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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
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SUPPLY BILL 2013

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading (resumed on motion).

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Goyder has six minutes remaining.

Mr GRIFFITHS (Goyder) (15:36): Precisely done, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am pleased that you did not rip me off that last minute; I was worried about that.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: We would not dare do it; would not do it to you.

The Hon. A. Piccolo interjecting:

Mr GRIFFITHS: What a conjecture coming from across the court! I was going to talk about the state debt now.

The Hon. A. Piccolo: You had better make it quick then.

Mr GRIFFITHS: I will; I will try to talk about that. Anybody who actually pays bills at home will appreciate the effort that goes into paying off debt. All of us who have purchased homes or purchased businesses or helped support that understand the implications of it. That is why, when you look at the future figures, and even with the SXLs that occurred, it is distressing; it truly is. From a very low debt position that existed only about five years ago to a substantial debt position of a fraction over $14 billion projected in the 2015-16 financial year, you become worried.

It impacts upon the ability to manage the taxation policies and the infrastructure and service investment policies that are going to assist in government. That is an area for concern, that it is going to come back and haunt both sides, no matter who is in government from next year. I truly do hope it is this side, because it is the ability to service that debt that will become very substantial. I will talk briefly about unfunded liabilities such as superannuation too. It is not real sexy to a lot of people, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Mr Treloar: It is to us, though.

Mr GRIFFITHS: It is. To any person who is actually focusing on what their future retirement opportunities are, or someone who has a responsibility to help pay that unfunded liability, recognising that it is 2034, I think, when the full liability is funded, it is frightening, especially when it is not actually post-1993 employees. As I understand it, for everybody employed before 1993, there was an accumulation scheme and therefore the funds were there and earning a certain amount.

The benefit that is paid above what that fund earns, that is what a liability comes into also, but for those pre-1993 people, they are the ones who benefit from it. For everyone after 1993 the accumulation comes in—defined benefit before that, accumulation after that, and it is going to be very challenging indeed for us. With a $13 billion debt going forward to 2034, it just goes to demonstrate some of the costs that this society is going to have to cover for. At $13½ billion, that is very frightening.

I want to talk briefly on a couple of things that are occurring locally too, that impact upon budget decisions. One is the patient assistance transfer scheme. I appreciate the fact that the Minister for Health has flagged the fact that a review is to be undertaken and I recognise the effort by the member for Frome on this one too. It has been called for for some time. As a person who lives in a regional area, who is contacted regularly by people who have to travel to ensure they get the medical services and treatment they need because they are not available locally (and I understand some will always be based in metropolitan areas), I say this money needs to be there and it needs to be in a system where it gives an opportunity for these people to at least cover a little more of their costs.

The first 100 kilometres is a self-absorbed cost of that, but, for example, for accommodation costs there is only $30 per night. Try to find something that will give you a roof over your head and a bed to sleep on for $30 a night—it just will not happen. The member for Frome has done the right thing. The Liberal members, I know, have written to the minister on this in previous years too and it is appropriate that it happens.

I have also been very concerned to see some significant withdrawals in funding, again through Health, for non-government organisations that are associated with mental health activities, particularly in the regional areas. I know of two in my own electorate, where one lost its funding a year ago and one has been flagged to lose its funding as of 30 June this year.

I met with this group last year. They are not going to make a political argument. They are prepared to try to work on as a volunteer-based group post 1 July, but how, I do not know. They have existed for nearly 15 years—for the first three years, purely as a volunteer group to prove their worth; for the last 12 years, through a funded arrangement—and they have demonstrated to hundreds of people who live on the Copper Coast the quality of services they provide to those who need some help.

No matter where you come from, there are people around all of us who are suffering and need some assistance. I really think that the fact that this NGO help that has been provided by Health in previous years to help mental health in regional areas and metropolitan areas has been withdrawn now is extremely sad.

I have also been very concerned about an instruction that has previously existed about Health on bequests that were given to hospitals. I can certainly quote one in a regional area which is about $0.5 million, which this person had very generously decided to give to a hospital and an aged care health service that existed there. They were unable to approve any expenditure above $2,000, even though $0.5 million was put there.

Mr Venning: Ridiculous.

Mr GRIFFITHS: Absolute madness. The health advisory council members who are there have expressed their great frustration quite well. I am very pleased that Mrs Helen Colliver, from Arthurton, who is a member of the Yorke Peninsula HAC, has taken this to a wider voice. We have had some level of response from minister Snelling on it. Some changes have occurred which have improved it a little bit, but it still talks about evolving into a future management of a benevolent group that will allocate the funds.

I am thinking that health boards existed for decades and decades in regional areas. They made great decisions that allowed hospitals to be what they are now. They continued to raise money for decades, even after the state government took primary control of them, and they made good decisions that allowed hospitals to move forward. They got local support financially and now an opportunity to use some level of local financial support has been taken away.

It goes into a central pool of funds where it just does not come out too easily, unless you can manage to convince somebody that you have responsibility to spend above $2,000. That is a decision about this that has continually frustrated people and it needs to improve. I look forward to future contributions made by other members in this chamber. I am sure they will be quite eloquent and interesting.

The Hon. I.F. EVANS (Davenport) (15:42): It is with pleasure that I get up to speak to the Supply Bill 2013. I indicate that I am not the lead speaker. The Leader of the Opposition will ultimately be lead speaker in due course. As we all know, the Supply Bill 2013 is simply a procedural mechanism to give the government enough money to continue to run its programs until the budget proper is passed, so it receives opposition support but it does provide for the opposition to make some comment in regards to the state of the budget and the state of the government's performance on economic management.

It is interesting to see how the government here has got itself into a very similar position to the federal government. Both have massively increased debt, both are running budget deficits and both are running relatively high-spending regimes. It is interesting that both governments have got themselves in trouble in their budget management and their economic management because of that philosophy of high debt, high tax and high spend budget management.

Just as the federal government has tried to resurrect its budget through things like the carbon tax and the mining tax and, if the rumours are right, now another levy on Medicare, the state government itself has also tried to resurrect its revenue by introducing a tax—the car park tax—and, of course, the leader has outlined the position on that.

It is interesting to note that if you look at the government's revenue position over the term of this government, it has received significantly more revenue than it ever budgeted for—around $500 million dollars a year extra in revenue over the term of this particular government. What is frightening, is that if you look at the 2010 election year, when the government received over $1 billion extra in revenue that particular year above budget, it is staggering that they managed to return a surplus that year of only $187 million.

So the government, over the term of the government, has had plenty of revenue. Its real problem, of course, is that it has gone out and spent it straightaway and, over that period, it has spent about $3.2 billion extra in greater expenditure than it originally budgeted, so it has over-expended by about $3.2 billion in that particular period. As the then treasurer, Kevin Foley, said in Estimates, the government really has an expenditure problem.

The budget position really is a concern for South Australia. This is a government that ran six net operating balance deficits in seven years. The only year that they managed to secure a surplus was the 2010 election year when, through the courtesy of the federal government, we received massively increased grants, and we managed to return a surplus of just $170 million. So, take out that electoral gift from the federal government and what we really have is a state government that has essentially run seven deficits in a row (if you ignore the windfall gift from the federal Labor government to try and bail out the government during the 2010 campaign).

If you go to the net lending deficit, which includes all the capital works then, in actual fact, the state has run eight deficits in eight years. So, there is clearly an issue with the management of the budget and we look forward to how the Premier, now Treasurer, is going to respond differently to what has happened under previous treasurers and previous premiers to the budget challenge that is now facing South Australia.

The interesting thing is that this year's deficit in round numbers is about $1,200 million; the deficit next year is around $870 million in round numbers; and then, by 2015-16, there is miraculously this surplus in the forward estimates of $470 million in round numbers; and in 2016-17, $765 million.

If you just take that five-year period, from this year where we have a $1,200 million deficit, to the 2016-17 year where we have a $763 million surplus, the government is suggesting in the Mid-Year Budget Review papers that the state's budget is going to go from the largest deficit in history—which is the $1,169 million deficit this year, it may even be worse than that, but that's the budgeted deficit—and within a four year period, that is, the 2016-17 period, they are going to have a $763 million surplus, which is, again, the largest surplus going back over 20 or 30 years. So, we are going from the biggest deficit to the biggest surplus all within four years.

Dr McFetridge: Incredible.

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: One of my colleagues interjects and says 'Incredible.' I agree. I ask the house to contemplate, given all the media reports about the performance of the retail industry, the housing industry, the real estate industry, the unemployment rate slowly climbing, all of the governments reporting federally the fall of, what, $12 billion revenue, and Queensland reporting a revenue drop—in that context—how has the government managed to budget for a turnaround in its net operating balance from $1,169 million deficit to $763 million surplus all within a four to five year period?

The surplus, of course—$763 million dollars—is one year before the NDIS (which the government has just signed up to) kicks into its full expense. The ministerial statement by the Premier earlier this week suggests that expense is $380 million extra. So, on the basis that is the net cost to the state, then that means that $763 million surplus, if that was the ongoing surplus, would essentially be cut in half just on that one program, the NDIS. So, it will be interesting to see the final costings as the Mid-Year Budget Review comes out to find out exactly how the government plans on managing that particular expense.

The other expense, of course, that kicks in over that four to five-year period is the $397 million a year for the new hospital. So, there are two expense lines coming on-stream, $397 million for the hospital and $380 million a year for the NDIS, so about $750 million in round numbers on two expense lines coming into the budget. We are already at a $1,200 million deficit this year. So, the opposition will be watching with interest how the government goes about managing and setting out that expense and indeed whether the budget deficit will get worse and whether our debt position will get worse. Will we be borrowing to provide for those particular programs?

The reason we have interest in this is because this year's budget, which is a $1,200 million operating balance deficit, when it was first predicted four years ago was a $304 million surplus. Since that time, every time it has been reported, there has been a trend line down over that reporting period, and it has gone from a $304 million surplus first prediction to a $1,169 million deficit as the most recent prediction. That is a $1,500 million error. That is a $1,500 million miscalculation by Treasury and the government on what they thought the surplus would be today, or 30 June this year coming, as distinct from the $1,200 million that it is budgeted to be.

We asked questions today through the leader about what is the likely impact, whether the deficit is likely to deteriorate further, and of course, what we have got essentially is a response to say, 'You'll just have to wait until the budget.' I suspect, given what other governments are reporting, you would have to question whether the deficit would not blow out even further.

The other issues I want to raise in relation to the budget, of course, is our budget position compared to other states. This, I think, is a telling statistic, because it really does show comparatively where South Australia sits in its budget management. The budget deficit in South Australia is $1,169 million, then next year $868 million, and the year after that an $11 million deficit. The South Australian deficit is bigger than New South Wales, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia combined—collectively. So, if you add up the New South Wales, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia budget positions and compare that to South Australia, our deficit is worse. It is a bigger number.

Those four states have 17 million people to deal with that combined deficit. South Australia has 1.7 million people to deal with a bigger deficit. So, the budget ask by the government on South Australians in deficit terms is 10 times per capita what it is in those other states collectively. That is a staggering figure. The reality is that those states get back to surplus well before South Australia does, as well. So, in other words, South Australia is running bigger deficits and we are running deficits for longer periods of time than those other four states combined. That is just a staggering piece of information that I think illustrates just how bad this government's budget management has been.

Should this be a surprise to the government? The answer is no. The Auditor-General consistently warned this government right through from 2005-06. There has been a series of warnings over three or four years saying that this government's expenditure is unsustainable, that you are building in expenditure that was built on revenues that may not last and if your revenues drop you would be in trouble. That is essentially the message. The wording was: 'Given the forecast expectation that such revenue growth may not be sustained, control of expenses will be important.'

A couple of years later, the Auditor-General said, 'The state may have developed a culture of expecting growing revenues to continue to support increasing expenses.' Then again, the next year, he said, 'The state has received large amounts of unbudgeted revenues that enabled net operating surpluses.' In other words, the cabinet has nowhere to hide on this; the Premier and Treasurer has nowhere to hide.

The Auditor-General was putting it up in lights. He was saying that the government was running a high expenditure model based on revenues that were essentially a bonus. They were above the norm. As I said, there was $5 billion of extra revenue over the term of this government and the government ignored the warnings and kept on spending, except they signed up even more contracts in expenditure after the warnings and now, of course, what we find is that the budget is in more trouble than Ned Kelly.

As a result of that, the government has lost its AAA credit rating and it has lost it deliberately. The Premier went out and said that they made deliberate choices that would put the AAA credit rating at risk. What we find is that Moody's are saying that the pace of debt accumulation is among the fastest growing of all the states. We have amongst the fastest growing debt of all states at around $4 million per day every day for eight years.

The interest payment is about $800 million a year, which we end up paying on the $14 billion worth of debt when the hospital comes on stream. The interest payment is a staggering figure. At that point we will be paying $91,000 of interest every hour. We will be paying $91,000 in interest every hour when we get to the $800 million interest payment when the hospital comes on stream. Not only do we have some of the fastest accumulating debt, but according to the Queensland audit commission, we are paying the highest interest of all states. We are paying the highest interest of all states on our interest according to the Queensland audit commission.

That all adds up to us losing our AAA credit rating which, of course, ends up being an extra cost to the state. The reason we lost our AAA credit rating was simply put by the agency. It says, '…budget performance will be weaker than forecast…anticipated operating deficits will lead to a sharper rise in gross debt levels,' which has happened. Then in September, Standard & Poor's said, 'We are just not seeing evidence of cost constraints from the state government. The recent public sector wage increase was an example of that.' In other words there was no political will at the cabinet table to deal with the issues.

The then treasurer Snelling said that he was not going to let the state run up a credit card debt. We all know of course that, after selling the forests and after selling the lotteries commission, our debt goes north of $14 billion. It is a figure that is well north of the $11 billion when the State Bank collapse happened under the Bannon government.

This government's financial management has been a sad story for South Australia and they really have got the budget into an absolute mess. The reality is that South Australians are paying the highest taxes in Australia. It impacts on their cost of living, and if you want to know why people's cost of living is so high out there, it is due in large part to the economic mismanagement and budget mismanagement of this particular government.

There was the desal debacle, where the government went from saying, 'We don't need a desal plant at all,' and that the opposition's call for small desal plant was 'lunacy', to then coming out and saying, 'Well, you know what? We actually do need a desal plant and we don't need a little one like the opposition said, we actually need a really big one, so we'll double the size.' They then suddenly found out that to double the size to cater for the capacity you needed to actually join up the north to south interconnector, so it was another $400 million, to a $2.2 billion cost.

That is why water prices have gone up around 249 per cent under this government, because of their total, absolute mismanagement. Having charged everyone the increased water price of the desal plant, they are now going to turn it off. Is there a better example of the total incompetence in management of this government than that issue? It is not just the high taxes that drive the increased cost of living; it is the incompetent decisions such as those.

You also have to look at the infrastructure management of this government. This government has nearly cancelled as much infrastructure as it has built. This Sturt Road and South Road intersection has been front pages of the last two elections in my electorate. The present PPP was front-page in 2006; the Mount Bold reservoir expansion was front-page; the O-Bahn expansion was going to happen, and that got cancelled; the electrification of the line to Gawler has essentially been cancelled; and the Darlington interchange project essentially got cancelled. They have announced and announced and cancelled almost as much infrastructure as they have built.

The government is asking us to believe that their budget model is sustainable, but if we think about it in these terms: South Australians are paying the highest taxes in Australia, but even though we are paying the highest taxes in Australia the budget is $1,200 million overspent—$1,200 million overspent—and $860 million overspent the next year. And the government say that their budget model is sustainable. Well, how is it sustainable? It is only sustainable if they continue to charge the highest taxes in Australia, because if they do not charge the highest taxes in Australia the deficit would obviously be worse.

This is a government whose budget strategy is in absolute tatters, and the Premier and Treasurer cannot escape it. He is the one constant in cabinet for the last 11 years. When they go to the election the one person who has been in the cabinet for all of the 12 years at that point is the current Premier. He has had oversight through cabinet of every decision, every backflip, every tax increase and every incompetent decision of this government.

The concept that the Premier is somehow going to try to duckshove the bad decisions to Mr Rann and Mr Foley and the good decisions to his administration is simply not going to work. We look forward to receiving the budget. It needs to redress South Australia's budget management problems, our debt and deficit problems. With those few comments, I support the Supply Bill.

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (16:03): The Supply Bill is a piece of legislation we get through this house on a regular basis, and we all get a chance to speak about the state of the state. In this particular case, the Supply Bill is for the sum of $3,205 million—nearly $3¼ billion—and that is to supply the public service of the state to the end of the financial year, 30 June 2014; so $3,205 million. Yet, what do we see when we look at the state of the state? You would think that that would be a significant amount of money to make sure we can balance the books and do all the good things that South Australians expect this parliament and this government to do; but when we look at the state of the state and the Mid-Year Budget Review we see a picture that is not the brightest, and it is certainly a very sad state of the state.

We lost our AAA credit rating. First of all, it was put on negative outlook and then downgraded to AA+ with a negative outlook, and then downgraded to AA, the worst credit rating in Australia. The whole psyche of the state was built up around the last budget, with the Olympic Dam being once again over-spruiked by this government. We saw it go from a 'mirage in the desert', when former premier Mike Rann was the leader of the opposition, right through to being the world's largest event that was ever going to happen.

To try to blame events outside of South Australia is like when the former minister for tourism tried to blame the downturn in tourism in South Australia on SARS, yet we were the only state that had a downturn in tourism: all the other states were going well. We see the other states going well and we see the Australian economy is not doing as well as it possibly could but, certainly, the state of South Australia has a very sad outlook.

Let us look at the budget on any three of the measures that are used—and I am no economist but I do know that if you do not balance your budget and have enough cash flow to manage your expenditure, build your business and pay your current expenditure, you are going backwards. In the 2012-13 Mid-Year Budget Review the budget deficits on all three measures are: the net lending deficit of $939 million, the cash deficit of $1.4 billion and the net operating deficit of $1.2 billion in 2012-13.

We have seen, year after year, the Auditor-General warn the Labor government it could not rely on revenues increasing to cover its expenditure. This government has ignored that and ended up imposing taxes on South Australia so that we are the highest taxed state in the nation, yet we see that by all three measures (the net lending deficit, the cash deficit and the net operating deficit) we are in serious debt.

The opportunity of making sure that this state is able to benefit from the opportunities we have here is one that I look forward to come March next year when we have the state election. I hope, beyond hope, that South Australians realise that the time is up for this government. They have demonstrated beyond any doubt that they cannot manage the state and the economy and should not be given another chance. It would be an absolute disaster for this state to have another four years of hard Labor.

The portfolio areas I currently hold are a range of portfolios that are vital to the future of this state and they include communities and social inclusion, disabilities, mental health and substance abuse, social housing, youth and volunteers. I also have the area of suicide prevention under my care, and I am being helped by the Hon. John Dawkins, who has a particular passion for suicide prevention. If we do not look at the areas covered by the other portfolios I have, this state will be far worse off.

The communities and social inclusion portfolio is one in which I am particularly interested in expanding the range of areas it is involved in—not just as a separate portfolio. It is a bit like having Health in all areas of government. We should be doing this in the area of communities and social inclusion so that we have a transport policy, a health policy, education policy—all sorts of policies that are socially inclusive and involving all areas of the community—and I certainly will be working with my colleagues to make sure that happens.

I note that the Department for Communities and Social Inclusion has overspent, according to the last Budget and Finance Committee's transcript, by the sum of about $10 million, and that is, according to the evidence that was given, mainly in the disability area. According to the evidence, all governments around the country are under constant pressure in meeting demands around disability support, and I will have a bit more to say about disability support later in my contribution. Communities and social inclusion is a vital area—an area that we need to make sure we expand into all areas of government.

The other portfolio I have had previously, and have now again, is mental health and substance abuse. What do we see there? Every day, you go onto the government's own website, onto their own dashboards, and we are seeing an acute shortage in mental health acute beds. The whole problem in mental health is not just the acute beds: it is the whole way the system is being managed. Sure, the demand is increasing, but we all need to face up to the fact that mental health in South Australia is becoming a more and more widespread problem. It is reaching into more and more families and communities, and we need to make sure it is not just the sharp end—the acute mental health beds—that are being provided for.

According to the AMA, we are 43 acute mental health beds short in South Australia. We need to make sure that mental health is being treated as it was initially proposed to be in the Cappo report, the Stepping Up report, at a number of levels. In talking to a number of NGOs, the community providers of mental health support, as I have been doing over the last few months, there are so many examples of the good work that is being done with vital care to keep consumers of mental health assistance out of the acute part of the mental health system, our EDs and the Glenside campus.

Having visited the Glenside campus last week I was impressed with the way the campus has been organised. It goes against what the Cappo report said, which was about retaining the whole of the campus for mental health. However, in talking to the staff about what is being built, they are certainly enthusiastic about what they are getting. There is a bit more open space than I thought there would be, but I still have some concerns about the way the whole system is being run. We need to make sure that we have acute hospitals like that and that people out in the communities are being given support by not only the NGOs but the various mental health workers we have in the government departments.

The area of substance abuse is one that is changing all over the world. I was reading an article in The New York Times yesterday about the number of people now in their 60s and 70s who are abusing alcohol and prescription drugs. They are becoming serious substance abusers. We should make sure that that does not happen in South Australia. We need to make sure that people who are inclined to abuse alcohol and substances such as prescription drugs get the assistance they need.

We need to make sure that the potential damage that is caused by substance abuse, whether it is alcohol, illicit drugs or prescription drugs, or in some cases other addictions, is minimised and that the damage to people's lives, to their families and their communities is mitigated as best as possible.

The other area is the youth portfolio. It is interesting that South Australia is the only place that has a Minister for Youth other than Victoria. Whether it is mental health, social inclusion, social housing or volunteering, we really need to make sure that we are connecting with the young people of South Australia, and I think one way to do that is by having younger members of parliament in this place.

My kids are now in their 30s and perhaps seem old to some young people, however, they are able to put me in touch with some of the issues. I watch what is going on and I talk to people out there. I certainly sympathise with the 40 per cent of young unemployed people who are in the Playford area. I grew up in Elizabeth South and then in Salisbury. Those areas out there have challenges but they are certainly terrific areas. Glenn Docherty, the Mayor of Playford, should be proud of what he has out at Elizabeth. There are the challenges with Holden's rearranging its practices and we heard today about Saab reducing its workforce. There are some significant issues in that area.

The 40 per cent youth unemployment rate is certainly something that I will make sure that we on this side will keep the government up to speed on; what the government should and could be doing to make sure that our young people in not only the north (at Elizabeth) but also all through the regions and the metropolitan area of the state get what they deserve and what they want.

The area of social housing is another area. A lot of young people are looking for the security of some place to live. Social housing is one of those areas where we need to make sure that we provide as many opportunities as possible. I saw a press article yesterday about moving 5,000 Housing SA houses out to the NGOs. As I said, I grew up on Hogarth Road, Elizabeth South, in a Housing Trust house. Back then it was mainly public housing. It was not so much social housing: it was a start towards buying or building your own home. My parents built a house at Salisbury Downs and we moved there in the early sixties.

The unmet need with social housing now is huge. There would not be a member in this place who does not have somebody come in to ask them about getting some assistance in getting on or up the waiting list with Housing SA. It is important that we in this place make sure that those that are in dire straits are able to access social housing. To me, it does not matter who owns it or who runs it; it is about the outcomes. I have been speaking to a number of organisations out there which are managing a lot of Housing Trust stock or which have their own homes, the Adelaide Benevolent Society, for example. They are looking forward to being able to build more social housing so that the people in South Australia who need access to this sort of housing can actually do that.

It will be interesting to watch the changes that are going on with the management of it. There are changes going on interstate and I am watching that carefully to see how they improve the situation for people who want to access social housing, but in South Australia the days of moving to a Housing Trust house at Elizabeth are not anything like they were when I was a young lad. I want to make sure that people who do not have the advantages I have now are able to still access that sort of housing if they need to.

One of my other portfolios is volunteers. In South Australia we have about half a million volunteers contributing about $5 billion in in-kind effort. I look forward in a couple of weeks' time to joining with the government in a completely bipartisan way in celebrating the input of volunteers in South Australia. It is not just the CFS and the SES.

There are so many volunteers right across the whole of South Australia and without them we could not—we know that as members of this parliament—do the job that is expected of us in delivering resources and services in South Australia, and keeping the high level of social interaction in the community. I put on the record my heartfelt thanks to those half a million or so volunteers, who do it without any want of payment or any need for recognition. They volunteer because they want to get out there and help their fellow South Australians.

The other portfolio that I will talk about in the six minutes or so that are left to me is the disabilities portfolio. We are seeing a lot of media at the moment about DisabilityCare Australia and the NDIS that is going to come in. There should be no doubt whatsoever that the opposition supports the NDIS, both federally and in the state. We do need to know what we are getting though. There are a lot more questions than answers around the NDIS, and not just the funding. There is also the eligibility of the people who will want to access the system, the way it will be managed and the bureaucracies that are set up, and the services that are actually going to be delivered.

I had a lady in to see me the other day whose daughter was expected to die when she was about six or seven with profound mental and physical disabilities. That daughter is now 48, and the saddest part is that the mum has malignant melanoma and she was tearing her hair out as to what she could do. I just hope that the NDIS is going to provide for people in her circumstances, to at least give her some comfort that her daughter will be looked after in the way she hopes that she should be looked after in the future. That is the big thing: we have raised a lot of expectations with the NDIS but we now have to deliver it. We cannot do it half baked or half funded. We have to make sure that it does the job.

In the Premier's press release yesterday I think he said there were 33,000 people in South Australia who would be eligible for the NDIS. I understood that it was about 10 times that number. I understood that there were 300,000 people in South Australia—about that number anyway—who have some form of disability. How many of those will be eligible to access the NDIS is a question I cannot answer at the moment. I have been to a number of briefings on the NDIS and I have come away with more questions than answers. I have asked some of my federal colleagues about the NDIS and they have said to me that I am no orphan in not having a full grasp of what is going on with the NDIS, because we do not actually know.

We know that the Premier signed a heads of agreement with the Prime Minister. The minister was not aware of that, according to press reports. I hope he is now. I hope he has read the heads of agreement, because we do need to know exactly what we are signing up for. What will the financial implications be for South Australia? We do know that the NDIS is starting here in South Australia with children under five, and that is starting on 1 July.

By 2018 the cost for South Australia will be about $1.4 billion a year. Half of that is coming from the state and half of that is coming from the federal government—about that anyway. The figures I have seen here are $723 million from the Australian government by 2018-19 and $760 million from the South Australian government.

The Premier has said that there is room in the budget for this to be fully funded. He said on 18 April on ABC that there is room in the state budget to fully fund South Australia's participation in the National Disability Insurance Scheme for the 33,000 South Australians. South Australia will commit to $723 million by the year 2018, with the federal government contributing $760 million.

The numbers there are, at best, rubbery, because we do not know exactly how many members of the South Australian disability sector are going to be able to apply. We do not know exactly what the figures will be in 2018. We do not know what the inflation figures are going to be or what the CPI is going to be. I understand that the funding will be held in a central pool by the National Disability Authority.

We need to make sure that we understand exactly what we are getting ourselves into, so that when the Productivity Commission does review the whole scheme in 2017 it is not going to be a case of, 'Well, where do we go from now, now that we can't fund this? After having raised expectations, we are not going to be able to deliver.'

It would be a tragedy for all those people with disabilities, all their families, all their relatives, to have proposed this scheme. We all support it, we all want it, we all know that there is going to be some extra funding required for it, and we know that there has been a 0.5 per cent proposed on the Medicare levy today which, according to the figures I have read, will be far from sufficient to fully fund the NDIS. We do know we want this; we want to know how it is going to be funded. We want to know how it is going to be organised and administered so that everybody in South Australia, and throughout the nation, who has disabilities can do what they want to do and that is to live their life to the best.

We all know that there are many people out there with profound disabilities and some with lesser disabilities whose lives could be so much different with a bit of extra help. We should be doing that for all South Australians of all sectors, being completely socially inclusive and making sure that we are doing our jobs as members of parliament, making sure that the legislation, the propositions we put in this place, are going to be sound, practical and deliverable.

The state of the state, the fact that the budget is in deficit, worries me, because if I am the minister this time next year, where that money is coming from is going to be a real concern. I will be doing my very best to make sure that we actually deliver on promises that this government is making now.

Mrs REDMOND (Heysen) (16:23): It is my pleasure to rise to make a contribution in relation to the Supply Bill. It has already been mentioned, of course, that the Supply Bill is a peculiar creature simply to allow the government to continue paying the Public Service while we get through the budget. It strikes me every year as a little odd that many companies around the world which are much larger than this state government do manage to do their budget in sufficient time that they do not need to do anything like this. They simply get their budget ready and begin operating from 1 July with their new financial year.

It bewilders me that the government is so inept, and has been every year that I have been here, that every year we have a Supply Bill because the budget is not ready, and therefore we are going to go beyond 30 June, and therefore we need $3.205 billion to continue to pay the Public Service until we actually catch up to where we are meant to be. So that strikes me as odd, because it gives us every year the opportunity to get up and put on the record of this place just how appalling this government's financial management of the state has been over the whole time that it has been in office.

The shadow treasurer has already pointed out, of course, that this government in its current budget has delivered the biggest debt and the biggest deficit that this state has ever seen. It makes the State Bank crisis pale into insignificance and it is frightening, not only because of its size but because it is so unnecessary.

When this government came into office in 2002, we were indeed in boom times. The consequence of that was that, for the first seven years in office or thereabouts at least, until the global financial crisis, this government received over and above what it budgeted to spend, on average, $500 million—that is, $0.5 billion—every year for the first seven years, over and above its budget.

Yet, still, not only could this government not manage to balance its budget, it has led us to a point where we are now expecting a debt of at least $14 billion for this state. Our debt is growing at a rate of $4 million every single day for eight years. There will be an increase in our debt of $4 million a day, every single day, for eight years. It is incomprehensible that a government, with all the money that it had coming into this state, could possibly have got us to a situation where our debt is growing at that rate.

What is more, that even includes the sale of the forests and the sale of the Lotteries Commission. I have said many times in this place that the sale of those assets is selling the goose that laid the golden egg. We had a forestry situation where our forests were an asset producing in excess of $40 million a year income. Our Lotteries Commission, in the last year I think had an income for us of over $100 million.

Even when you take into account the bits that have been salvaged from that, we are still worse off for the sale, and that is the ridiculous thing. They are selling the goose that lays the golden egg and the only reason to sell the goose that lays the golden egg, with both the forests and the Lotteries Commission, is that we have a government that is so cash-strapped that it has no alternative.

The debt of this state is so big that it will cost us, the people of this state, $2.2 million every single day just to pay the interest, and that is if things do not get worse and I have every expectation that they will indeed get worse before this time next year. Every single day, the people of this state will be liable for $2.2 million in payments just on the interest, without reducing that debt at all.

I invite people to think about how good this state would look if, instead of paying interest on a debt that we should not have in the first place, instead of having to pay that $2.2 million every single day, we could instead give to every community around the state, choose 365 of them just for this year and say, 'Here is $2.2 million. You do what would improve your community and we will see what the state looks like after just one year.'

Imagine 365 communities around our suburbs and our regions with $2.2 million to improve their facilities and to improve all of the outcomes for people who need help and assistance in our community. That is the sad thing about the situation in which we now find ourselves because, instead of that happening, we have to pay an interest bill of $2.2 million a day.

That is the overall debt, of course, but our deficit, as I said, which is the biggest the state has ever seen, is due to be $1.2 billion just for this year. The member for Morphett went through the process of explaining the net deficit, cash deficit and so on. I will just use the net operating deficit of $1.2 billion.

So, there is $1,200 million of deficit just for this year. The surprising thing is that, when you go back into the budget books of this state, back in 2009-10, which is not very long ago, when the government delivered its budget then they promised us that, this year, we would have a surplus of $304 million. Indeed, by the Mid-Year Budget Review, partway through that year at around about Christmas, they said, 'It is actually going to be better than that.

By the time we get to 2012-13, we are going to have a $316 million surplus.' But then, when they got to the next budget, they said, 'Oh, no; $216 million surplus.' Then we got to the next budget review and they halved that and made it $127 million surplus. Then, at the 2011-12 budget it went down to $114 million before they started to come clean at the 2011-12 Mid-Year Budget Review, and it was a deficit instead of a surplus.

So, in a matter of six months, we went from a prediction that this year we would have a $114 million surplus to a prediction that we would instead have a $453 million deficit, which was then, at the budget brought down in the middle of last year, reduced to an $867 million deficit; and then, at the Mid-Year Budget Review, a $1,169 million deficit, which is near enough to $1.2 billion, and that is if they stay on track. I have every expectation, given that trend line, that, indeed, it will get worse, especially given that when the Mid-Year Budget Review was brought down we had not lost all the jobs and so on that we have lost so recently.

One of the other things that annoy me about all of this is that the government was not without advice that this could have been avoided. Every year the Auditor-General puts in a report to this parliament, and every year from at least 2005-06, the Auditor-General kept warning, and saying to the government things like 'You're relying on income you can't be relying on. You're spending money you shouldn't be spending. You need to control your expenses.' Indeed, the most recent one was when the Auditor-General warned in the 2011-12 report, at page 54 of Part C:

A major risk to the Budget...is the outcomes from enterprise agreement and control of FTE numbers.

They kept telling them there were all sorts of problems but the government kept refusing to listen, and therein lies the heart of the problem. So, it is not that we have not had the money coming in and, indeed, the government said, 'We've got a AAA credit rating and it's terribly important to us to keep it.' Jack Snelling, in fact, as the treasurer—and, of course, we all know that the Premier, who has now become the Treasurer, decided that Jack Snelling was not quite up to the job of being treasurer—said as recently as 28 September 2011, 'We are committed to making sure we retain the AAA credit rating.'

Why did he say that? Because a few days earlier on 23 September, Standard and Poor's had put the state of South Australia's AAA rating on a negative outlook. Then, by May last year, they downgraded it from AAA to AA+ with a negative outlook. Moody's, of course, acted in the meantime to also downgrade, and then Standard and Poor's again in September last year took us further down again from AA+, and we were downgraded yet again to simply AA.

So, we are in a bad way. As I say, there is no reason for us to be in this situation. Not only did this government have the riches of the first seven years; indeed, they have had quite a lot of money throughout their time in office. In fact, I think overall, there is something like $5.8 billion extra over and above budget that has come into the coffers of this government and, yet, in spite of that, they still have not had enough money.

Of course, one of the reasons that they have all this money is that there have been massive increases in the commonwealth grants that we have received in South Australia, but also they have had massive amounts of GST coming in—one of the things the Auditor-General said they could not rely on continuing—and then they were surprised when they heard that that might not be continuing.

The other thing is that we have the highest taxes in the nation. They do not seem to understand that businesses need to thrive in order to grow and to pay more taxes. It is a pretty basic concept: if businesses are thriving, if people are being employed, if people feel confident about the future, they grow their business, and that means that naturally more taxes will come in. Instead of that, this government has taken the opposite approach and said, 'Well, let's just keep applying higher and heavier and harder taxes', with the result that on many measures we have the highest taxes in the nation.

It is not just the Liberal Party that is asserting that this is the case. The Commonwealth Grants Commission says we have the highest taxes in the nation; the Institute of Public Affairs says that we have the highest taxes in the nation; and Pitcher Partners says that we have the highest taxes in the nation. So, here we are in a situation where there is, in fact, plenty of revenue coming in, and yet we have the highest taxes and we do not have a sound economic outlook. We do not have that—it is not lack of revenue that is the problem. It is a lack of capacity to control expenses and an appalling record on waste.

I just want to go through some of the examples about what waste we have seen by this government. They do things like, for example, the Adelaide Oval. The member for Adelaide sitting beside me here—I know it is one of her favourite projects. Remember back at the election when they said, 'It's going to cost us $450 million and not a penny more'? Not a penny more—and what's more, that $450 million they guaranteed us was going to include the car park and footbridge.

Then, after the election—surprise, surprise—well, it was true, it was not a penny more. It was $85 million more, for a start. So, it was $535 million, not $450 million, and, by the way, it was no longer going to include the car park or the footbridge. Indeed, I notice the member for Bragg as the shadow minister for transport has today put out a media release about the blowout in the costs in the footbridge and the fact that it is not going to do what they said it would do, which was deliver people to the entry to the Adelaide Oval. There are massive amounts of money that is simply wasted.

The advertising budget of this government beggars belief. I do not understand, for the most part, why governments need to advertise. I understand some advertising is necessary if you have got to let people know about fire restrictions or water restrictions or whatever it might be—absolutely you need to have some advertising. But, this government spends money on, for instance, publishing in The Advertiser this campaign called 'I Love Murray', as if people in South Australia needed to be persuaded that that was something that they cared about. Anyone who has done any polling would know that it was already the most important issue way back going into the last election. We all care about the Murray. We do not need to be told by The Advertiser that we care about the Murray, but this government spent $2 million on that.

Perhaps one of the most startling spends was that of the desalination plant. It was Liberal Party policy from way back to have a 50 gigalitre desalination plant to protect this state against the possibility of running out of water because we were in the midst of a drought. A number of us went over to Perth, we looked at the desalination plant there and I was in the room when we specifically asked the gentleman who was building it and said, 'If we signed a contract today, how much would it cost us to build and have an operational desalination plant like this one in South Australia?' The answer was $450 million.

We came home, we developed a policy, we announced the policy and the government said, 'No, no, no, we don't need a desalination plant.' They continued to say that for two years, and then suddenly, after two years, they did a complete double backflip, pike and somersault and said, 'Not only are we going to have a desalination plant, but it's going to be double the size of what the Liberals propose.' It is going to be 50 gigalitres, in spite of the fact that the Productivity Commission had said, and continues to say, there is no way that this state could ever need a desalination plant bigger than 50 gigalitres. But, no, this government has to spend the extra money, so we are going to have a 100 gigalitre desalination plant.

Of course, the price has gone up by now, so it ends up costing us, by the time we have the connection put in and all of the disruption that that involved, $2.2 billion. We could have done it for $450 million back when we had the policy, but no, they did not want it then. It ends up costing us $2.2 billion. What's more, we are not going to use it. We are going to mothball it. Unless anyone thinks there is going to be a great saving there, in fact, the mothballing is going to cost us $30 million just to keep it running. What's more, Treasury requires a 6 per cent return on the desalination plant asset, and that equates to another $130 million a year.

An amount of $130 million a year, plus the $30 million to run it—that is $160 million a year—for what? As I say, the waste of this government is just extraordinary and I am bewildered by the things that they do. We have a series of power poles up to the north of the city at the moment, put up there to electrify a line that is not going to be electrified in the foreseeable future. What they have created is a wonderful series of graffiti opportunities for those who get into that. But of course we all know that this government put all its eggs in the basket of the Olympic Dam expansion.

Remember in last year's budget, at the very beginning of the budget, the then treasurer Snelling said, 'South Australia will be a very different place in a few years. The expanded Olympic Dam mine—the largest open pit mine in the world—will be operating...' That is an extraordinary statement when you look back over those last few months and see just where this state has gone to, because they put all their eggs in that basket instead of recognising that they needed to be supporting a whole lot of other things.

Then very lately the government, when they prorogued and the new Premier had his opening speeches, suddenly decided agriculture was going to be something worth saving, after spending years closing things like agricultural research and taking money out of that sector and making our farmers do it as tough as could be. It is no wonder that on 27 September, Standard & Poor's told the media, 'We are just not seeing evidence of cost constraints from the state government...The recent public sector wage increase was an example of that.'

I only have a couple of minutes left and I do want to talk very briefly about one of my other pet hates with this government. There are a couple of them, but one of them is Shared Services. Shared Services was this insane idea that we were going to be able to centralise all the human resources and pay and so on—all those facets of the various government departments—into a central place. What the government promised when they announced this back in 2006 was that it was going to be completed by the year 2009-10 (and I note in passing that it is still not completed) and it was going to be done for an up-front cost of $60 million to save $60 million a year.

In spite of the fact that Western Australia had gone down this path, realised the error of its ways and retreated, this government insisted on still going ahead and so far the implementation has cost the state $93 million and it is still continuing but what is more, they are so far $83 million short of their promised savings. Meanwhile, as if that was not bad enough, the whole thrust of it was to actually improve the way services were provided. What we have now is a government which, through the introduction of Shared Services, has failed to pay on time bills to the tune of $1.5 billion.

Not only that but we pulled jobs out of our regional communities which were the payroll clerk in government departments and so on. What is more, if you were the payroll clerk, say, at Flinders Medical Centre and suddenly you have to come into Shared Services in the city, you—the individual payroll clerk—have lost time out of your day because you have to travel further, and what is more, it is costing you more money and is a lot less convenient if you lived in the southern suburbs or around Blackwood or somewhere like that.

The whole thrust of the Shared Services debacle is just an insurmountable problem and yet, instead of recognising that it could have been corrected, this government has persisted in going down the path of having Shared Services continue to be an affront to the people of this state.

Mr MARSHALL (Norwood—Leader of the Opposition) (16:43): I indicate that I will be the lead speaker for the opposition today. It is my great pleasure to speak on the Supply Bill proposed by the government. This bill of course guarantees the money supply from 1 July to the time when the Appropriation Bill comes down later down the track, and I have commented on this in the past because this seems such a crazy situation to me coming from the commercial sector. The government is essentially asking us today, with this debate on the bill, to authorise their expenditure of $3.2 billion without telling us what they are going to spend the money on.

Of course, I think we can be cut some slack by people who say, 'That's a pretty cynical exercise. Of course you should trust the government.' Really, should we? Over an extended period of time, the forecast budgets that the government has projected have been loose to say the least and today we have to, as an act of faith, support the government in spending $3.2 billion without seeing any sort of indication of what they are going to spend that money on. It would not happen in the private sector, but it happens here on an annual basis. Nevertheless, I will indicate that we will be supporting the Supply Bill, having made those comments.

There have been many comments in the media lately about the government's over-spruiking, and in particular there have been discussions in the media about over-spruiking jobs, with regards to Holden, with regards to the Arafura Resources project, with regards to the big daddy of them all, Olympic Dam. In fact, the Premier himself came out and said last week in the media that he thinks that the government has in the past been over-spruiking some of these projects.

Well, surely the most obvious evidence that anybody would ever need to be presented to them to demonstrate that the government has been over-spruiking is just a cursory glance at our economic performance in recent years. I think that provides the perfect evidence that anybody would need to see. Each year we are presented with pretty much the same picture: it is going to be tough in the next couple of years but thereafter it is going to be the land of milk and honey. Let's take the current year that we are sitting in, the 2012-13 financial year.

When the government originally forecast this year, they said that we were heading for a $304 million surplus—do not forget that this is in the outer years of the forward estimates. They said $304 million surplus this year that we are currently sitting in. Then, over the times of update to the house the position continually deteriorates. It went from $304 million in the original 2009-10 budget, and in the Mid-Year Budget Review that year it actually went up. The government was more optimistic about this current financial year. They said it was going to be a surplus of $316 million.

In the 2010-11 budget it dropped out to $216 million. In the Mid-Year Budget Review they again confirmed that this would be a surplus year. In the 2011-12 budget, again, this year was forecast to be a surplus year. It was not until the 2011-12 budget that we were going to post a 'small deficit' in this financial year. Well, let me tell you: by the time the budget was finally brought down for this financial year the government said that we were heading for an $867 million deficit in this year.

As if that was not bad enough, by the time we got around to December last year, in the dying days of 2012—when everybody was out wrapping their presents, getting their house ready to receive interstate or overseas guests, getting ready for Christmas, getting that turkey organised—the government snuck out its Mid-Year Budget Review. And let me tell you what it showed the people of South Australia: it said that we were heading towards the single largest deficit in the state's proud history—a $1.2 billion deficit. So, it was originally forecast at a $304 million surplus, and then we end up with a $1.2 billion deficit, a forecasting error of just a lazy $1.5 billion.

Mrs Redmond interjecting:

Mr MARSHALL: And, as the member for Heysen points out, that was just the most recent update. Let me tell you that the government is so hopeless with their forecast that when we get to hear the actual performance this year it could be substantially worse. This government has no economic credibility whatsoever. They have been over-spruiking the finances for an extended period of time.

There are two explanations on the part of the government for this nearsighted, harsh reality and this longsighted delusion. It is either a deliberate strategy by the government to deceive the people of South Australia, or misrepresent the state's finances, or it is gross incompetence. You take your choice. I do not think either of them are particularly good opportunities or good options for the people of South Australia.

Of course, the Premier was not happy with the previous treasurer's performance, and he sacked him. He said that he was not doing a particularly good job and that the best person in this parliament to look after the finances of this state was indeed the Premier himself. So, of course, we are really looking forward to what is going to be contained in this budget because he is promising to sort this out.

Let us take a look at the government's most recent published document which relates to the state's finances. I refer, of course, to the Mid-Year Budget Review, which was titled, curiously, 'Strong Foundations, Stronger Future'. I put it to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that in reality this document identifies a deteriorating foundation and a debt ridden future for the people of South Australia.

Of course, the government has repeatedly stated that this deteriorating budget position has been caused by this once-in-a-lifetime write-down of future revenues derived in this state for the GST revenue from the commonwealth government. I took a close look at the Mid-Year Budget Review expecting that there was going to be a once-in-a-lifetime order of magnitude write-down in GST revenue into this state incorporated into the Mid-Year Budget Review. That is a logical thing to expect.

What did I find? I found that there was actually a projected increase—admittedly, only small, $2 million—in GST revenue from the commonwealth government contained in the Mid-Year Budget Review. This was extraordinary, as far as I was concerned, because I had been led to believe by the government that the reason for this massive blowout in the forecast deficit of this state was due to the write-down in revenue of GST into this state when, actually, it was quite the reverse.

The simple fact of the matter is that the government's spending is completely and utterly out of control. Again, if you need any proof of this, you just need to look at page 15 of the Mid-Year Budget Review which clearly shows there has been an increase of over $888 million included in the remaining 3½ years of the forward estimates. That is the problem with our finances in this state. It is not a revenue problem: it is a spending problem. This is a government which is addicted to spending. I do not think they have ever seen a spending idea that they do not like, and they take action immediately.

I thought it was also interesting when we were looking at the Mid-Year Budget Review that there was some new terminology that the government has introduced. With the Premier taking over the role of Treasurer and being an avowed person against over-spruiking and 'bull dust', as he pointed out in the media in the last 24 hours, it will be interesting to see what he will do with some of this new terminology. I come from the business sector and, historically, we have called a blowout a blowout. In fact, we have called it many things but, generally speaking, we have called it a blowout.

Let me tell you what the government now calls these blowouts. They call them—are you ready for this—operating initiatives. I would just like to quote from page 14 of the Mid-Year Budget Review and it says:

The largest new operating initiative is an adjustment to the Department for Health and Ageing's budget following an assessment of its capacity to deliver savings.

When I think of operating initiatives I think there must be a new service which is actually being provided to the people of South Australia. I think that there must be some incremental improvement to the quality of service or products that are provided to the hardworking people of South Australia. Well, no: the single largest operating initiative of the government in the Mid-Year Budget Review is essentially a blowout in expenditure, or a failure to achieve the budgeted savings, in the Department for Health and Ageing—and what a massive blowout that was.

In fact, this year, the new operating initiative in the Department for Health and Ageing cost us $123 million and, in fact, if you look at the total cuts that are now required (they are much smaller than they previously were) by the Department for Health and Ageing to bring this budget in on track, they are $949 million worth of cuts over the remaining 3½ half years. It is an incredibly hard situation for the government but it is a situation that, of course, they have got themselves into.

I also want to hark back to something that, of course, minister O'Brien introduced the people of South Australia to some years ago. He is not one for over-spruiking: he is one for telling us the plain, simple truth. Recently, he said to the people of South Australia, 'Of course we are in a dire situation. We are actually borrowing money to pay wages.' The government got into a flap and came up with a technical explanation—'Actually, we are not borrowing money to pay wages because there is a non-cash item in the Income and Expenditure Statement: it is called depreciation.' We accept that: that is a non-cash item. So, technically they got away with it for that period of time.

Of course, I looked up in the Mid-Year Budget Review what that principal non-cash item value of depreciation was for this current financial year and I am happy to inform the parliament it is $832 million. Again, getting back to my schoolboy maths, I know that $832 million is less than $1.2 billion, so I can state for a fact on the record that minister O'Brien was right: we are, as a state, borrowing money each and every day to pay the wages here in South Australia. This has got nothing to do with the capital account: this is just the departmental income and expenditure statement. We are $1.2 billion in deficit. Take off, if you like, the $832 million of non-cash items (the depreciation, principally), and we are still borrowing money each and every day. That is the problem we have here in South Australia.

Of course, the other thing that the Mid-Year Budget Review made very clear to the people of South Australia is the deteriorating position with regards to state debt. You simply cannot continue to run deficit after deficit after deficit without it massively impacting upon the debt of the state. We had a situation again in December of last year where we had a further $1 billion deterioration in the debt forecast for this state. In a six-month period they got it wrong by $1 billion. This is an incredible situation. As Moody's (that independent group) has pointed out, we will be paying $800 million—in fact, in excess of $800 million—each and every year to service the debt that this government has mismanaged over its time in office.

We have to spend $800 million a year before we can look at any programs to ease cost of living pressures here in South Australia, $800 million before we can look at any form of tax reform in our budget, $800 million before we can spend a cent in providing government services to the people of South Australia—$800 million per year is a massive amount of money. Quite frankly, it is immoral, because what it basically demonstrates is that the next generation has to pay for our excesses of today. We have overspent our money and the next generation will be paying; that is, my kids, your kids, our grandkids and the next generation. Quite frankly, it is completely and utterly immoral.

I would like to also raise another issue, and I do not think it has been an issue that the parliament has really looked at in much detail. When I look at the government's financial statements and the cost of that debt and in particular the interest rate that is payable on that debt, I see that it currently sits at 4.9 per cent. So, the average interest rate we are paying on the $14 billion worth of debt is 4.9 per cent. For those of us who have been in business and for those of us who have had a mortgage on our house, we accept that 4.9 per cent is an historically very low interest rate. What would be the case in South Australia if that interest rate increased? Of course, there is no reason to believe that it will not increase.

I do not think that anybody as optimistic or as overspruiking as they could be would think that we are going to remain at this historically low level indefinitely going forward, so I have made some calculations. Let me tell you: if it went from 4.9 per cent to 5.9 per cent then, guess what? We would be paying in excess of another $150 million per year on that interest rate. Imagine if we were back to where we were a couple of decades ago: over 10 per cent, over 12 per cent. Imagine this debt and how much it would encumber the next generation of South Australians. They would never, ever get over it.

I would now like to make one other observation with regards to this unprecedented level of debt that is now forecast for South Australia, and that is the noises made last year by the former treasurer, treasurer Snelling. He was actually quite concerned about the increased level of debt. He was so concerned that he said, 'I'm going to bring in a new debt ceiling that we are not going to breach.' There had been quite a lot of discussion about this increasing level of debt. He said, 'We are going to set this debt ceiling at 50 per cent.' He did that in May last year. Less than a year ago he said, 'We will set that at 50 per cent.' Now six months later he is forecasting that they have already breached it. Our debt to revenue ratio has already blown out in the forward estimates to 55 per cent.

If you look at the total government financial liabilities compared to our revenue, guess what that moves to? It moves to nearly 200 per cent. Quite frankly, the previous treasurer knew this was a problem. He put a program in place. Alright, he breached it and he got sacked for it. Obviously the Premier did not like what he heard about this new level of responsibility imposed by the treasurer, so the Premier sacked him. He thought he could do a much better job. I will put this statistic to the house: when this government came to power the debt to revenue ratio was 7 per cent and 11 years later it is now forecast to hit 55 per cent. This is gross economic mismanagement of the highest order. What is the government's response to this continually deteriorating financial situation? This makes for really interesting reading in the Mid-Year Budget Review.

First of all, as everybody is more than aware, we are going to sell the forward sale of the forestry rotations and also the licence for SA Lotteries. They are two transactions that occurred of course within public non-financial corporations, so you would think that the sale proceeds of that transaction would stay within those public non-financial corporations. That is pretty orthodox. Well, guess what? No way! It is not staying there. It is being transferred over to the income and expenditure statement in the departmental summary. This is unorthodox and is actually being presented as a note in the Mid-Year Budget Review. It is very unorthodox, but of course this cash-strapped government would have posted a significantly larger deficit this year if it was not for bringing that money into the departmental budgets.

South Australia is of course widely acknowledged now, for four years in a row, as having the highest business taxes in the nation. I put it to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that this creates a handbrake on the South Australian economy, and that is why in South Australia we have slowed and indeed stopped. It does not matter whether we look at last week's CommSec report, the Deloitte Access Economics report or the previous month's ABS statistics, they are all saying the same thing: South Australia has stopped treading water and we are now going backwards. I put it to you that that is because we are the highest business taxed state in Australia.

The government's response to this is to introduce a new tax. Admittedly they did originally call it a Transport Development Levy. That is how it was originally termed, although I think even the Premier now, in this new atmosphere of removal of bulldust, is referring to it as a tax in the parliament. It is nothing more than a tax. It is designed in the Mid-Year Budget Review to bring in additional revenue of $25.7 million. The government will have you believe that this is actually to build park-and-ride facilities. Fair enough, if that is the government's position I thought a reasonable question to the Premier would be, 'Once those park-and-ride facilities have been built I presume you will be removing the tax and unencumbering the people of South Australia.' What was his answer? 'No way! No, we're going to keep that tax—I mean, that Transport Development Levy.'

Give me a break! We have a cash-strapped government and an economy that is stalled, and the government's only response is not to tighten their own belt or look at eliminating waste within their own budgets but to simply impose another tax on our businesses, our small businesses who are all doing it tough, and on people who come in to shop and work in our CBD. Of course, we ask a range of questions. We know that the government is predicting $25.7 million in terms of revenue, but we always say 'What is the net effect on the budget?' The state government has car parks. They are going to have to pay that car park tax themselves. 'What is the net effect?' 'We haven't done that modelling.' 'You've had six months; but okay.' We asked questions about what are going to be the impacts on businesses in our state. 'Well, we haven't decided on the final form.'

We cannot believe on this side of the house that the government would essentially go out to the people of South Australia, send letters out from Revenue SA to all car park owners in South Australia and tell them that there is going to be an increase in tax before they have even done the modelling. We asked the Premier repeatedly in the house, 'Has a cost benefit analysis been done?' 'Not at this point. We are still working through the details of the model.' We find it absolutely extraordinary.

Of course, the centrepiece of the Mid-Year Budget Review's tightening of the belt methodology comes with the addition of what they are referring to as an 'efficiency dividend'. It comes at 1 per cent in this current financial year, 2 per cent next financial year, and 3 per cent in the following financial year; so it is a 1, 2, 3. Of course, it is written up as 1 per cent, then 1 per cent, then 1 per cent; people think it is only 1 per cent, but is cumulative and so it adds up and of course it is a major efficiency dividend that the government is seeking.

Of course, we would welcome some cost savings, but when have they ever achieved these budget savings that they have set for them? You only need to look at the Department for Health. I am sorry that the former minister has had to leave the chamber at the moment, because he seemed quite interested in what I had to say. Can I just say, every single year we seem to have this heroic assumption in terms of how we are going to achieve these budget savings, only for a complete disappointment to the people of South Australia, and of course to this parliament, to follow when those heroic assumptions are not achieved.

Of course, also contained within the Mid-Year Budget Review is an announcement by the government that it will be ceasing the operation of Zero Waste SA. This comes under the heading 'Waste policy reform'. I cannot see how getting rid of an agency which, quite frankly, has served the people of South Australia well is a reform. The government has seen fit to impose a solid waste levy on the people of South Australia. We have seen a massive increase in the dimension of all these levies, fees, fines, charges and cost recovery methodologies over the last 11 years. This is one of the greatest ones.

They have put out this levy, they are collecting $42 per tonne in metropolitan Adelaide, $21 per tonne in country SA, predicted to go up to $50 per tonne in a few weeks' time. They have massive rivers of money flowing into the EPA. The EPA now makes a profit each year—can you believe it? Our major environmental regulator is now a profit centre for this cash-strapped government. The other half of the money, approximately $17 million in this year's budget, goes to Zero Waste SA and this is to fund all the objects, all the policy objectives contained within the act—except that the government only allowed Zero Waste to spend $8.5 million last year, going down to $8.2 million this year.

There is this ongoing massive accumulation in the government coffers of the solid waste levy, which is now called the waste to resources fund. When they have that waste to resources fund brimming with money, what do they do? They decide to actually scrap Zero Waste SA. This is an extraordinary situation and it really highlights to people that the solid waste levy to be hypothecated against the objectives of the act was nothing more than a tax to accumulate money for the government.

The Mid-Year Budget Review also takes a swipe at the Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources. They are predicting a cut of $10 million in the 2013-14 year, then rising steeply to $40 million a year by 2014-15. It seems to me that we are going to lose an entire component of that department. The problem is, of course, that we have not been told by the government at this stage precisely what we are going to be losing.

Another issue that I would like to raise from the Mid-Year Budget Review, and something that really worries me, is a massive provision for 'operation slippage'. I come from the business community; I am not sure what 'operation slippage' is. I do not know whether it is something you go out and exercise on or something like, 'Operation slippage—all aboard.'

Anyway, it is a provision which is contained within the Mid-Year Budget Review. The Mid-Year Budget Review came down and all the departmental budgets were put in place. As I said, there were some efficiency dividends put in place but, by and large, those budgets were not massively changed. So, the casual observer could look at their area of responsibility and say, 'Do you know what? There is not a big change to my budget. There is this 1 per cent efficiency dividend in the coming financial year.'

But, down the bottom of the Mid-Year Budget Review was this new idea, which is a massive increase in what was called 'operation slippage'. This provision actually amounted to $287 million. There has been $287 million worth of 'operation slippage' built into the budget. So, this is now the government saying, 'We know we have got these budgets by department, but we are not actually going to really spend that money.' In fact, $287 million is not going to be spent.

So, you sort of say to yourself, 'How is this going to be made up? Which department is not going to be spending this money?' If you just add up all of the departmental budgets themselves, we are heading for a budget deficit of $1.5 billion this year. I put it to you, because we have never had this item in anywhere near this order of magnitude—$287 million—that I find it very difficult to believe that, firstly, we are going to achieve that slippage or, secondly, if we are and the government is forecasting it, why don't they tell us where it is actually going to be? Why don't they tell us what this $287 million provision is, or did they just not like the headline figure of a $1.5 billion deficit in this financial year?

As I have stated, the Liberal opposition, despite all of my protestations this afternoon, will be supporting this bill. We are going to agree with the government that we should allow supply of $3.2 billion to the government, prior to them giving us the budget.

Let me tell you that I am really looking forward to this Premier's, this new Treasurer's, first budget in this house. I have got no idea how he is going to provide for achieving the forecasts that he has updated to us only a few months ago and still incorporate the increasing costs of delivering on the NDIS, of delivering on Gonski and of delivering on the massive health expenditure cuts that we have now got built into the budget.

I asked the Premier, today in this house, if he could rule out any further increase to the projected deficit—the largest deficit in the 176 years of this state. He said, 'You will have to wait.' I said, 'Have you actually sought any advice from the Prime Minister, from the federal government, to update this state on what the likely revenue decrease is going to be, given that the Prime Minister herself went out to the people of Australia and said that there is going to be a $12 billion budget deficit in the commonwealth this year?'

We asked the Premier what would be the flow-on effects. He said he had no update. On a $12 billion sum, he had no update for the people of South Australia. We have to wait. He said, 'Be patient. We have to wait. We have not got long to wait. On 6 June, all will be revealed.'

I implore this new Treasurer, this part-time Treasurer of our state, to give us a decent, honest set of accounts going forward. We do not want any more over-spruiking. He has admitted that the government which he has led has been over-spruiking for an extended period of time. He wanted us to believe that that was the previous premier, the previous treasurer, and that things were going to be different under his watch.

I hope they are. I hope that we get a decent, honest, forthright set of accounts. The people of South Australia deserve that. We have not had good forecast accuracy in the past, and I look forward to a solid set of numbers—ones that we can rely on. I hope that he can resist the temptation, as his last budget before the next election, to over-promise in the next financial year, over-promise in the year after, over-promise in the forward estimates, and tell us that we are going to get back to surplus, only to be disappointed. I leave you with this thought: this government in the last eight years, in the outer year of the forward estimates, has promised eight surpluses—only one has been delivered.

Mrs GERAGHTY (Torrens) (17:15): I rise to support the Supply Bill. This is a very important debate each year because the debate on the Supply Bill allows the government and the opposition to speak on a range of issues beyond that of just one bill. Sometimes, though, the debate degenerates into an opposition exercise in denigrating the state as those on the other side (as we have just heard) fling angry criticism at the government. It is important, therefore, to remind the house that South Australia is a great place in which to live. Many young South Australians have proudly sported the oddly worded 'Heaps Good' T-shirt. The slogan 'Heaps Good' usually refers to places, events and products—

Mr Marshall: Heaps broke.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Mrs GERAGHTY: May I say I did not interject—which is unlike me—but I did not interject on the leader's speech. So, I would ask you to show me some courtesy.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The leader was heard in silence. I am sure he will wish to pay it back.

Mr Marshall interjecting:

Mrs GERAGHTY: Don't point at me either; it's very rude. I am sure your mum told you that.

Mr GARDNER: Point of order.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Point of order.

Mr GARDNER: The member is clearly straying from the substance of the debate at hand.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: There is no point of order; the member can continue.

An honourable member: Heaps rude.

Mrs GERAGHTY: Yes, 'Heaps Rude' might be a good T-shirt for them.

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Mrs GERAGHTY: This slogan often refers to events and products which are the signatures of South Australia such as our world-class wines, Lucia's in the market and bung fritz, which is the favourite of every South Australian of a certain age (including my dogs), but it can also describe other aspects of life in South Australia such as education, health care, social services, and living in safe and spacious communities. Last year's budget was delivered still within the shadow of the global economic crisis. As a result of global forces, the state has endured economic write-downs of over $3 billion since the 2011-12 budget. This government has, therefore, introduced savings measures that will reduce the debt level by $6 billion by 2015-16.

Nevertheless, the government is still meeting its obligations to South Australians in need. In last year's budget, $210.2 million over four years was earmarked to assist people who need some assistance to prosper in our society. For example, in the area of disability services: $101.6 million over four years for accommodation and community support as well as very important respite services for carers; $61.5 million over four years to the South Australian Housing Trust to construct new community-based disability housing; and $21.6 million over four years to move residents of the Strathmont Centre into community living.

The Strathmont Centre is in my electorate and I observed closely the transition of residents into community-based housing. I have been extremely pleased to see the changes that such a move brings to the residents. Their lives are substantially enriched; they are considerably happier in their new environment; they have pleasant courtyards in which to spend time; their inside environment is pleasantly decorated; and they can see their food being prepared for the first time for many of these residents, which is a much more pleasant experience than receiving meals that are delivered from the central kitchen.

Unsurprisingly, these changes benefit not only the residents, but also their families whose lives are made less stressful by the knowledge that their loved ones are being cared for in a happier environment. We cannot, I think, underestimate the level of social capital that is generated by investment in this sector. I would say to people, if they ever have the opportunity, perhaps, to have a look at some of the community housing, because it is a really homely environment and a pleasant place to visit.

Another area of investment in good social policy enacted by the government that is popular among a lot of constituents in Torrens is the regime of concessions available to low income earners and people on fixed incomes. These include the medical heating and cooling concession for people whose medical conditions require a temperature-controlled environment, water bill concessions for up to 25 per cent of a water bill, sewerage rate concession and energy concessions. Recognising the impact of these imposts, the government increased these concession payments at the beginning of the current financial year.

Maintaining a high quality health service is always a challenge, but the government continues to pursue its agenda of making high quality health care available to all South Australians. One way this is being done is by creating facilities that offer a range of services in one place, which not only minimises costs, but also makes it easier and less time-consuming for patients, carers and parents when they need a health care professional.

Many such projects are the result of joint commonwealth-state funding arrangements. One recent example of this is the laying of the foundation for the new $46 million teaching and research facility at the Repatriation General Hospital in a partnership with Flinders University and the ACH Group. Linking health, aged care and education, the facility will allow older Australians to receive rehabilitation and other support services in a specialised facility in one place.

A further example is the recent opening of a $12 million older persons' mental health unit at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Establishing facilities like these is forward-looking as we face the challenge of future health care for the ageing boomer population, which I think might include me. This is a slightly—

Mr Venning: No, you're only a youngster.

Mrs GERAGHTY: I thank the member for Schubert for saying it does not, but he might be wearing some rose-coloured glasses today. This is a slightly unpalatable turn of phrase, I have to say, for those of us who fall into that category, but government policy must always have an eye to the future, as well as meeting contemporary demands.

In modern western societies, as we all know, treatment of cancer looms large, and the difficulty and prolonged nature of the treatment means that it is expensive and highly disruptive to patients and their families. That is why the government is investing in regional chemotherapy units, and I have to say, having had personal experience in dealing with that issue, I think that is a great credit to the government. It is so essential—

The Hon. S.W. Key: Hear, hear.

Mrs GERAGHTY: —to have them in regional areas, yes, as the member for Ashford says. In February, a new $442,000 chemotherapy unit opened at the Clare Hospital, which will give relief from travelling for treatment to people who live in Clare and those surrounding towns. This unit is the first of 10 units to be opened in the regions. Establishing new health facilities like the chemotherapy units, the facility at the Repat and of course the new Royal Adelaide Hospital means South Australians are gaining state of the art, world-class health services.

In closing, I cannot fail to mention the government's investment in our great future for South Australia that contributes to all areas of government priorities. Our amazing infrastructure projects provide jobs, better health facilities, improved public transport, water security—

Ms Chapman: You should have scrubbed that one out.

Mrs GERAGHTY: Well, the member for Bragg talks about transport services, but I can recall when I first moved into my home there was no bus service on a Sunday. We had bus services every hour, if we were lucky, and you would have to get exceptionally early, in my case with young children, to be able to get into town or to work for appointments. So, in the comparison between what it was like and what it is like now, we have a far better, more efficient service available to people. Nothing is ever perfect, but the service is good and if you look at the O-Bahn, for example, it is an amazing service and—

Ms Chapman: You should be thanking Dean Brown. He built it.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Mrs GERAGHTY: —extremely well patronised and the changes that we have made to that have enhanced it tenfold.

Mr Gardner: What happened to the extension? Weren't you guys going to extend it into town?

Mrs GERAGHTY: It is really interesting just to listen to negativity from the other side.

Mr Gardner: We're proud of it.

Mrs GERAGHTY: You're proud of it?

Mr Gardner: We're proud of the O-Bahn.

Mrs GERAGHTY: You're proud of the negativity that you continue to share with the chamber.

Mr GARDNER: Sir, I must take objection. The member is imputing improper motives yet again.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Are you taking a point of order?

Mr GARDNER: I am, sir. I think if you look at 127, if a member is imputing improper motives, then the other standing order says it has to be objected to at the time, and I do object to the member imputing improper motives on me.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I don't think there is a point of order.

Mrs GERAGHTY: In my defence, sir, if I may—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I haven't agreed to the point of order.

Mrs GERAGHTY: No, and you are quite right in not agreeing with him. Had the member not been interjecting, I would not have had this discussion across the chamber with him. Sometimes, it does not pay to interject. Anyway, as I was saying, we have better health facilities, improved public transport, a vibrant city and good education facilities. I might just say about education, in all my years as the member for Torrens, I have seen some of the most remarkable changes in my schools—new facilities.

Buildings that were run down and were appalling were just left: we have improved those facilities. The children now go into classrooms that are fresh, where they do not sit on a chair and it rolls down to a wall or they are sitting there and windows pop out. I know that the educators in my schools are exceptionally happy with the changes that are occurring not just around the buildings but also around the opportunities that are provided for them to educate our young children well.

We also have our transport corridors for the future and this is going to improve immensely both private and commercial transport. Some $680 million in infrastructure investments were budgeted for in 2012-13, and I think that is something to be exceptionally proud of. As a member who will not be here in the next term—

Mr Gardner: For shame!

Mrs GERAGHTY: I am sad about it, but—

Mr Venning: Is this your last one, Robyn?

Mrs GERAGHTY: Yes, this is my last term. But I am exceptionally proud to support this bill as part of this government.

Ms SANDERSON (Adelaide) (17:27): I also rise to speak in support of the Supply Bill. The Mid-Year Budget Review delivers the highest debt in the state's history and the highest budget deficits in the state's history. The state debt is increasing to $14 billion while the budget deficit for 2012-13 is budgeted to reach $1.2 billion. This deficit is followed by an $868 million deficit in the 2013-14 year. The government is also expecting zero job growth for this year. In just over one year of a Weatherill Labor government, South Australia's AAA credit rating was put on negative outlook, then downgraded to AA+ with a negative outlook, then downgraded to AA—the worst credit rating in Australia.

The much anticipated Olympic Dam expansion has been cancelled. There are 4,100 fewer jobs. Labor has budgeted for the largest deficit in the state's history and the largest debt in the state's history. Labor has mothballed the desalination plant that they doubled in size. For the second year running, South Australia failed to meet the national average NAPLAN scores in all 20 categories. South Australia has the worst property sales figures in 27 years.

The government budgeted for and then spent the proceeds of the Olympic Dam expansion before it was approved. Now, the $30 billion 25,000-job project has been cancelled. The cost of living is skyrocketing in South Australia with the world's highest electricity prices, the highest water prices of all Australian capitals and the highest taxes in the nation. Labor will collect over $17.7 billion in taxes over the next four years.

It is no secret that the reason I stood for parliament and joined the Liberal Party, campaigned and then won my seat, was because of the wasteful Labor government, the wrong priorities and general frustration at seeing my state being ruined by the incompetence of this Labor government. There are many things that are affecting the state as a whole and there are many that are also specifically in my electorate that do also affect the entire state.

In a desperate need for money the Labor government has decided to bring in a car parking tax of $750 per car park for both on-street and off-street car parking in the city. This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard of to create vibrancy in the city. On the one hand, the Labor government has allowed shop trading on public holidays in the city in order to improve the vibrancy of the city, and then on the other hand they are going to hit people with a tax to do so. Why would people come in to the city when it is just so expensive, when they could just go shopping at Westfield or somewhere else and not pay at all?

I have had many, many calls to my office regarding the car parking tax. If the intent of the car parking tax is to reduce congestion in the city and also to improve public transport, these are good initiatives, certainly, but this is not the way to go about it. There have been 2.2 million fewer trips on public transport over the last year. Had the Labor government, in a cost saving attempt, not changed suppliers of their transport facilities they perhaps would not have such a congestion issue, and people would still have faith in the bus system if it was running on time, if drivers knew where they were going and the buses were not full before they get to all the inner city suburbs.

It has been an absolute debacle. They have had to reprint the bus timetables and they have had to add bus lanes through the city, which is frustrating the traffic even more, and it was all due to a cost saving measure which has gone terribly wrong. In order to compensate for that they are trying to now get cars out of the city by putting in this car parking tax. If this was aimed correctly at, perhaps, people who work full-time in the city from 9 to 5, when there is adequate public transport available, maybe there could be some merit; however, it is not—this is a blanket $750 tax on every car park in the city. So, it is actually hitting shoppers, it is hitting residents. With all the DPAs for the city there is no longer a requirement to have the exact number of car parks per resident.

For example, at the UNO apartments, that I was recently at the opening for, I believe there are something like 36 car parks for 131 apartments. I have been contacted by people who live there. Whilst it is an amazing building, and it is terrific, and I certainly agree with the principle of encouraging fewer people to have cars, it is not in our near future. One of the residents of the building is on a disability pension and has to have a car in order to get to her different appointments.

Because there is no bus that runs directly in front of the building, she does need a car, so that means she has to pay for commercial car parking. She has contacted my office deeply concerned that the extra $750 a year is just absolutely unaffordable and will mean that she will be more isolated in her own home and not able to leave at all, and she will not be able to afford to have a car and the mobility and the freedom that that gives her.

I have had other calls from residents who have also bought cheaper units in the city to save money. They are young, they have been encouraged into the city by this Labor government by different initiatives, which is a great thing; however, there is no car parking available with the units that they own. Therefore, they lease commercial car parks and now they are going to be hit by the $750. So they are saying to me, 'Why did the government encourage us to move into the city to save money? It'd be cheaper for me to have just had a house in the suburbs and have my car parked in my driveway at no cost.'

Either the government wants a vibrant city or it does not want a vibrant city, and this car parking tax certainly will be to the detriment of the vibrancy of the city. I have also had calls from churches and community groups that earn money from leasing out their car parking on their property in order to maintain their buildings and run their properties. They will also be hit by this $750 tax which makes it not affordable for them to do that and, in some cases, they will not be able to provide any of the services that they have been providing for the community.

If you also look at this from a business point of view, the value of an asset is determined by the revenue that you can raise or the profit that is available. If you take someone's, say, million-dollar car park in the city, if they had 1,000 car parks and you have just added a $750 fee to each of those, that is, I imagine, $750,000 that you have just taken off their revenue base, which means you have just devalued their property. If they have that property mortgaged and then have other investments, you have affected all of their other investments and their ability to create more jobs or assets and purchase more assets throughout our city. So this is really not a well thought out proposal.

The Premier has referred to this working in Melbourne. However, in Melbourne, instead of it being evenly spread between all of the long-term and short-term car parks, in order to keep their clientele, the long-term parkers (who are the ones the government seeks to keep out of the city and on public transport) have had their amount protected and it has been put onto the short-term parkers—the shoppers, the mums and dads, and the people going to the dentist in the city or to specialist visits.

They are the ones getting hit for double the amount, so you are actually reducing the vibrancy of the city and not hitting the people who you want to have catch public transport and that is the long-term parkers. Whilst perhaps reducing congestion in the city and getting more people on buses is a great idea, I do not think this tax will do it at all. It has not been well thought out and there are perhaps a lot of unintended consequences or plain stupidity.

The topic of Adelaide Oval was brought up by other members today and, certainly, it has been one of my bugbears. Prior to the election, we were told that the Adelaide Oval would cost $450 million and not a penny more, and that was to include car parking and a footbridge. Of course, not long after the election, we ended up paying the $85 million SACA debt, which they assured people they could have afforded to pay off themselves. I do not know why the taxpayers of South Australia were lumped with this debt when SACA was perfectly capable of paying off its own debt.

However, it also then failed to include the footbridge, which became $40 million, and then I believe there was also about $30 million from the federal government in order to help as well, and a couple of million from the AFL, which we have not heard much about lately. This has ended up being an incredibly higher cost than the $450 million that we were told about, and we are getting a footbridge that does not cross over War Memorial Drive, is far smaller than anticipated and now includes upgrades to a bistro and some office area; and, again, I am unsure why it is appropriate to include that in the budget for the Adelaide Oval.

I would also like to mention Adelaide High School. In a last-minute desperate attempt to save the seat of Adelaide, only days before the last election the government announced a $60 million expansion of four high schools. It promised to add 250 places to Adelaide High School and expand the zone to include Prospect and Walkerville. This was to be done without encroaching on the Parklands and would be ready for the 2013 school year. Well, it is 2013 and work has only just begun. The expansion is largely on the Parklands and no expansion of the zone to include Prospect or Walkerville has been announced. Now we hear that the government is actually reviewing the whole thing.

From FOI documents I have received, the member for Croydon is also now encouraging the government to abandon its promise to expand the zone to include Prospect and Walkerville and is instead requesting that it is expanded westward. This government ignores the fact that we actually need a second campus of Adelaide High School to accommodate the demand for an inner-city high school, not to mention the government's own 30-year plan, which anticipates a huge growth in the number of people living in the city.

People will only move to the city if there is adequate schooling for their children. If we want families to move to the city, we need to realise that there is a lack of schooling available both at the primary school level and the high school level. These 250 extra places are for a school that is already 200 places over capacity and already does not accept people within its own zone unless they were there in grade 7 in term 3 of the year before they needed to go to the school. If you move into Adelaide High's existing zone anytime after year 7, you cannot be guaranteed a place and it is highly unlikely that you will be accepted.

Adelaide High School does not even accept siblings. There are no sibling rights at Adelaide High School. My view is that the 250 places could be filled immediately just by people already in the current zone, let alone after expanding the zone.

It is also on record—and being on the governing council I am certainly aware—that the 250 places will only be divvied up at 50 per year. If we put 50 extra students in year 8 as soon as the school opens, we will need to accommodate those 50 all through the school. So that means that in 2016 or 2017, or whenever it gets finished, there will only be 50 places in that school for all that money. So the government really does not realise that it is totally inadequate and that there has to be another city school.

The Women's and Children's Hospital car park is another big issue in my electorate. I have had many calls and I have been working on this issue for a couple of years. There are issues with staff not having adequate access to parking. They are sometimes lining up in the current car park for up to 45 minutes and their pays are being docked. It also interferes with scheduled surgeries because adequate staff is not on board; so they are delaying things. We have also had safety issues, with nurses parking as far away as Barton Terrace West. We know that there have been several rapes throughout North Adelaide and in the Parklands. The last thing we want is nursing staff and hospital staff walking all the way through the dark streets of North Adelaide because there is not adequate parking.

We have also had stories in the paper about sick children carrying their oxygen bottles all the way from the Lion on Melbourne Street because they cannot get a park anywhere. I have had constituents contact my office about being booked. Because of all the streets being full, the City Council has now zoned the area for two-hour parking so that residents have some hope of having visitors to their home. That means that we now have people with sick children getting booked when they take their children to the hospital.

I believe this car park needs to be expanded. I believe that car parking is part of providing adequate health care and I believe that it is the government's role to provide that. This car park brings in about $1.2 million in revenue to the government every year, so I find it astounding that it would want to sell off yet another asset that actually brings in money.

The health minister has said that he is not in the business of providing car parking and that it is not part of the health service, yet the government will invent a whole car parking tax to pay for park-and-ride, which is car parking. Perhaps it is only in the business of providing car parking at a loss and not at a profit.

It is astounding that the government would keep selling anything that makes money—the lotteries, the forests—and leave us in massive debt with no hope of paying it off. At least if we had a surplus we could be getting our debt down. We not only have massive debt, we have a deficit, so we are going backwards. If we sell every asset that makes money, we have no hope of ever recovering this economy in the future.

The desalination plant has been mentioned by a few people. Again, the desalination plant was the Liberals' idea. Labor thought it was ridiculous at the time and did not go ahead with it. The Liberals proposed a 50 gigalitre desalination plant at a cost of $450 million. Due to the Labor government's need to upstage and make something even more grand, we have ended up with a 100 gigalitre desalination plant at a cost of $2.2 billion which has now been mothballed. These are examples of why I could not sit at home and watch this Labor government destroy my state any longer. It is just disappointing that it is continuing. I am extremely concerned about the state that this government will leave our state in.

Irresponsible spending and wrong priorities are further demonstrated by the Mid-Year Budget Review's $3.5 million cut from grassroots community sports and recreation clubs, the $40 million funding cut to preventative health programs, the scaling back of the much-needed upgrade of the Lyell McEwin Hospital to save $24 million, and the $150 million slashed from the SA Police budget, threatening the number of officers on patrol.

There are all of these cuts, yet for some reason the government could still find the $40 million needed for the footbridge, so this was a priority over health, policing and community sports. I find it absolutely astounding that we needed to spend $40 million on a footbridge when there are five bridges within one kilometre of that area. We have had a bridge since I think the 1930s that was specifically built to cope with crowds of up to 60,000 people, which it has managed in the past when there were not so many seats and there were more standing areas, and there were crowds of up to 60,000.

The priorities of this government continue to be wrong. They continue to sell anything that produces money and only build things that can possibly lose money. It is just astounding; however, for the function of government, I will be accepting the Supply Bill.


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