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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
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Question Time

STATE ECONOMY

Mr MARSHALL (Norwood—Leader of the Opposition) (14:08): My question is to the Premier. After 11 years of Labor government, why is South Australia in a recession?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier, Treasurer, Minister for State Development, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for the Arts) (14:08): Never has a question been more anticipated than that visit to Mount Lofty. Can I first begin with the premise? The premise is wrong. The assertion of a recession is simply wrong. There is no basis on which to say that. Each year we publish the figures for the gross state product and that growth that occurs through the year. It is only done on an annual basis. That is the only basis on which you would be able to conclude that there actually has been that analysis of the economy and it of course has not been published yet, so how one could reach that conclusion is beyond me.

I presume that the figures which the honourable member is referring to in seeking to draw the conclusions he has reached are the state final demand figures. We had this debate some time ago in this place. That does not measure all that goes on in the economy. It is not a measure of production in the economy: it is a measure of spending in the economy. It does not, for instance, measure interstate transfers or exports.

On the last occasion, when I think it was the shadow treasurer who came into this place predicting recession on the basis of similar material, he was proven wrong by the publication of the annual figures, and we fully expect him to be proven wrong again. Indeed, I think there is strong evidence to suggest that that will be the case, because what we have seen in the recent BankSA series is that both consumer demand and business demand are picking up.

We knew that the last quarter of last year was a difficult quarter. That is why we took a range of steps to actually seek to put a floor underneath demand in the South Australian economy, by doing two particular things. One was a series of measures that were directed at stimulating demand in the housing and construction sector including incentives for off-the-plan apartments and incentives for a housing construction grant. You would have seen just yesterday, sir, the announcement of the bringing forward of $70 million of projects to provide for further stimulus to that particular section of the economy, so there was an acknowledgement that there was softness in that quarter to which we have responded.

I must say that you need to contrast that with what has been urged upon us by those opposite, that somehow our commitment to the economy, in terms of our infrastructure projects and the stimulus measures, were somehow a false economy. If the data that we are seeing from the ABS tells us anything, it tells us that those measures were well targeted and that they were sensible responses to the economic activity that we knew was finding its softness in that quarter.

We do expect that to change in the future and there is strong evidence to suggest that that is happening but there is no basis for suggesting that the economy is in recession. Indeed, since 2010, there have been an extra 12,800 jobs. It means 126,000 jobs since we came into government and that is a record of which we are proud and we will continue to pursue investments that drive job growth in this economy because we believe in this economy. We believe in this state.

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