.' Of course, they are running a business and they need to get paid; they do government work and they need to get paid.

They gave me a document about the customer payments from the government. This goes through quite a period of time but, from last year, the longest they had to wait was 395 days on one invoice. That is over a year. Then they decided, 'We'll have a meeting and see if we can sort it out,' so they went to see the people and in December they got an agreement that from now on it would only be 30 days that they would have to wait. Their accounts would be paid in 30 days.

These people are running a private business, needing to get the money in because they in turn have salaries to pay, rent and whatever other expenses. People who are running businesses know what it is like. Since they got the agreement to have their invoices paid within 60 days—

Mr Williams: Thirty days.

Mrs REDMOND: Thirty days. Well, I read '60' because that refers to the next several: 60 days, 60 days, 60 days. On it goes, with rarely one even getting down to 30, with the result that thus far only 37 per cent of their invoices have been paid within the agreed time after they have had their meeting. That is Shared Services.

Shared Services was supposedly going to make annual savings of $60 million. It has now cost $113 million, and there is another $8.3 million for it in this budget. When it will all be fully implemented, we do not know, but the Auditor-General has already identified a savings shortfall of $125 million over these forward estimates. In other words, the savings target is $60 million per year, but over the forward estimates we have a shortfall of $125 million, so more than half of that forward estimate.

These figures are all quite large, so it is quite difficult for the ordinary person in the street to translate the budget into what it means for them, but let's have a look at what it means for them. If you catch a bus, drive a car, consume water (most of us might do that), pay insurance, are looking to buy your first home or work in the public sector, or any number of other things, you are worse off as a result of this budget.

The government increased the per kilolitre water charges by 32 per cent from 1 July 2010. The average household will pay $84 more for water next year, making the average about $500, but that is before sewerage charges come in: that is just for the water. In 2008, the Treasurer informed us that water prices would need to be doubled to pay for the 50 gigalitre desalination plant. Remember, we actually proposed a 50 gigalitre desalination plant. For 18 months, we could have built it for something like $700 million, was it, originally?

The Hon. I.F. Evans interjecting:

Mrs REDMOND: $400 million, originally. When we went over to Perth and had a look at it, the people over there who had built it said, 'You could build this today for $400 million.' We came back and we formed a policy of having a 50 gigalitre plant for $400 million. What has this government done about it? For 18 months it denied that we needed a desalination plant and then—typical of this government—it did a double backflip pike reverse somersault, and we get to, 'Oh, we need one now and, what's more, we need one double the size. We need 100 gigalitres.' You know what? The $400 million will only (if it is lucky) pay for connecting the north and the south once it is built. The $400 million could have built the whole thing: instead of that, it is now $1.8 billion to build this desalination plant.

Mr Williams: Plus $400 million.

Mrs REDMOND: Plus $400 million to connect the south to the north. Of course, through that whole process the government has been so good at being consensual and consultative as we all know, especially through electorates like Norwood, Adelaide, Morialta and so on.

An honourable member interjecting:

Mrs REDMOND: Yes. Of course, do not forget the Premier's promise that every tiny bit of power going into that desalination plant is going to be green power. The Premier does not seem to understand that the only way to guarantee that is to build a separate power plant to supply the green power, because once you put it into the grid it comes out as power; it does not matter where it came from to go into the grid, what you are purchasing is power. We do not yet know how much our water prices are going to go up by, but we have heard suggestions that, having already doubled, they will double again: if doubling once is good, doubling again must be twice as good. In fact, since 2002-03 the price of water in South Australia has already trebled, and we face more increases.

Property tax revenues have more than doubled. Land tax, as I said earlier, has gone up fourfold. In fact, aside from Victoria, we pay the highest stamp duty in the nation. Is it any wonder that our young people leave to go somewhere else? In this budget, the $4,000 first homebuyer subsidy on existing purchases has been cut. So, if you decided to buy an existing house because it was where you needed to live and it happened to be an existing house, 'Sorry, no, only subsidies on newly-constructed homes.' That is the way they go. They just make arbitrary decisions. They do not actually stop to think, 'What is the impact of this on the people we are meant to be serving?'

On land tax revenue, the backbench sits there quietly. We all heard what the member for Newland said on election night. Do you know what? He was exactly right.

Mr Williams: He was right.

Mrs REDMOND: He was exactly right.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! I am trying to listen to the Leader of the Opposition, and I cannot hear for all the background noise.

Mrs REDMOND: Thank you, Madam Speaker, I am glad you are trying to listen to me. I am just reminding the member for Newland how right he was on election night. It was just that none of us on this side realised he was talking about what they had done to the people of this state.

Land tax is up by 309 per cent since this government came to power. I remember Kevin Foley saying, 'Well, that's just something that affects rich people.' He does not recognise that land tax actually affects everybody, but nearly all the businesses in this state—

Mr Williams: That is why he invests in Sydney.

Mrs REDMOND: Yes, he invests elsewhere.

Mr Pederick: He was never game to run his own business.

Mrs REDMOND: That is right—he never ran his own business. However, the Treasurer does not seem to realise that nearly all the businesses in this state are small to medium enterprises and nearly all of them run out of rented premises. If they run out of rented premises, someone is paying land tax, and that land tax is being passed onto that business, and they are passing it onto every person who uses that business.

Furthermore, people who invest in houses rent them out, and the people who are the most vulnerable are probably the ones in rental accommodation. Their rents go up because of land tax going up, and land tax is going up by huge amounts, but this government did not care. This government refused to recognise that there was even a problem with land tax until it was eventually forced into some sort of reduction as an announcement at the election.

As to stamp duty on motor vehicles, we are among the least competitive of all states, and guess what happens? Businesses that have the opportunity register their vehicles in another state—surprise, surprise! However, for ordinary people, stamp duty on motor vehicles is going to go up. We have CTP insurance premiums going up by 7.2 per cent, motor vehicle registration fees up by 3.5 per cent and driver's licence renewals up by 3.7 per cent. They are all above inflation. We should not need to go above inflation for these increases, but they all have.

This is just wondrous: they have decided they can make money by charging commercial rates for the parking at hospitals. With their economic rationalist approach, that will give them a good reason to keep people waiting longer in hospitals, because then they can be charging more while the people are parking their cars. Every individual will be affected by it, but let us look at what they are doing to communities. The government is cutting small schools grants by $12.1 million.

Mr Venning: They're not going to close them.

Mrs REDMOND: They say they will not close them. The government says that it will not do any of that; it will not amalgamate or close them. It is death by a thousand cuts with this government; they will leave them to wither on the vine. Every time the government does that, another vote changes, I can guarantee it. The government builds so-called super schools, which cost a lot of money. Education is about teachers and students; it is not about having flash new buildings. My view is that you can actually have a good education sitting under a gum tree, provided you have good teachers. How do you have good teachers? You pay them appropriately.

The government does not care about teachers. It just went through arbitration with teachers and it did not happen to tell them, 'By the way, we're going to remove all your conditions.' Communities function because of things like schools. That is what keeps communities alive, things like the Parks Community Centre. They are the glue that holds communities together. Governments cannot do that job. It is the people in the communities who hold communities together, and what this government is doing is a wholesale wrecking job across the community.

I love the item in today's paper pointing out that this Premier promised to bulldoze bikie fortresses but, instead, is going to bulldoze the community centre across the road. This government promised to be more consultative. It has redefined the term 'consultation'. For as long as I have been in this place, the government has redefined what it means by consultation. In my mind, it used to mean two-way dialogue where you actually listened to the people who came to the meeting. What it means now is that the government sends out a public servant to say, 'Were going to have a public meeting'—

Ms Chapman: They make the decision first.

Mrs REDMOND: That's right; they have already decided. They have already made their decision, and anyone fool enough to turn up at a public meeting is told what the decision will mean. That way the government can then cross the box that says, 'Consulted with the public.' It tried to do the same with us. It sent a public servant to arrange a meeting with us, so then it can tick the box that says, 'Consulted with local member.' It does not matter what you say at those meetings, the government actually says that it has consulted. It has redefined the very concept of consultation.

This government, which said that it was going to be more consultative, is now proposing, without any consultation or discussion, to collocate all sorts of schools. That is just another word for, 'We're going to close some schools.' That's another word for, 'We're going to close schools; we are going to rationalise.' Economic rationalism gone mad. Why? Because you are bad economic managers.

The government is going to discontinue adult re-entry programs into public schools. Adult age students will now have to pay to go to TAFE, and that threatens programs in schools such as Hamilton, Marden, Thebarton and Fremont-Elizabeth—all of those programs just going. Does anyone remember at the end of last year when we asked the then minister about the potential closure of Panorama TAFE? Boy, did he dance around that topic. He did not want us to go near that, because he was trying to say, 'No, we're not going to close it,' but, all along, the government knew it was going to close it. In fact, it is not just Panorama; O'Halloran Hill and Marleston are set to close as well.

How about the removal of the money from private hospitals? This is a really paltry amount. It is a saving of $1.2 million per year, and the government is going to take away the money from little country private hospitals, such as Keith, Ardrossan, Moonta and Glenelg.

Ms Chapman: It's a miserable, mean thing to do.

Mrs REDMOND: It is not just miserable and mean; it does not actually solve the problem. Those hospitals provide a service in their communities. Often, they have boards of unpaid people who are there for the good of their communities and, with a very small amount of input from the government, they are able to keep those hospitals running to provide a service to those communities. The government seems so shortsighted that it does not even seem to consider the effect of closing a hospital. There are still patients; where will they go? 'We are going to centralise everything. We centralised disability, we're going to centralise the Royal Adelaide Hospital; we're going to centralise it all into Adelaide.'

You are constantly depriving the people of the regions around South Australia of the most meagre and locally supported things that they run in their communities. To take away that paltry amount of funding from those hospitals may well spell the death knell for them when, in fact, they are doing you a favour. They are saving you millions of dollars and yet, for $1.2 million a year, you are prepared to just rip them away.

You have already made one attempt on country health and now you are turning around and trying, via a different way, to take the heart out of country health. Regional and rural people of this state—who, by the way, provide most of the income in terms of our agriculture, fisheries, mining and so on and are the ones who provide a lot of the wealth of this state—are just as entitled to equity in the provision of health, education and all other services but you, for the paltry price of $1.2 million a year, are prepared to sell them out entirely.

What is more, you are even going to cut the tourism budget. Did anyone notice—maybe you did notice—that Oprah is coming, but not to South Australia? Oprah is coming to Australia. I have to say that we had an excellent operator in Tourism SA in Andrew McEvoy as we did previously with Bill Spurr. Andrew has gone off to the national scene and he came up with this brainwave and I think it is a good one. It is an excellent idea but I have a sneaking suspicion that South Australia might be the state that misses out on Oprah.

Mr Williams: Again!

Mrs REDMOND: Again.

Ms Bedford: She's never been before!

Mrs REDMOND: Why would she miss out?

Members interjecting:

Mrs REDMOND: Why would you cut tourism? The tourism budget is being cut by $12.5 million—that is $12.5 million out of tourism. It is one of our growth areas, in case you haven't noticed. There are other things that one might do to help tourism, like road maintenance, signage and things like that. However, they are going to cut the number of programs and that has the capacity to seriously damage our tourism potential in this state. Then what are they going to do on mining? They are going to increase the royalties. We are putting our mining royalties up.

Mr Williams: Did you see the FinancialReview this morning?

Mrs REDMOND: Yes, I saw the Financial Review this morning. The government—although, again, it did not tell anyone before the election—would not upset the miners before the election by saying, 'Oh, by the way, folks, we're planning to increase mining royalties from 3.5 to 5 per cent.' However, the reality is that for eight years I have sat on this side of the chamber listening to Mike Rann talk about a mining boom in this state. We did have, for a while, a mining exploration boom. We did have it for a while but, in fact, in the mining sector now our jobs are down to a six-year low of 6,200 in the whole sector. They have gone down by half over the past three years for jobs in that sector.

Mr Williams: There are no more than we had in 1985.

Mrs REDMOND: There were more mining jobs in 1985 than we have in 2010. We do not yet know what will be the impact of the combined increase in their royalties and, of course, the Gillard plan for mines. As the deputy reminded me, in this morning's paper there was already an item overnight whereby the Financial Review reported that BHP is looking to substantially reduce the scope of the Olympic Dam expansion and, indeed, concentrate its efforts on copper rather than uranium because of a bit of slump in world prices.

We, on this side, have always supported Olympic Dam—unlike the Premier who wrote a pamphlet about the 'mirage in the desert'; the Premier who was the president of a Labor Party that opposed uranium mining altogether. We have always recognised the value of that to this state. We want it to happen but this government is doing nothing to ensure that it will happen. Every step they take is another nail in the coffin, it seems.

Let us look at another little promise they broke and, in fact, the member for Bragg mentioned it earlier: the promise not to absorb the one-off pension increase. The government now, in this budget, has cancelled the public housing rent assistance for pensioners and it is going to save $28 million over three years.

Can I just bring to your attention some of the funny things that I have found in the budget? It seems that in the budget there is a note that the budget for the cabinet office is going up, from $7.1 million to $8.431 million. The strategic policy initiatives—now there is an important thing to have, maybe like how to fool the people most of the time—are going up from $26.459 million to $41.699 million. So, this government that is prepared to rip away $28 million over three years from pensioners after promising not to is nevertheless prepared to break that promise but still increase what it is paying elsewhere.

Of course, we all know about the Parks Community Centre. In fact, this morning I was watching—I was not home for the news last night—and managed to see a rather dark-haired and young looking Mike Rann, standing there with Don Dunstan, while they talked about the social crime of thinking that a Liberal government would destroy the Parks Community Centre.

An honourable member: Hypocrite!

Mrs REDMOND: We are not allowed to use the term hypocrite in this chamber, but they might be referred to as whited sepulchres. We might consider it deceitful that a government that plans to slash and burn in electorates where it thinks it is invincible might learn a lesson eventually. Of course, it has also cut agriculture, fishing services and all that research and development. In fact, I am sure that a number of the research facilities around the state—

Mr van Holst Pellekaan: Jamestown.

Mrs REDMOND: Jamestown and Lenswood, I think, and Flaxley—a lot of those places are under threat because of the cuts of this government. We have, until this government, been able to pride ourselves on the level of agricultural research and development in this state and the level of aquaculture. It should be one of the shining stars of this state, but no, this government in its wasteful ways has got us to a point where they are cutting those important things in favour of increases to things like the cabinet office.

An honourable member: They have got their priorities all wrong—completely wrong.

Mrs REDMOND: Exactly. Their priorities are wrong. After eight years of Rann Labor government, our living standards, service levels, infrastructure and economic position relative to other states have all declined under this government. Our share of the national economy has declined. Our share of the national population has declined. If we had kept pace with the national growth, we would now have 34,000 more people employed in this state than those we have. We have failed to keep pace with what the rest of the country is doing. We used to be the third largest state. We are now trailing along at the bottom because of this management by this government.

When Mr Rann came to office, we had a 7 per cent share of national business investment. We now have only 5.4 per cent of national business investment. Our exports: does everyone remember the wonderful strategic plan? We were going to treble exports. They started out at $9.1 billion per annum when we left office. I think members opposite are a bit confused about what they mean by trebling, because so far we have got down to $7.9 billion. I think it is a bit like the bulldozer direction that they have got wrong. They have got the idea of trebling exports wrong. You are meant to be increasing them, not having them go down to one-third. Our exports declined by 14.5 per cent last year.

We are falling behind the other states. We have the lowest proportion of exporting businesses of all the mainland states. We continue to lose residents to other states, with three times more people migrating to other states than when we were last in government. So, our share of the national population, as I said, has even gone down under this government. We used to be roughly about 8 per cent; we are now down to about 7.37 per cent. People often say to me, 'Now, what would you do differently? How would you manage the economy?' Well, we would not have got it into this mess in the first place.

The Hon. S.W. Key interjecting:

Mrs REDMOND: We would not have got it into this mess in the first place, and may I remind you that this is somewhat cyclical. We went through the State Bank. You got us into awful debt. We came in and got you out of it. You come back in and you get us back into this awful debt. It is cyclical and, if you look at the federal government, it is exactly the same. I remind those sitting opposite that we took an entirely different plan to the election. We opposed building the rail yards hospital because we said that it was actually better for a whole lot of reasons and magnificently cheaper to build it where it is.

We went to the election with a plan to build a completely new stadium—and it was costed—not patch up the Adelaide Oval. We went to the election with a plan to cancel the tram extension. Why would you build a tram extension when it is not in your own Strategic Plan and when it costs so much money simply to provide the service that is already provided by buses? It makes no sense. We were going to cancel the $520 million tram extensions to Footy Park and western suburbs.

We were going to reduce departmental spending on consultants and contractors, saving $63 million. I have already mentioned the figures for the cabinet office and places like the Strategic Policy Initiative. We were going to reduce the number of government boards and committees, saving some $8 million.

We were going to abolish the Thinkers in Residence program. We all know, don't we, the importance of why we have to have thinkers in residence? I will not say anything more about our most recent Thinker in Residence, who is not taking up her appointment after all. We would have abolished that.

In fact, I have actually said, somewhat jokingly, that it is my aim in life, my aspiration, to become a Thinker in Residence. I reckon that is the job. I want to go to Paris and be paid a lot of money to sit and think and then tell the Parisians what I think. I reckon that is a good gig, and then do you reckon president Sarkozy might say to me, 'Isobel, why don't you come and live here and be paid a fortune to stay here and think some more?'

We had committed to something recommended by the famous Sustainable Budget Commission, that is, to have 12 ministers. This government, of course, introduced an extra minister, then an extra minister, then an extra minister. We now have many more ministers than we need because this government needed them to stay in power at first. There is no excuse for still keeping them. Your own paid appointed Sustainable Budget Commission recommended reducing your ministers to 12. That is what we would have had in government. That is what it recommended. Have you done anything about it? No.

You go out to the Parks and ask the people there whether they think it is more important to keep their community centre or to have three extra ministers. Go out and ask them. The reality is that a Liberal government will always be in favour of smaller government and of putting money out into communities. That is how you make your money work effectively—$2,000 to the local cricket club is worth a lot more than $23 million spent on advertising in the first six months of last year by this government. You know how to waste money, not how to build infrastructure and not how to do things that the state of South Australia needs done and that the people of this state deserve. We actually believe in putting money out into the community, not in building bigger infrastructure.

Look at Disability SA, which is a favourite example of mine because I am passionate about the way we have mistreated the disability sector in this state. This government closed and sold off the Julia Farr Centre, shut down the Intellectual Disability Services Council, defunded the Independent Living Centre and a range of other things, such as Deaf SA, the multiple sclerosis organisation and the Brain Injury Network. They said, 'We can do this better as a government. We will build Disability SA, and we will do it all.'

What has happened? Those poor organisations sink into the mire, lost without a trace, and all the expertise they have built up is lost. You have a dysfunctional department where, even before they made that decision, their own people writing the report said, 'This department is so dysfunctional that we can never do the report you have commissioned us to do.' Yet they still spend more and more money into that sector, creating a bigger and bigger problem instead of putting the money out into the community where it belongs. In closing I say, one of the whispers I have been hearing around the halls is that Kevin Foley has a new spring in his step because he thinks he is about to become the premier.

Members interjecting:

Mrs REDMOND: You never know. You never know. It might explain a lot. We know that the Premier is disengaged and disinterested and we know that the left has the talent and the right has the numbers, so we know there is a lot of internal squabbling on that side of the house as to how they are going to manage their renewal. We know that they want renewal, but we know they cannot figure out a way, so I suspect that there could be some truth in the rumour that Mr Foley might actually think, 'Now is my chance. Now is my chance to be the premier.'

So in closing, can I invite Mr Foley, if indeed he does become the premier, rather than going down the path outlined by this budget, to rethink his priorities, and take a fresh look at the priorities we took to the election, which, after all, more than half the people voted for. From an environmental, from a social and from an economic perspective (and he as the Treasurer should appreciate that last one) those priorities represent a better outcome for South Australia.

If he would but reconsider the placing of the Royal Adelaide Hospital on the old rail yards—we have heard that there are figures well in excess of $2 billion for his original $1.7 billion hospital, and that is without all the likely increases in cost—we can actually keep the Royal Adelaide Hospital where it belongs, where the vast majority of people want it, where it is next to its medical school and dental school. Why would you bulldoze a billion dollars worth of state-of-the-art infrastructure just because one day a few years ago the Premier decided that they needed a big-ticket item for the budget: 'Let's build a new hospital; everyone will love that.'

So I want to give the premier-in-waiting, the Treasurer, my assurance that, were he to do that, were he to rethink the Adelaide Oval and not waste the $700 million that that is now going to cost, not waste the over $2 billion that his proposed hospital is going to cost and look at the priorities we took to the election—we know it might not all be able to be done at once; we recognise that—I would actually thank him. I would welcome it.

An honourable member: So would the people of the state.

Mrs REDMOND: The people of the state would welcome him, and it would do a lot to save the economic disaster that this government has created and in which this government has now been found out. My last comment is: it is your sewer, you swim in it.

Honourable members: Hear, hear!

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. I.F. EVANS (Davenport) (11:58): Madam Speaker, this is a Labor budget. How do we know it is a Labor budget? Let me walk you through it. When there are cuts to small schools, it is a Labor budget. When there are cuts to community hospitals, it is a Labor budget. When nearly 4,000 public servants get the axe, it is a Labor budget. When public service entitlements are cut, it is a Labor budget. When there are cuts to adult education, it is a Labor budget. When there are cuts to business assistance, it is a Labor budget. When taxes are set to increase by $1 billion over the next four years, it is a Labor budget. When the debt increases to $7 billion, it is a Labor budget. If you have any doubt, when South Australian regional communities are absolutely savaged, it is a Labor budget.

This budget attacks pensioners, it attacks the primary industries sector, it attacks the fishing industry sector, it attacks the aquaculture sector, it closes the Parks Community Centre—this is a Labor budget. This budget delivers to South Australia higher debt, fewer services, higher taxes, job cuts—this is a Labor budget.

This is the budget for which the Labor MPs applauded the Treasurer when he gave the caucus a briefing. The Labor Party members love this budget; they applauded the Treasurer. So, when the Treasurer stood up and said that he was going to increase costs on pensioners, that he was going to close the Parks Community Centre, he was going to increase taxes, cut small schools and cut community hospitals, the Labor Party MPs applauded the Treasurer. They love this budget. So, there will be no crocodile tears from Labor members of parliament going back to their electorates saying, 'We didn't mean to do it. I didn't support that bit.' The Labor Party members applauded the Treasurer for this budget. Some media even reported a standing ovation—but they at least applauded the Treasurer for this budget.

You knew that this budget was in trouble when you had a Premier spending budget day trying to tell people what was not in the budget rather than what is in the budget. Look at the media spin by the Premier: he was out there saying what the government was not going to do because he could not tell them what the government was going to do. He left it to the Treasurer to take the fall for the bad news. So, with this government—this media spinning government—when the Premier is not out there promoting the budget you know you have problems with your budget.

This budget is a treacherous budget, and this budget will hurt South Australia. The budget is not the budget that was promised prior to the state election, but it was the budget that was designed for the state election, make no mistake about that. This is the budget that was hiding in the Treasurer's office just waiting to pounce on the unsuspecting and trusting public of South Australia if the government was given the chance to win the 2010 election. The Treasurer has used the Sustainable Budget Commission to ambush South Australians, and the Sustainable Budget Commission was nothing but a political shield to give the government a justification for its cuts.

We now know why the budget was delayed and put amongst the football finals: it was delayed and put amongst the football finals because the Treasurer wanted the media to be distracted by other issues and not cuts to the budget. It was a cynical exercise by this government and one that I do not think the public has missed; that is, the cynicism of that decision by this government.

Just as the Treasurer and Labor misled the people about the cost of the blowout of the Adelaide Oval project prior to the state election, this government and this Treasurer hid what they were really going to do if they were re-elected. If the public has learnt anything about this Treasurer and this government as a result of this budget, it is two things: Labor does not tell the truth, and you cannot trust Labor. They are the two lessons out of this budget. South Australia cannot trust this Treasurer, South Australia cannot trust this Premier, South Australians cannot trust this government and South Australians cannot trust Labor.

Why can't we trust them? Well, let me just walk through some of the reasons why you cannot trust this government. Remember before the election, the Treasurer went out and told the public of South Australia that all he needed to do was find $750 million worth of savings or revenue measures over three years and the budget would be fine: there would be $150 million in 2010-11, $250 million in 2011-12, and $350 million in 2012-13. He then went on to say, on behalf of the Labor Party—on behalf of each and every member of the Labor Party—that there would be no need for wholesale cuts to the Public Service, assuming the Public Service kept its wage outcomes to around 2½ per cent. That is what he said. I will give you the quote. Ian Henschke on Stateline during the budget debate asked Kevin Foley this question:

Now if you're going to have a savings target of $150 million in the first year, $250 million in the second year and $350 million in the third year, doesn't that mean thousands of jobs will go?

Treasurer Foley, in response:

Not at all. What it means is that of the $350 million per year required in the fourth year of our budget cycle, $290 million of that, so the vast bulk of that, can come if the public sector unions choose to respond positively to our request that wages be held in this round of enterprise bargaining at 2.5 per cent.

So there was the great lie of the campaign. The Public Service went in and negotiated on the basis that their jobs would be protected, there would not be wholesale cuts to the public sector if they took a lower wage outcome. That is what the Treasurer told the public sector on behalf of all of the Labor members of parliament.

What do we find straight after the election? Well, surprise surprise, Labor say they do not need to find $750 million worth of savings and revenue measures; Labor say they need to find $1.5 billion in savings, they need to raise an extra billion dollars in taxes, making a total of $2.5 billion of taxes and saving measures over that four-year period—over three times the target. That is just a great piece of deceit by this government that they have put in play over the South Australian Public Service and indeed the people of South Australia. That $2.5 billion includes $500 million of previous savings that this government have yet to deliver. If they have not delivered the savings previously, you would have to wonder about the capacity of the government to deliver them in the future.

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson interjecting:

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: I must admit that the capacity of the cabinet has increased since the former attorney left. What did they say? Did the government say before the election they were going to axe 4,000 public servants? Did the government say before the election they were going to attack public servants' entitlements? Did they say they were going to close small schools, cut community hospitals, increase tax by $1 billion? All of that was hidden by a treasurer who misled the people of South Australia and sat in his office and planned the ambush after the election if they happened to win.

Why are we debating this budget? Why is the budget in these circumstances? Why are we here? There is only one reason we are in this position: Labor mismanagement. That is the reason we are here. It is not so much about the global financial crisis, as the Treasurer will try to spin; it is simply about Labor mismanagement. Remember that this is not a Labor government being elected after a Liberal government saying, 'Shock, horror! The budget is in a mess. We have to make all these changes we had not thought of because the budget is in a mess.' This is actually treasurer Foley following eight years of treasurer Foley and treasurer Foley saying, 'Holy smoke! The budget is in a mess. I have to make all these changes.' What has he been doing for eight years? That becomes the question.

Eight years of treasurer Foley has been eight years of folly because he has wasted the revenue, he has wasted the rivers of gold that have come in to the budget. He has no-one to blame but himself. Essentially, for virtually all of the eight years, the government has had rivers of gold coming in that have been mismanaged. Let me talk about the extra revenue. In the eight years of this government, this government has received $5 billion of unbudgeted revenue—$5 billion of revenue over and above what was in the budget. What has happened to it? That is what the public is asking. That is $625 million a year on average in extra revenue. What have we got for it? I think here is the story of this government.

What we have got is an increase in the Public Service of 18,105. Of those 18,105 public servants over that eight year period, the actual number that was budgeted to be employed was 2,554. The unbudgeted number of public servants was 15,551 or, put another way, 85 per cent of the public servants employed by this government over the last eight years were not budgeted.

Let us give the government a slight bit of slack; let us give it just one bit of slack in my contribution. The government will say, 'Hang on; we've employed more nurses and doctors and police.'

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: We have.

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: The former attorney says, 'We have.' Well, I cannot work out why the government did not budget for them if it intended to employ them, but the member for Croydon can explain that in his contribution. However, let us give the government that credit; let us say that there are 6,000 more people in those positions that we would call core jobs. That leaves 12,000 people unbudgeted who have been employed. Now at a total employment cost of $75,000 a year, that becomes a $900 million a year cost.

I put to the house that this government and this Treasurer have been lazy over the eight years, because the real tough budget measure is not coming in after an election and cutting the Public Service; the real tough measure of government is day-in, day-out, week-in, week-out, month-in, month-out managing the public sector over the whole term of government. That is actually the tougher job for a government.

The question becomes: how can a government employ 15,551 people it never budgeted for? How can it actually do that? But relax, Madam Speaker because, having paid to employ them for the last eight years, we are now going to pay to get rid of them. This is a generous government, because it is going to pay them the highest voluntary separation packages in Australia. It is the highest package to get rid of the public servants, the ones who were not budgeted for in the first place, because these ministers were too lazy to manage their departments over eight years.

Now we are going to pay the most generous voluntary separation packages to get rid of those public servants. Remember, this is a government that went into the 2006 election saying that there would be no reduction in the Public Service. Then, in that four-year period it went and offered 3,200 TVSPs, then it went into this election saying that there would not be any wholesale cuts in the Public Service, and now we find that nearly 4,000 are on the way out.

In one sense, this budget is a historic budget. The Rann government, and every single member of the Rann government, will go down in history as the only Labor government to legislate to reduce public sector entitlements and workers' entitlements. They applauded it in the party room; make no mistake about that. It is the two-faced nature of this government; it attacked the Howard government over WorkChoices and then brought in legislation that took away the public sector entitlements and claims it is a great reform. The two-faced nature of this government is not lost on the public or the Public Service.

Then we come to the question of redundancies. The Premier put in writing that this government would not support forced redundancies. It would not support them; there would be no forced redundancies. Well, the Treasurer is now out there saying, 'Gee, we might have to bring in forced redundancies.' So the question becomes: of what value is the Premier's word? It is quite clear that, even when the Premier puts something in writing, it has no value. It is as simple as that.

The Premier is out there trying to soften the blow, saying, 'Don't worry; it's not serious.' Of course it is not serious; it was in the budget speech. That is how not serious it is. The Treasurer has always put things they are not serious about in the budget speech; it happens every year. The Premier is trying to walk two sides of the street.

There are broken promises about the Public Service, there are broken promises about pensioners' rents, there are broken promises about the level of savings, there are broken promises about small schools, and there are broken promises about hospitals. This is a budget that attacks the community. But, don't worry about it, though, because this government, like the Treasurer said, has the moral fibre to go back and break its promises.

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson interjecting:

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: Let me just talk about the Treasurer's claim—and this will interest the member for Croydon—of $1.4 billion in lost revenue. It would be a surprise to the house that the Treasurer is claiming that he lost $1.4 billion in revenue between 2008-09 and 2012-13. In actual fact, in 2008-09 the unbudgeted revenue received was $276 million, and in 2009-10, the year just finished, the unbudgeted revenue received was $1.087 billion. If you add those together, the Treasurer has actually received $1.363 billion in the first two years of a period when he says he is losing $1.4 billion. I think the Treasurer may well be spinning a line, and we will test that in due course.

It is hard to believe that, given that the 2008-09 and 2009-10 years have finished, we are not convinced that you need to have tax cuts in years 2011 to 2014 to cover lost revenue in years 2008 to 2010 when they are finished. That is a stretch.

The tax increases in this budget will hurt families and businesses. There are $1 billion of extra taxes in this budget. In the broad, inflation in this budget is tipped to be 2½ per cent over each year for the forward estimates, but taxes are increasing at 8 per cent in this year and then at 6.7 per cent in each and every year after that. So, we have taxes increasing at 2½ times the rate of inflation. So, a doubling of water prices, and the cost of recovery for the fishing, hotel, farming, agriculture, and real estate industries, will all ultimately hurt South Australia in the long term.

This, of course, is the reconnection budget. This is the budget where Labor was sent out to doorknock to reconnect with the community. What do we get after this reconnection process? We get 4,000 public servants axed, we get Public Service entitlements axed, we get water prices doubling again, we get increased taxes by $1 billion, TAFE fees up 20 per cent, car costs up, small schools cut, hospitals cut, adult education cut, and the closure of the Parks Community Centre. Madam Speaker, you have to ask what they would have done if they were out of touch.

The leader set out an alternative agenda, and let me speak quickly about that in my last minute. The leader set out the framework of the debate of the last election—and it is still occurring in this budget—and it centres around two key projects: the Royal Adelaide Hospital project, which has nothing in the budget for the $1.7 billion hospital, and the Adelaide Oval project, the blowout in that project. Those two projects are not yet signed off. So, we on this side of the house will continue to argue the case until those projects are signed off, as outlined in the leader's address.

This is a Labor budget: it delivers more debt, it delivers higher taxes, it delivers fewer services, and it delivers job cuts. This budget was eight years in the making, eight years of lazy economic management, all under the one Treasurer. This is a Labor budget, and we do not support it.

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (12:19): It is interesting that normally when we debate issues in the house the flow goes from one side of the house to the other. We have a small number of government members sitting in the chamber, and at this point they have had two opportunities to stand up and speak in favour of this budget; none of them has taken that opportunity. Not one government member—and, as my colleagues have been saying, these are the people who reportedly gave the Treasurer a standing ovation in the party room—has taken an opportunity this morning to stand up here and defend this budget that they apparently applauded—not one of them. I wonder whether they were actually listening when the Treasurer briefed them. I wonder if they actually listened.

They have sat through eight of his budgets; they should by now have some understanding of the deceit that flows every time a budget is handed down by this government. They should have known where to look for the pitfalls. When will any of them stand up here, including the former attorney-general who always has plenty to say? When will he take his turn in the house and say what a wonderful budget it is and put his thoughts about the closure of the Parks Community Centre? Does he applaud that? Do you applaud the closing of the Parks Community Centre, just like you applauded what happened at Cheltenham?

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: I am all in favour of it.

Mr WILLIAMS: Taking away open spaces and services from the western suburbs, yet you lot will have the gall to come in here and rail against Liberal governments and say that we have no feeling and no empathy for the people of the western suburbs and for working men and women. It is an absolutely disgraceful budget, brought down by an absolutely disgraceful government full of disgraceful members who would applaud the Treasurer for the sorts of measures that attack the working and living standards of South Australians. That is the budget we are discussing here today and that is the budget that no member of the government has seen fit to support. I actually agree with them; I agree with everybody in the government, apart from the Treasurer: it is not worth supporting.

What is a budget about? A budget is about setting an outline of how you are going to control your revenues and expenses. It is setting forward a plan of your priorities so that you can meet your commitments. We heard the Leader of the Opposition talk about how good this government is at meeting its commitments: not paying bills for over a year. A budget is about managing your state of affairs so that you do not do that sort of thing. It is about managing your state of affairs so that you do not employ people, by the thousands, only to then turn around and take away their jobs from them and/or reduce the conditions of their employment. It is about managing a plan, about managing your priorities. This Treasurer claims to be a good economic manager. I will spend a little time this morning explaining why he cannot lay claim to that title.

This is the highest taxed state in the nation. We were not always in that position, but we have landed in that position because of this government. This government has very little flexibility with regard to taxation, but that has not stopped this Treasurer. He has managed to find another billion dollars worth of taxation in this budget through the forward estimates. We were already before that measure the highest taxed community in this nation. They are addicted to spending.

I will spend more time talking about the expenses because that is where the problem is. This government has lost control of its expenses. The Treasurer would have us and the people of South Australia believe that his budgetary problems have been caused by the global financial crisis. He lays claim to that excuse at every opportunity, but I want to go through a table published in the budget—Budget Paper 3, appendix B, page B.1. I draw members' attention to it. I seek leave to insert a table in Hansard.

Leave granted.

Revenue Expenses
Budgeted Revenue Unbudgeted Revenue $m % real growth %GSP Budget Expenses Unbudgeted Expenditure $m % real growth % GSP
98/99 7290 16.2 7505 16.7
99/00 7644 2.3 16.1 7974 3.7 16.8
00/01 8108 3 15.9 8406 2.4 16.5
01/02 8538 2 15.6 8713 0.5 15.9
02/03 8818 528 9346 5.2 16.2 8714 184 8898 -1.8 15.4
03/04 9206 749 9955 3.4 16.2 9103 467 9570 4.4 15.6
04/05 9997 595 10592 4 16.7 9881 487 10368 5.9 16.3
05/06 10721 521 11242 2.9 16.8 10670 370 11040 3.2 16.5
06/07 11264 493 11757 1.9 16.4 11173 374 11547 2 16.1
07/08 12158 739 12897 6.1 16.7 12110 304 12414 4.1 16.1
08/09 13255 276 13531 1.8 17.1 13094 670 13764 7.4 17.4
09/10 14444 1087 15531 12.3 19.1 14748 616 15364 9.2 18.9
10/11 15086 -5.4 17.6 15475 -1.9 18
11/12 15527 0.2 17.1 15472 -2.7 17
12/13 16005 0.5 16.7 15789 -0.5 16.5
13/14 16294 -0.07 16.1 15924 -1.6 15.8
Average 2.6753333 16.7 2.2866667 16.59


The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: Is it purely statistical?

Mr WILLIAMS: It is purely statistical. What I have done is that I have taken the table that is on that Budget Paper 3, page B.1, and I have added some numbers. The table shows the revenues and expenses of the government sector over the years 1998 through to the end of the budget period. I have added next to the 'revenue' column another column, which is the budgeted revenue for each of those years and the unbudgeted revenue. Add those figures together and you get what is in the column published in the budget paper; and the same on the 'expenses' side.

This is quite revealing, because it shows that, over the period that Kevin Foley has been handing down budgets, just over $5 billion in revenues have been received, and something like $3.4 billion extra in expenses has been spent. The really telling numbers come in the years from 2007-08 to the current year, 2010-11—that period where the Treasurer has claimed that there has been a decline in revenues and that has caused his problems.

In reality, when you analyse the figures you can see that there has been an additional $2.189 billion in revenue in that period, and that equates to a 16.97 per cent growth in revenue over that four-year period. My best analysis from the ABS website is that the inflation in Australia has been, at best, 12.1 per cent during that period. I have to extrapolate out to the end of the current year, but I will be surprised if it goes over 12.5 per cent; I think that it will be closer to 12.1 per cent. We have seen a 16.9 per cent growth in revenue in that time.

The Treasurer might understand his problem if he looked at the other side of the table and did some calculations, because at that same time, that same four-year period, his expenses have grown by 24.6 per cent—

Mr Goldsworthy: Basic bookkeeping.

Mr WILLIAMS: That is 24.6 per cent. My colleague, the member for Kavel, says that it is basic bookkeeping. It is simple arithmetic. It is the sort of arithmetic most people learn at primary school, and this Treasurer still cannot grasp it.

Mr Marshall: He's not the brightest tool.

Mr WILLIAMS: He is not the brightest tool, and we are the sufferers. In the financial years 2009-10 and 2010-11, we have seen a cumulative growth in revenues of 6.9 per cent, which equates to 3.45 per cent per year. The average growth in revenues from the years 1999-2000 through to 2013-14 is merely 2.6 per cent; nearly a full 1 per cent lower.

So, the Treasurer cannot lay the claim that his problems have been caused by the global financial crisis. His problems have been caused, clearly, by a blowout in expenses; clearly his expenses are out of control. The shadow treasurer talked about the blowout in public sector numbers, something like 10,000. I cannot recall the exact number. He told the house a few minutes ago, but it is something like—

The Hon. I.F. Evans: It is 15,500.

Mr WILLIAMS: It is 15,500 unbudgeted, but if we allowed for those in front-line services (doctors, nurses and school teachers) we still come to a figure of 12,000 additional public servants doing what, we might ask, because the people of South Australia are not receiving a higher level of services. They are certainly not in my constituency or any other constituency in the country, and I doubt whether they are in the city, either. It is rampant wastage. But that is not the whole story.

The other problem this government has is that it is deceitful. It continually says one thing when it knows that something else is going to transpire. It continues to do it, and it is not something which has just happened in recent times; it is not something that has happened in the last six months since the March election; and it is not something that has happened in the last 12 months. It has been ongoing, it is a culture of this government.

I hark back to a few years ago when the government announced that it was going to rebuild the prison at Mobilong. That was in the September 2006 budget. I think it was something like a $700 million PPP project to build a new prison at Mobilong to replace Yatala Labour Prison. It was going to be the cornerstone of our correctional services in the years to come. It also included the replacement of the Magill Training Centre with a new centre at Cavan. Three years later, in the 2009 budget, that whole project was cancelled.

Why was it cancelled? Because the budget was already in trouble. It was cancelled because the Treasurer, as he does, had gone and consulted the ratings agencies—Standard & Poor's and Moody's—and they had told him quite firmly that his AAA credit rating was going to be lost. He came back to look at what he could cut, and he cut that project. He still prances around today claiming he has continued to save the AAA credit rating. A project that was essential, and remains essential to South Australia, was cancelled because this Treasurer, and this government, fail at every turn to manage the finances.

Just after the budget in 2007, the very next year, the government claimed that it would rebuild the Mount Bold reservoir and increase its capacity from 50 gigalitres to 250 gigalitres and double the storage in the Adelaide Hills to save us from the drought and ongoing droughts. That is another headline and another project that has simply disappeared. The minister for water might update us, when he stands up to lay claim to how fantastic this budget is, on where the Mount Bold project is. I think it has gone forever.

The PR spin that the people of South Australia keep being fed is that this is not caused by endemic mismanagement but by the global financial crisis. That is just patently false. The evidence is now irrefutable. The budget, read in conjunction with the leaked Sustainable Budget Commission report, proves that this state has been incredibly mismanaged and continues to be incredibly mismanaged. It saddens me to draw parallels between this state and New South Wales. We saw a few years ago an election in New South Wales where, unfortunately, the people were conned into returning a dysfunctional and failing Labor government, and that state has continued to spiral downwards.

We have the exact same scenario here in South Australia. This government—not just the Premier, the Treasurer and a couple of senior ministers but every member of this government—is responsible for what they took to the people as recently as March. Every member of this government is responsible for the decisions that are taken. They approve those decisions in caucus. Those who are in cabinet approve those decisions in cabinet. Every member of this government in responsible. We do not hear one of them speak out against what this government does, so every one of them is responsible. In this case, I think the more appropriate word is 'culpable'. Every member is responsible for the economic demise of this state.

I will not go through the intimate detail that my leader and the shadow treasurer have already put on the public record, but we have deception on deception. It is inconceivable that, as recently as March, the Treasurer, the cabinet ministers and the backbenchers were not aware of the budget's perilous state. It is inconceivable that the Treasurer went to the election referring to our Adelaide Oval proposal versus their proposal and saying, 'We have fully costed plans,' but then saying, 'We need to recover, through the Sustainable Budget Commission process, $750 million in the forward estimates.'

It is inconceivable that he did not know at that time that the real figure was well over $2 billion, in fact $2.5 billion. It is totally inconceivable. That is the very reason we went through the charade with the Premier and the Treasurer who said that we cannot bring down the budget at the end of May when it is normally brought down, we have to push it out to September—and the shadow treasurer has already talked about this. However, is it now patently obvious why we went through that charade—because the government needed to distance itself from what it said prior to 20 March and what it presented in this most recent budget.

We have seen the deception in the Adelaide Oval debacle, but that has been compounded by the measures that are now revealed in this budget. Let me just highlight one issue that came to my attention when I was reading through the Sustainable Budget Commission leaked report. There has been a change to the arrangements in the police force where the number of motorcycle police officers are going to be halved and they are going to be put on to other duties. When questioned, the Minister for Police said, 'Oh, no, that's an operational matter.' Interestingly, when you read the Sustainable Budget Commission report, the exact move was outlined in that report. It was a budgetary matter, not an operational matter. It was a decision taken by this government, not by the Commissioner of Police. The members of this government are culpable for these decisions and they cannot lay them off to other people administering the state: they are making the decisions.

The Parks Community Centre, what a debacle. We have already talked about it. In relation to pensioners' rent increases, we have a Premier who promised and who stood shoulder to shoulder with his federal counterparts and said, 'We will not gouge from the increases in pensioners' income extra rental or extra revenue for Housing Trust tenants.' That was only a few months ago. What is he doing today? He is gouging. The problem is that the Premier and his senior ministers, this government, have lost credibility. Nothing they say can be believed, because the evidence shows that they will say one thing one day and then it is very quickly revealed that they knew it was not possible to deliver. That is what is really sad about this government and this budget: we have a government which is not credible and which cannot be believed.

Small schools grants, $12 million being ripped out of small schools. Most of those small schools will be in rural and regional communities. It does not matter that we cut the fuel subsidy rebate to rural communities and we also cut their small schools and force them to close, and then force the parents of those students to drive their children extra miles to go to school. That does not matter, they are country people, they do not vote for us, but as long as they pay their taxes. Then there are the small, country community-run hospitals. There are not many of them, but for a miserable $1.2 million we are going to cut services—and I will talk about this later at another opportunity.

Why do you lot hate country people? Why do you lot believe that country people do not deserve the sort of services that you expect in your electorates in the city and urban communities? You have a real bent against country people and I do not understand it. The leader talked about the cuts to PIRSA. This state was built on its primary sector and continues to reap huge benefits from its primary sector, which only survives because it can stay at the cutting edge of new technologies. A lot of that has been delivered through having a viable primary industries department and that has now been cut to the bone. One of the reasons why our exports continue to fall in this state is that a lot of our exports are derived from our primary sectors. Unfortunately, I have run out of time but there is plenty more that I would like to say about royalties, water and first homebuyers, but I conclude my remarks there.

Mr PISONI (Unley) (12:39): In speaking to the bill, I think it is important that we go back to the architect of the budget, and he is certainly the man who runs the state here in South Australia, the Premier of South Australia, who has told us time and time again that he is a student of Don Dunstan. It was fortuitous that we saw on the ABC news last night some footage of Don Dunstan. What Don Dunstan said in that footage was, and this is back in 1996, 'to close the centre of activities in these facilities is obscene socially'. I think that sums up the budget of the student of Don Dunstan, premier Mike Rann, and Kevin Foley. The words of Don Dunstan have been used to describe this budget beautifully. I bet he would be crushing his safari suit, rolling in his grave, if he saw what his student, Mike Rann, was doing to social services here in South Australia.

I am looking forward to hearing the contribution from the member for Mitchell, a new member in the chamber, but maybe he will be a little bit shy in getting up and defending this budget because we are still waiting on the outcome of the Court of Disputed Returns to see whether there has been a rorting of the electoral system in the seat of Mitchell and whether we will need a by-election, because if he was proud of this budget this would be the perfect opportunity for him to speak in favour of it and about the benefits for the people that he claims to represent.

Let us look at some of the cuts in my portfolio. The first thing I want to start with is this mythical boast that the government has made about the amount of funding per student in the education system. During this election, I think the figure was quoted at $13,547. Let us break that down a little bit. If you get a school resource entitlement statement, you will see that, certainly, the schools in my electorate, and the schools in the member for Davenport's electorate, the member for Waite's electorate, and a number of inner suburban electorates—and it is fair to say that you would not call them struggling constituencies—are receiving less than $7,500 per student.

So, you are seeing an enormous amount of money being allocated to students—according to the budget, it is $13,457—but the schools are seeing only a fraction of that money. Around 40 per cent of that money is being held by central office in that situation, and of that $13,457 per student, or the biggest education budget ever, I think, was some of the language used to describe the budget by the education minister, only $8.18 million is for new spending on capital expenditure this year.

Do you remember the big announcement the Premier made in the dying days of the election campaign, in response to our very popular and well-researched plan to build a second campus of Adelaide High School, to expand Adelaide's most prestigious public school? That work will not be completed until after the next election, according to these budget papers. They are only spending $50,000 on that project this year, so one would question whether this is another commitment that we will not see met by this government, with a very small investment of $50,000, which I suspect would not even cover the paper, staples and envelopes at the beginning of the design process, for this budget.

There is $12 million in the budget that should have been spent one or two budgets ago. They are overruns, cost overruns and time overruns of capital projects. This is the one I like: $200 million is allocated as an accounting measure for the PPP super school programs—an accounting measure—but that is counted in the education budget as part of the government's education spend here in South Australia in this budget.

We have cuts in the small schools grants of $12.1 million and this will result, of course, in many schools effectively withering on the vine. It is interesting that I should use that term because there are a number of schools in regional South Australia that will be affected by this 'withering on the vine' policy.

We know what that will do: that will stop schools being able to bring in extra resources to give some additional diversity to students in small schools of fewer than 70 students. They will not be able to bring in perhaps somebody to teach them an art lesson or a music lesson. They will not be able to bring in an extra SSO to help somebody who is having difficulty with reading or something like that. That will start the end of parents choosing to send their kids to government schools in regional South Australia because the facilities simply will not be as diverse as they are now.

It is only a small amount of money—$30,000 for each school. This is how mean-spirited this government has become after windfall budget growth and windfall budget earnings. Over and above what the Treasurer expected to bring in over the last eight years, $5 billion has come in unexpectedly and, every time, instead of putting money away for a rainy day, it has got him out of a difficult situation.

What is interesting is that we have the cuts to small schools and we are told that there is a 15 per cent cut to the minister's office, but the education minister's office has an extra staff member this year. Jane Lomax-Smith could get by with 12 staff; Jay Weatherill, the Minister for Education, needs 13 staff and an extra $108,000 allocated to his budget.

We are also seeing now collocated schools amalgamated and controlled by a single administration. This is a process that this government, when it was in opposition, used very effectively politically against the government, which came to office to get the state out of debt, to get the state out of bankruptcy. When it came to office in 1993, when South Australians decided they wanted some responsible economic management of the state and they voted for Dean Brown and 36 other Liberal members of parliament into the House of Assembly, they wanted the finances fixed with a budget of only $5.2 billion.

That was the size of the budget when they came to office and they had to make some pretty tough decisions, but instead of agreeing that these decisions were tough and conceding that they made the mess, the Labor Party made extreme political capital. This sums the Labor Party up: it is all about political capital, all about saying one thing in opposition or supporting one thing in opposition and telling the people what they want to hear during an election campaign but then doing what they want to do when they are in office.

So we have a situation where the then shadow education minister (Hon. Trish White, as she is now known) brought a private member's bill to the parliament that prohibited the government from closing down schools without going through a fairly lengthy consultation and review process. But what do we see from this budget? From this budget we see that that is all out the window.

I would like the education minister to explain telling schools—over the phone, mind you; nothing in writing, we don't want anything in writing that might come back through the FOI process to show that we are intending to break our own legislation—that they are going to close but, by the way they have to go through the movements of the legislation that the government set up when they were in opposition which basically says that we cannot close or amalgamate a school.

The act is quite specific: section 14A tells you that you cannot close or amalgamate a school without the majority agreement of the parents or, if it is an adult school, of the adults attending that school.

That brings us, of course, to the defunding of adult entry programs into public schools. This is a program that survived because of how important it is for giving people a second chance. This program survived the savage cuts that this state had to go through after the State Bank collapse here in South Australia. It is a 20 year old program introduced in 1990. It survived the 1993 budget, the 1994 budget, the 1995 budget—I could go on. It survived every budget since, until this budget. After the government's revenue has grown from $8 billion to $16 billion, this second-chance program, saving about $20 million for the government, has been stopped.

I think the government has confused the role of teachers and the role of lecturers. No disrespect to TAFE lecturers, but teachers teach kids to learn. These are adults that have had difficulty for whatever reason—it is none of our business what the difficulty was when they were adolescents or when they were at school, but they want a second go, they want to re-enter. I was told a story just recently by a teacher at one of these schools that 47 of their students—these are students that dropped out aged 13 and 14 in high school in some of our most difficult suburbs—have gone on to get university degrees after starting back at school in an adult re-entry program.

The government says, 'Well, they can go to TAFE.' There are a couple of problems with that. The $20 million has to come from somewhere, and we know if they go to TAFE it is going to come in the form of TAFE fees to those students; they will be billed. The difficulty you have there, of course, is that these are people that really are on the bones of their bum. One of the things that we believe in, on this side of the house, is giving someone a fair go and encouraging people to be independent, taking responsibility for themselves and making a contribution to society as an individual.

What we see here is a government that has said, 'No, we would rather that you don't help yourself. We would rather that you rely on us, because we know that if you rely on us you're left with no choice other than to keep voting for us, because we will keep throwing you a few scraps every now and then, but we won't encourage you to improve your own lot and take responsibility for yourself and actually give you the skills so you can be a member of society who is enjoying life, who has something to give back, who has something to wake up for every morning, and somebody who wants to be part of the community, rather than somebody who is angry and feels as though they haven't been given an opportunity,' and they are right. If they look at this, their opportunity for that second chance has been taken away. The second chance and a fair go is a fundamental Australian thing, isn't it?

It is interesting that we see the minister for green spin, the Premier, in this budget rip out $4 million over four years for ceasing the school grants program. However, let us go back a bit to what the school grants program was all about. In 2006 school budgets for electricity were cut. They were cut to 80 per cent of the size of the budget in 2003. In other words, 'Whatever your cost for electricity was in 2003, we are going to give you 80 per cent of that to cover your electricity bills from 2006. But don't worry about it, because we are going to give you green grants so that you can do an audit, you can put in more cost-effective light bulbs, we can tell you to turn the lights off when you're not in the room, we can tell you that if you buy a particular toasted sandwich maker that will use less electricity than another brand. All of this will happen in the green grant program. There might even be some leftover money for some energy saving devices. And we are going to give you a single-cell solar panel, that on a sunny day will be able to power one of your computers and, in case it is not sunny, there is a small wind turbine that you will get. With any capital works that happen on your school, you will be guaranteed a wind turbine.' This was in the press release.

There were the education minister and the Premier telling us that we have these great green grants, we have these wind turbines and solar panels for schools. Here we are in 2010 and a couple of weekends ago they have pulled the wind turbine down from the State Administration Centre building because it does not work. So, the wind turbine has been pulled down but the spin keeps happening. The spin continues.

Back in 2008, we were told in the Public Works Committee that the wind turbine program was discontinued because there was a problem with the contract. The real problem was that the things did not work, but that did not stop the Premier spending $330,000 of taxpayers' money buying a stockpile of these things so that he could pull them out whenever a camera was around.

Another important thing to remember is that we are going through a so-called digital education revolution. Three years after that program started, the state government allocated about $12 billion to help install those computers, and we know that only a handful of schools actually have those computers up and running. In this budget, ICT learning technology efficiencies have been cut to the tune of $1.198 million and $8.8 million over the forward estimates—$8.8 million pulled out of ICT training for teachers.

Teachers are going to have these new computers, and students are actually going to know more about them than they will. That is not being derogatory to teachers, because teachers have told me that they need ICT training so they can get the full benefit, but this government does not see that. This government thinks that it is something visual, that they can stand in front of the camera and say, 'I am doing something for education because there is a computer,' but no-one knows how to use it. The government is happy with that because it makes for good photographs and occasionally you get to cut a ribbon. Finally, I will talk about—

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson interjecting:

Mr PISONI: Well, there are plenty of cuts here to talk about, member for Croydon, and I am looking forward to your contribution a bit later on, particularly after the promise you made in opposition to open the Millswood station but did not make any effort whatsoever to do it while you were in cabinet. Did you raise it in cabinet? You promised the people of Unley to open that station. You said that, when the Labor government was returned, you would open the Millswood station. But then again, that is Labor's form. That is the Hawker Britton model: say whatever you like when in opposition, tell them what they want to hear during an election campaign, but do what you like.

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson interjecting:

Mr PISONI: He says, 'Where are we now?' Yes, they are in government, and that is all they care about. That is why they are cutting funds for the most basic social services here in South Australia. They are in government and that is all that matters to the ALP.

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: How old are you going to be in 2014?

Mr PISONI: The member for Croydon is very proud to boast that he is in government. He does not care that there are people in his electorate who will no longer be able to use the services that Don Dunstan claimed as being necessary.

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: The Parks is nowhere near my electorate.

Mr PISONI: Nobody in your electorate of Croydon uses the Parks? Is that what you are saying: nobody in the seat of Croydon uses the Parks?

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson interjecting:

Mr PISONI: Well, perhaps it does not matter. Well then, that does not matter for the member for Croydon. That is a very narrow view of politics: 'Anything it takes to get into government and then I don't care once I am a backbencher if it doesn't affect my electorate.' It is an extraordinary admission by the member for Croydon.

In summing up, there is a lot to be concerned about in education for South Australia under this budget. Lots of promises were made by the so-called education Premier, but they have not been delivered. As a matter of fact, here in South Australia, we have gone backwards. This is an education minister who has said that he is happy with fourth place in the education system here in Australia.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mr Pederick.


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



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