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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
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SUPPLY BILL 2012

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 4 April 2012.)

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (11:03): It is a most interesting situation that the Supply Bill has run on for so many weeks. The house generally disposes of the Supply Bill in one go rather than moving on to other matters and coming back weeks and weeks later. Supply, obviously, gives the government access to finances to continue the operation of government during that period before the budget is formally adopted and passed by the house, so it is really a technical bill but it is essential for the operation of government.

Obviously, the debate on the Supply Bill gives members the opportunity to talk about just that—supply—the use of taxpayers' money to run the state. We have seen in this state a very sad situation arising in recent years where the government has absolutely lost control of its expenses. Former treasurer Foley eventually admitted that he had a problem with expenses. He said, 'We just can't control our expenditure.' That was a problem of his and the government's own making.

Notwithstanding that this government has sought to rebadge itself as something new and fresh, the reality is that the current Premier has sat at the cabinet table whilst every decision of this government has been taken since it first came to office back in 2002. So it is impossible for this Premier and this ministry to divorce itself from the poor decision-making and the poor financial management of the state over the past 10 or so years.

Interestingly, when we look around the nation we see that this disease that afflicts governments is not unique to South Australia. It is a disease that has afflicted governments—Labor governments, more particularly—right across the nation, not only in the states but also federally.

It seems that it is indeed a part of Labor's DNA that it does not know how to manage the finances of the state or the commonwealth. It is Labor's DNA that it cannot control its expenditure. It has happened in every state in the nation; it has happened in the commonwealth. It has happened, probably to a greater extent, right here in South Australia than anywhere else. The reality is that the ministers sit around the cabinet room and simply do not understand what they are doing.

Strangely enough, I assume that every one of them has run some sort of domestic budget. I assume that every one of them takes their pay packet, and has taken their pay packet ever since they entered the workforce, and worked out how they are going to manage their personal expenditure. I assume that they have been able to manage that reasonably well. The problem with the DNA of the Labor Party is that, when they get their hands on somebody else's money, they treat it completely differently from the way they would manage their own money. That is the flaw in the Labor Party's DNA.

Good governments manage public moneys as though it were their own. Good governments understand the necessity to be frugal, and they understand the necessity to not spend beyond their means. That is the difference between a good government and a not so good or bad government. We in South Australia have endured too many of the latter over the last 40-odd years, and that is the reason that South Australia finds itself in the position it is in today; that is, a state whose economy is going backwards relative to every other state in the nation. Even Tasmania's prospects have moved ahead at a rate greater than that of South Australia.

I have said before in this place that, when I was a schoolboy, South Australia was on the verge of becoming the third powerhouse in this nation. We were on the verge of overtaking Queensland; Adelaide was on the verge of overtaking Brisbane as a major city. Perth was a very small city; Western Australia was a very small economy. I never expected to see the situation where South Australia was languishing as a much smaller economy than that enjoyed by people in Western Australia.

The first time I went to Perth was in the late 1960s, and I got quite a shock when I went back there some 20 years later and saw the difference in what was just a large country town, as Perth was in the late 1960s, to a thriving, bustling, modern city that it is today.

It was not because they had any sort of luck, it was just because the state governments in Western Australia saw how to build a prosperous future for their communities. They knew how to manage the finances of the state, and they got on with it. In South Australia, we had a completely different attitude, and we continue to pay the price.

One of the key problems that besets the South Australian economy is the shift from the private sector to the public sector. The percentage of the economy in South Australia that has shifted from the private sector to the public sector over the last couple of years is quite dramatic. There has been something like a 3 per cent shift of the economy that was previously in the private sector which has moved into the public sector. That simply masks the underlying problem that we have here in South Australia.

These numbers come out of the budget papers; if members look at Budget Paper 3, they will see these numbers. I do not have the page with me, but there is a table there that shows the percentage of the revenues and expenditure of the state government as a percentage of the total state product, and there has been a dramatic shift. The problem that that signals for South Australia is based on the fact that it is just not sustainable.

The state's debt in 2007-08 was about $1.6 billion. For a small economy and a small state like South Australia, that was not an unreasonable position in which to find ourselves. At that time, that debt was not created by any great infrastructure spend; it was created by mismanagement, but it was not a level of debt which was frightening. But, between 2007-08 and the projections in the out years of the budget (2015-16, when the new Royal Adelaide Hospital comes to book) that debt will have increased to $11.2 billion—$11.2 billion worth of debt. That is not sustainable.

It is not sustainable for this state to rack up debt at that rate. At some stage, somebody is going to have to say, 'Enough is enough.' That is why this problem of shifting so much of the economy from the private sector to the public sector does not augur well for South Australia, because when the brakes go on on the public sector the economy is going to come to what we could call a hard landing. At some stage, South Australia is going to suffer from a hard landing.

We are not going to be saved by the Olympic Dam project, as fantastic as it is going to be for South Australia. That project in itself will not save South Australia from the hard landing which this government has ensured we are going to have. I expect the mining sector will grow in South Australia and will be part of our economic future, but we have a more immediate problem. We have a problem we are going to face within the next few years, when I believe we are going to have a hard landing. That will be the legacy of the Rann/Weatherill years of South Australia. That will be the legacy, and that legacy will be borne by our children, and that saddens me greatly.

Just to illustrate how the government can get itself lost—the biggest part of the budget goes to health. Those of us who have been around this place for a few years remember that, when the Labor Party came to government in South Australia, one of the first things they did was have a major inquiry into our health system—not an unreasonable thing to do. They brought in John Menadue, who prepared, over a period of time—and it did take some time—a major report into where we should take our health system in South Australia.

By and large, what Menadue said was that the cost of providing health services is going to continue to rise if we keep doing the same thing that we have been doing, that is, waiting for people to get ill and then trying to treat acute illness in a public hospital system. That is what we have been doing for a long time. We have all seen where it is going. It is costing more and more to treat these people, and the costs are just going to continue to rise, and that in itself is unsustainable.

Menadue advised the state government to do a complete about-face with regard to the way it delivered health services. He advised the government that it should be concentrating on primary health, putting our resources back out into the community, and encouraging, supporting and aiding people to lead a more healthy lifestyle. He advised that the government should be tackling health issues in the community and making sure that the community faced up to these health problems before they became chronic, keeping people out of our hospital system.

I did not agree with quite a few of Menadue's proposals, but I think the fundamental points behind what he told the state government were soundly based. I think it is still a soundly-based approach, yet what has this government done? I think the former minister for health, Lea Stevens, was at least trying to head down that path. However, the minister who has been in control of health for the last seven years, John Hill (the member for Kaurna), has turned that completely around. He has obviously either never read Menadue's report or he has just simply ignored it, because the whole focus of health in South Australia is on centralised care, it is on building a new hospital on the other end of North Terrace, it is on headlines in the daily newspaper, and that is coming at a great cost to the state.

The government has sought advice and it has been given some sound advice, but it has then ignored that advice and gone in the complete opposite direction, expending the resources that we have in a way that we can all see is going to be unsustainable. We have committed ourselves for the immediate future to a path which is just unsustainable, that is, to a centralised, acute-care system based around a small handful of major hospitals here in Adelaide. That has undermined the health system's ability to deliver services at the community level right across the state. Not only has the government, I think, got the policy setting incredibly wrong with regard to health, but it seems that on a day-to-day management basis it just continues to get it wrong.

We have seen the Auditor-General's Report—which was released nine months late—a damning report on the way in which the health department has been managed in South Australia. How on earth can the government expect to manage adequately, let alone properly, a department the size of health when it does not even know what it is spending on a day-to-day basis? How on earth can it manage its expenses when it does not even known what they are? This is indicative of the problems with this government.

One of the portfolio areas for which I am directly responsible on behalf of the opposition is water. We have the exact same mentality with regard to water—the desalination plant. It was not good enough for this government to build a desalination plant of about 50-gigalitre annual capacity which would safeguard South Australia from a water catastrophe, because that was what we were looking at, that was what we were all fearful of, and it was a reasonable policy position to say, 'We need to have a safeguard to insulate us from that sort of catastrophe.'

A 50-gigalitre desalination plant was a fair and reasonable response to the circumstances we found ourselves in, but the decision to double the size of that desalination plant to 100 gigalitres was pure madness. It is not necessary. It will not be necessary in the next 40 or 50 years, and it is coming at a great cost. It saddles us with a technology for the life of that plant which surely will be replaced by something much more effective and much more efficient in that time. On every count, it was a dumb decision to double the size of that plant.

It gets worse. In the total cost, I include the north-south interconnector, where the two parts of the Adelaide water supply system are being connected, as I speak, at a cost of about $400 million. That was only necessary because of the size of the desal plant being doubled to 100 gigalitres a year. The total cost including that interconnection is about $2.2 billion. Every household in South Australia has to fund that and fund the operation and maintenance contract for the desal plant.

I was saying that it gets worse. Of that $2.2 billion, about $328 million, I think, off the top of my head, was provided by the commonwealth government and there were a number of headlines: 'How wonderful are we! We've negotiated this money from the commonwealth government to support us building this desalination plant.' It was not until a little while later that the opposition was able to reveal that that payment was offset by reductions in our GST payments from the commonwealth. I think it was only about a week ago, in the Budget and Finance Committee of the upper house, that the Under Treasurer, Brett Rowse, in fact said that the net benefit South Australia got from those commonwealth payments was a mere $26 million.

The public of South Australia was told that we were going to get $328 million towards the desalination plant. Treasurers—and this includes former treasurer Foley and current Treasurer Snelling—regularly stand up and say, 'Oh, woe are we! The GST payments coming to South Australia are being reduced.' Well, hello, South Australians. You got the money, and one of the places where you got the money was to pay for the desal plant. I would argue that the people of South Australia were seriously misled when those announcements were being made that the commonwealth was kicking in money for the desal plant.

We saw water prices in South Australia rise by 40 per cent last year. There will be another announcement before the end of this month about water prices for the next year and the government has already indicated that they will be of the same order as last year—another 40 per cent on top of last year's 40 per cent, and that is on top of huge rises in water prices over the previous few years. That is why it was a dumb decision to double the size of the desal plant. We did not need it and it is very costly.

I have to wind up now because I see that my time is almost finished but, unfortunately, in debating the Supply Bill, the reality is that this state is heading for even tougher times than we have already experienced. and it all comes to the feet of this government.

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (11:24): In a similar vein to the member for MacKillop, I will continue and indicate that clearly the opposition will be supporting this bill. It is a necessity. However, we need to put a few things on the record, and I would like to put a few things on the record that pertain particularly to my electorate. We seem to be struggling to apportion money in the right areas, and one issue that is causing a good deal of angst in my area is mental health and mental health funding. Simply, we seem to have an epidemic of mental health issues across Australia and South Australia and also in my electorate. I do not think I have ever been so conscious of the mental health dramas that are taking place in people's lives and the impact that it is having.

In relation to education, for example, a number of schools are having to deal with the mental health issues of some of their students. Many of the schools in my electorate are small and do not have the resources, and some of the larger schools, with 500 to 600 students, even with their special needs category, are finding it really difficult to deal with these matters. That is only made worse by the fact that the centralised bureaucracy that has come into place under this Rann/Weatherill government is ignoring these matters and pushing them under the table. They are heavy handed and dictatorial on principals and staff in my schools and, I suspect, other schools, and it is simply not good enough.

In the wider community I note, through health services, a continuing demand for mental health services. Only last week a constituent from Mount Compass rang me in desperation because there is nothing to assist her and her family; and I am working through that one.

The issue of road funding is also something that needs to be put on the table in this place again. It is interesting that we are now seeing work being undertaken on the Southern Expressway. Let me say thank heavens that Dean Brown bought the land and the Labor government have not sold it like they did with South Road so that we can duplicate the Southern Expressway. It will be a boon. It is a pity it was not done some years ago. It is interesting that the announcement was made prior to the 2010 election about half an hour before we were due to announce it, so you can form your own conclusion on that.

Let me turn to the issue of transport. Much has been said lately about public transport and, more to the point, the disaster that public transport is becoming, it seems, in South Australia. Once again, this morning I heard the Minister for Transport Services waffling through excuses and whatnot on what should be done and what can be done. That is all very well, but let me point out that services that are coming in from the south, the frustration of people who cannot get on trains or trams, or the buses being late, is an enormous issue in the metropolitan area. It is not so much of an issue in my area, because apart from Sellicks Beach we do not have any public transport. Like many of my regional areas, if not all of them, we just do not have public transport and we just have to make do.

However, it is interesting how topical this very issue has become, and the ducking, weaving and excuses that have been found by ministers to apologise for and explain the debacle in the public transport services. I have been following it with interest, and continue to follow it with interest. I point out that the member for Bragg, the shadow minister for transport, seems to be all over both ministers on this matter, and it is not going to go away.

The devolving of funds for country health and dental health are other matters that have been discussed in this place. Country health has been crucified by this government. Once again, the central bureaucracy has taken over. All decision-making is taken out of the regions. With the abolition of the regional health boards and the regional country hospital boards, they really have no input whatsoever into where health is going in this state. We have the current minister, minister Hill, who is looking older by the day, over an out-of-control—

The Hon. C.C. Fox interjecting:

Mr PENGILLY: It's not an unfair comment; it's a reality. The minister's department is totally out of control. With the budget well over $100 million it will be interesting to see where it is by 30 June, but we will probably have to wait 12 or 18 months to do that. Quite clearly, increasing the number of bureaucrats running the health system in the city has been a disaster for country health; you only have to look at places like Keith Hospital, and others, that are struggling to cope. The loss of the boards and the putting in place of the health advisory councils—despite the best intent in the world the people on those councils have absolutely no say. The bureaucrats are reigning supreme. I think it is a sad indictment on this government where that has gone.

As the member for MacKillop stated, former minister Lea Stevens had a great handle on health, particularly country health. She had a passion for it and she understood it. She understood that boards, whether they are metropolitan hospital, country hospital or regional, are actually a very good way of running the health system and providing some sort of leadership through local units. That has all gone. I have not spoken to Lea Stevens lately but I would imagine that she would be quite distraught about where it has all gone.

Now we have the bureaucrats running amok. Only yesterday, I had a communication from a constituent who informed me that an X-ray machine from the Mid North has been placed down at the South Coast. Apparently, the X-ray machine was funded by the public of that Mid North community but it has been moved (by the bureaucrats) down to my area, and they are just wondering exactly what has taken place. So, there will be more to come on that matter.

Equally, the question of public housing is another debacle that this government has not faced up to. It is embarrassing. The lack of public housing is embarrassing. If you look at what Sir Thomas Playford put in place so many years ago and what we have now (what the government is not doing), you have to ask yourself: why is this government so directionless and rudderless on this issue of public housing and so many other issues? I have my own thoughts on that. However, it is very concerning when constituents contact my office, or come in to see me, and they are totally distraught over the fact that they cannot find public housing—Housing SA has none.

So, what do we do? I turn to the local church groups, in this case in Victor Harbor, and they have some accommodation where we can put people for two or three days and they can feed them. This government has abandoned its public housing responsibilities. There will always be people in need. There are so many people out there who simply cannot cope and who are increasingly struggling. Why are they struggling? As other members have said, and as I will repeat: the lack of direction, accountability and financial management skills of this government are legendary.

People simply cannot pay their water bills or their power bills, they are having increasing trouble paying their council rates, and they are desperately looking to see what can be done about all of this. So, that is a challenge for my side of the house to work out where we are going on that. In the case of water bills, it is total mismanagement by this government that has led us to this situation. I can tell you that the constituents of South Australia (the public) will not forget where they are at—where we were and where they are at now.

The desal plant was mentioned a while ago. What a hideous waste of money and an electoral opportunity for the federal government to come in and double the size of a desal plant which is simply not going to be required. The jolly thing will be in mothballs for years, I would think. Who knows? We cannot foresee the weather in the future. This was another concession to the great green monster: the great green monster which needs to be continually fed. You know: it will produce our water and take the pressure off the Murray. It is all mixed up in the middle of it, as indeed is another feed for the great green monster: marine parks, and I will say some more on that at another time, but what a debacle that has been.

Once again, bureaucrats are totally out of control. It is interesting to see what the Premier announced the other day: it would appear from first reading that his Department of Environment and Natural Resources, particularly those involved with marine parks, has taken an absolute belting, but it is still not good enough.

I heard some radio this morning on the issue of facilities for handicapped people, and I think there has been a federal announcement on where they are going with funding for the handicapped.

Mr Gardner: Eventually.

Mr PENGILLY: Eventually—sooner rather than later, perhaps, but it will not happen with the way the federal government is in chaos at the moment, I would have thought. I, along with other members in this place on all sides of the house, seem to have growing numbers of handicapped people to deal with, and the fact is they are having increasing difficulty just coping with life. Where we are going with this, I am not so sure. I do not know where the government's priorities are. The Treasurer will be handing down the state budget on the 31st of this month, and it is going to be interesting to see where he goes.

Last week, the Treasurer got himself all tied up in knots and in a horrible mess over the sale of car parks and God knows what else. I think he is relying totally on what his bureaucrats tell him without any understanding. It is a failing of this government that, with the exception of the Minister for Finance, there does not seem to be anyone on the other side who has any understanding of the way business works or the fact that people have to have jobs and have got to be paid. We saw the debacle over shopping hours a few weeks ago which I suspect will continue to play out for some time.

I would also like to raise the issue of support for small business. Small business is a great driver of our economy and a great employer. It is a critical issue in my electorate—and I see other members shaking their head in agreement.

Mr Griffiths: Nodding.

Mr PENGILLY: Nodding, yes, not shaking. Small business is being cut adrift by this government. They could not give two hoots about it. There is all this talk about mining, and I see that the minister for mining said yesterday at a conference that we are going to be a Titan in mining in South Australia in the next few years. I hope he is right and I hope it comes to fruition because the Financial Review two or three weeks ago gave no surety to that argument whatsoever, with the perhaps rethink by BHP Billiton on just exactly what they may or may not do.

I think we are in a very, very parlous economic state in South Australia. There are the downturns that are taking place in China, the enormous financial mess that India seems to be getting into—which was going to be a saviour a few years ago—the debacle in Europe, the announcement that Spain is in recession, and the list goes on. We are not isolated from that. Our tiny state of just over 1½ million people will be struggling to deal with these issues, and it remains to be seen just where this mining industry will go.

School funding is a major issue to me, and I mentioned education a while ago. Once again, the government just does not seem to get its head around how these schools operate. The Flinders Street bureaucrats are walking all over the top of principals and all over the top of school councils, and the amalgamations issue is a classic example of that. In my own area of Victor Harbor, R to 7 schools were to be amalgamated. They simply do not want to amalgamate.

It works very, very well as it is, it has worked very well for years, and all it is is a cut to funding—that is all it is. It is purely and simply a cut to funding. They have expressed severe reservations about it. They do not like it and they do not want it. Likewise, the smaller schools in my electorate of Finniss are greatly concerned about where they are going to go in the future. They simply do not trust this Weatherill government. They did not trust the Rann government, but they trust this one even less, so where that goes I am not quite sure either.

The issue of tourism is close to my heart. The savage funding cuts that have been made to the tourism budget in South Australia alarm me greatly and they also concern me about where the tourism direction and strategy is. Even last week there was an announcement made by the tourism people on the matter—not to put names into it—and when I rang the chairman of the local tourism board to see whether he knew about it, he said, 'I had no idea about it.' So there has been no communication. The communication between the SATC and the regions is now non-existent. They have been shafted. We have the former CEO of the SATC who left under a cloud; he was shafted.

Tourism is a great industry. It is hard work, and it brings few financial rewards. It brings a lot of jobs to rural areas, a huge number of jobs in my electorate alone, but I have no doubt that in the next state budget in a couple of weeks we will find they will get dudded again—all in the name of saving money. It is all very well for ministers and members of the government to go out and say what a wonderful job tourism is doing, but they cannot do it if it is not funded. We need to have a total rethink on tourism.

It is likewise with police services. I have a huge amount of respect for SAPOL in this state; I think they do a great job, but still they are being starved of resources in areas. Mud fuddling around by the state government to make announcements on more police in the city has only led to fewer police in the regions, from where they have been dragged back in. I have talked about it in this place before, but there are stations in my electorate that struggle to be manned appropriately, where officers get no relief and they take the job home with them 24 hours a day. When someone goes on leave, unless someone is put in their place—which does not always happen—it puts huge amounts of stress on the officers still working.

Having said that, I would like to say that I have a great deal of respect and time for the way my area is run out of Mount Barker; I believe we have very good people in there. Finally, let me talk about emergency services. I want to point out the ridiculous state of play in relation to where we are going in this state with the expenditure on emergency services and the mess that some of these are in. No greater mistake was made than by the department of environment a couple of weeks ago, which lit up a fire in Deep Creek against the better judgement of the local CFS. In fact, they were not even consulted; they were given an email to say that they were going to burn.

What did it do? It got away. So for five or six days the local CFS volunteers on the Fleurieu were down there in Deep Creek scratching around in prickles and heavens knows what else trying to put out a fire that was lit up against the better judgement of CFS officers. The message I have got—and I will verify it when I do a freedom of information on it—is that that fire cost $500,000. It never should have happened. Once again, we have department of environment officers, who think they know everything but who do not know everything, who do not take any notice of the locals but then expect the locals to go out for five or six days and monitor and try to repair the damage that has been caused.

I flew over it a week ago, just to have a look at the area that was burnt. I am a great believer in burning, but if you are going to burn you need to do it right—and you do not have to have a university degree to know how to organise a scrub fire, trust me. Local knowledge should be put to the fore. Once again, down in Deep Creek it did not happen, and as a result local people were put out for many days.

Mr GARDNER (Morialta) (11:44): In rising to speak on the Supply Bill I note that the bill in question seeks to allow $3.16 billion of revenue to be spent by the South Australian government for the next financial year. We do this now because the state budget is being delivered on the last day of May, and of course it needs to be passed before the funds are available. This just guarantees that we can keep going through July, August and September; and, of course, the opposition will support that because government must have money to pay its public servants.

But for 10 years this state Labor government has been managing the budget so poorly that I have some very serious concerns about the ways in which that money is currently spent, particularly the deficit and debt that has been accumulated, which means that now we have some serious crises in government—and particularly in some of the portfolios that I look after—that I am not sure that the government is able to tackle. Because it had some very, very good years. It had some magnificent years with unbudgeted for GST revenue coming in, which the previous treasurer (Hon. Kevin Foley) and the cabinet (which, of course, our current Premier was a member of for every single day) did not see a spending priority that it did not want to sign off on.

It never saw a cheque that it did not want to sign, and consequently, with no thought to accumulating money for the bad years, it managed to continue running up debt and deficit for all those years. In 1976 Margaret Thatcher famously said that the problem with socialists was that they eventually run out of other people's money to spend, and 36 years later we see this state government apparently run out of taxpayers' money to deliver the services that taxpayers need.

It has done this before, and in 1991, when the state Labor government was laughing off suggestions by Dale Baker and Jennifer Cashmore that we might be approaching some sort of problem in our State Bank (and we eventually had to bail that out), we ended up in $8 billion of debt which cost South Australians dearly. It took a Liberal government to fix that problem and we had to make some very hard decisions to do that. That was the result of a State Bank disaster the likes of which the state had never seen before.

We are going to be topping $11 billion in public debt once the government's hospital on the rail yards has been completed—$11 billion in government debt, higher than the State Bank disaster, and what is the cause? Has there been a State Bank disaster? No. We have had seven years of ongoing revenues to the Treasury of more than half a billion dollars unbudgeted for. Every single one of those budgets had about a half a billion dollars each year coming in in unbudgeted revenues. It is extraordinary! At a time when it put up taxes to the highest in the country, at a time when GST revenues had been coming in in unbelievable manners and at a time when it has been selling off thousands of public houses this Labor government will also have managed to run up debt approaching $11 billion once we have sold off the hospital.

It is ten years of Labor mess. South Australia has been left in recession. We have the nation's highest taxes, we have the nation's worst economic growth, we have the nation's highest decline in job vacancies, the nation's highest capital electricity and water charges, we have the nation's worst business confidence, the nation's worst business approval figures, the nation's worst performing workers compensation system and the nation's slowest growth in wages, but we have the nation's fastest growth in consumer prices.

How extraordinary that a cabinet of which the Premier was a member for every single day of this government's life can present itself to the public having had such extraordinary conditions, such waste and to now cry poor and suggest, 'Oh, it's all the fault of the global financial crisis,' or, 'It's all the fault of those nasty Eastern States who have been mean to us at COAG.' How extraordinary! For 10 years Labor has failed to manage the state's budgets and invest for the future, so state debt is heading to $11 billion, and the most vulnerable in our community have some serious assistance that is now needed. The state government has a moral obligation to ensure that people's human rights, particularly people with a disability, are looked after, and I will be going more to that issue in a moment.

Premier Weatherill was in state cabinet for every single day of the Labor government. He was there when every single one of Labor's bad decisions was made since it took government in 2002 and he stands by them. As he said last year, 'We've had a change of leader, not a change of government.' He must take responsibility for the lifetime of problems that this government has caused. Of course, for the significant part of that time Premier Weatherill was the minister with responsibility for some of the things I look after. He was the longest-serving minister in the Rann government for disability, families and communities, youth and justice and he must take a personal responsibility for the extraordinary mess that so many of those areas are now in.

Yesterday, along with the member for Norwood, the member for Adelaide, the member for Taylor, I believe representing the government, the Hon. Kelly Vincent and the Hon. Tammy Franks from the other place (I think that is everyone from the state parliament who was there), I was able to attend the rally supporting the National Disability Insurance Scheme. We were joined by some federal members of parliament. Kate Ellis and Christopher Pyne both spoke on behalf of their respective parliamentary parties in Canberra. It was a terrific occasion. It was terrific to see the bipartisan nature of the desire for real rights to be considered when funding disability services in Australia. It was, I think, encouraging that both parties, through their federal representatives speaking, recognised the significant challenges being faced, that need to be faced by parliaments and governments across Australia.

We have perhaps higher expectations for the lives that are going to be led by people with a disability in our community than we once did. We recognise that it is important to take a rights rather than a purely welfare based approach. These are people with lives to lead, with contributions to make, with an extraordinary capacity for resilience and an extraordinary capacity and desire to contribute to the community, but they need support in doing so and that is support that unfortunately they have not always had.

This is a direction that has been coming for some time. When the Hon. Robert Lawson QC was minister for disabilities in the late 1990s he was, I believe, the first disabilities minister to recognise the importance of individualised funding in South Australia and started us on the track that eventually we are now getting to. I note that earlier this year the minister sent out letters to a number of people offering them the opportunity to have self-managed funding. This morning on radio he said that all the people are going to get it, but just for the record there were about 2,000 letters sent, and the other 90 per cent of people with a disability in South Australia are, of course, still waiting for the opportunity to have that self-managed, individualised funding approach.

The NDIS will hopefully eventually get us there, but South Australia is a state that needs the NDIS more than just about every other state. People living with a disability in South Australia are living with substandard services even by the poor national standards that we have currently in Australia. In documents putting together the proposed model for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the Productivity Commission noted that government support across Australia for people with disability is 'underfunded, unfair, fragmented and inefficient, and gives people with a disability little choice and no certainty of access to appropriate supports'.

That is across Australia. The situation in South Australia is that we spend 15 per cent less per capita than the national average. On top of that, we have a higher proportion of people living with a disability in South Australia than other states. We have noted before—or I have noted before; the government seems to be blind to the possibility—that many people in South Australia who are upwardly mobile, young and seeking a career move to Perth, the Gold Coast, Melbourne or overseas, so consequently we have a significant need in South Australia.

In South Australia we spend $234.90 per capita according to the Productivity Commission, well below the national average of $275.90, streets behind states like Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania. I note that the New South Wales government recently promised another $2 billion to go into their system. This is all before the NDIS comes on board. Bear in mind that the NDIS is a process. Hopefully next year there will be some opportunities for some people to start reaping the rewards.

Hopefully at some stage in the next few years the states, the commonwealth and both parties will have the opportunity to be involved in the final design of the system and it will in fact deliver great benefits to all people, but in the meantime people right now who are living in South Australia with disability are suffering housing and accommodation stress and severe stress because they do not have the opportunity to fully achieve the things that they could in life. Their families and their carers are in extreme stress due to the lack of respite services, particularly in rural areas. The member for Stuart talked to me just recently about a lack of respite services in the Clare Valley region. It is a story that we hear across South Australia, particularly in the rural areas.

In the last few years Monsignor David Cappo and the Social Inclusion Unit worked on what was eventually released as the Strong Voices report, with its recommendations on a number of aspects for a blueprint for the future. In December, minister Hunter and Premier Weatherill basically signed up to all the free ones and said that everything else would be considered in light of this year's budget. This year's budget is rapidly approaching and I put this to the government. For 10 years it has been talking big on disability services. The Premier in particular has made some grand statements about disability. Minister Hunter, in the months that he has been in the job, has talked about what the government would like to do for people with disability. For 10 years they have been hearing this rhetoric. This government will be judged by what it delivers in this year's budget and whether it takes seriously the recommendations of the Strong Voices report. People with disability in South Australia have heard it all before.

We know that the challenges facing government are more significant than they have been in the past. Our understanding of this issue means that we no longer have large institutions full of people who are kept out of people's sight. We look forward to the opportunity for people to make a contribution and to be involved in the community. In the meantime, the support services that needed to be in place in the community for people to achieve that have not been put in place. People are living longer because of the wonderful benefits of better health care so the support will potentially cost more than it once did because of our expectations and people's longer lives but it needs to be delivered in line with that. For 10 years people have been waiting and the government will be judged at this year's budget.

Where are we now? We spend 15 per cent less, generally, than the national average according to the Productivity Commission. The Gonski review of education in Australia did some work on this as well. The Gonski review was a review of funding for schooling and it produced a chart on average funding per student for students with disability in government schools by state and territory in 2009-10. I hesitate to tell the chamber this because I know many members will be upset to hear that in South Australia our figure of $4,808 is up to eight times less than some other states. Indeed, we come straight last across Australia. The Northern Territory spends more; New South Wales spends three times as much; in Victoria the figure is $19,800; Western Australia and the ACT are over $20,000 per student; in Tasmania they take it seriously with over $40,000 per student with disability in government schools; and in South Australia, $4,800—it is quite shameful.

We also have to cope with the issue of the category 1 unmet need list for supported accommodation. These are people with a severe disability who have been identified as at critical risk of homelessness and immediate and high risk of harm to themselves or others. At the time of the last election the figure from December 2009 was 306. Just in the life of this parliament the number of people on the category 1 unmet need list for supported accommodation in South Australia—people with a disability and at high and immediate risk of harm to themselves or others—has grown from 306 in December 2009 to 413 in December 2010 to 504 in December 2011. It went down for the first time in a while: in January 2012 the monthly figures went down by six which is fantastic. We are now down to 498 (under 500 again) people with a disability in South Australia at immediate and high risk of harm to themselves or others. It is not a very encouraging start.

I would love to tell the house what the February figures are but we have been waiting two months for them. They are supposed to be released monthly and the last time we had an update was at the beginning of March for the January figures, so we look forward to that. This is the sort of issue that must be tackled in the May budget by this government. They have a responsibility to the vulnerable in our community and people with a disability in particular. They cannot just say there is a national disability insurance scheme coming in over the next seven years and wash their hands of responsibility for what happens to people with disability in South Australia in the meantime.

We must have a response now. We must have a response to the Strong Voices review. People with disability deserve much better than they have had from this Labor government and they deserve much better from the Premier who, as minister for a number of years, met with so many of these people. He should know that this is a vitally important step for his government to take, and it must be a high priority in his May budget.

One group of people in South Australia with disabilities who are particularly vulnerable as we approach what is likely to be a cold winter is those who suffer from heat-dependent medical conditions: those for whom the Liberal Party announced a policy prior to last year's budget—which the Labor Party (we were glad) took up in its budget—of providing increased concessions so that people with heat-dependent medical conditions would not be afraid to have their air conditioners on on the warm days and their heaters on on the cool days. It is important, with a number of conditions, that these people be able to have constant body temperature.

The Labor Party followed suit in the budget, and the new minister, looking for a good news story just prior to Christmas, went out and encouraged people to apply. He said, 'People will need to have a doctor's certificate to say that they have a condition that requires them to use continuous cooling or heating,' and, of course, many did. In fact, we know now that, as of the beginning of April, 1,894 people had followed the minister's advice and applied. As of 12 April, only 280 had been approved, only 130 had been paid, 766 had been declined and 338 were still awaiting a determination. In explaining why so many applicants have been declined, minister Hunter went to the press and in a conference said:

I think a lot of people said, 'Wacko, this is fantastic, let's apply,' but didn't really drill down into what the qualifications are, and about 700 of those people who applied won't meet the qualifications.

If minister Hunter wants to know why these people might not have drilled down into all of his details, he need look no further than the mirror when he gets up in the morning. I remind people that he said, 'People will need to have a doctor's certificate to say that they have a condition that requires them to use continuous cooling or heating.' We have met a number of these people who have a doctor's certificate to say they need continuous cooling or heating but, because they do not meet the bureaucratic technical definitions that the department under minister Hunter has put into the requirements, they are unable to get it.

Half of the people for whom determinations have been made—more than half—have now been rejected. With the spiralling high cost of living and spiralling electricity prices—which are only going to get higher under Labor's toxic carbon tax as of 1 July—all these people with heat-dependent medical conditions need to have the comfort of knowing they will be able to turn on their heaters in the cold days of winter and not be caught in the poverty trap.

Government, of course, does not help these people. They generally will turn to welfare agencies if they are under family stress. Figures for February show that requests for assistance by welfare agencies had increased massively. One of the things the government did, of course, was cut the early intervention anti-poverty unit measures such as the financial counsellors who were going to help people. There were 40 financial counsellors in the government and they have been cut.

These were people who would save the government money later on, of course, because, if you can keep families together and reduce their financial stress levels, they are less likely to need acute services later on. This is understood by even the Gillard federal government, which has put in 50 of these around Australia in recent months, even despite cuts elsewhere, because they know that it saves the government in the long-term. The short-term thinking of this government has seen the extraordinary increased demand on our charities.

I note that figures released by SACOSS for February show that UnitingCare Wesley saw requests for assistance increase 34 per cent between November 2010 and November 2011; the Salvation Army requests increased by 69 per cent; the Salvos Doorways of Hope phone line increased by 42 per cent; and Anglicare reported an overwhelming 373 per cent increase in requests for assistance. Welfare agencies can only do so much, and the extraordinary increase in demand on them because of the extraordinary cost of living pressures that have skyrocketed under this Labor government have actually seen people in this situation, in unprecedented numbers, turned away by welfare agencies.

Figures released on 20 April by Anglicare show that their annual survey of people they have turned away during a week in March has increased to 325 people in 2012, a 35 per cent increase on the 241 people turned away in 2011. For the vast majority of Labor's 10 years, they had rivers of unbudgeted revenues coming in—a staggering $500 million per year extra, on average, during the course of Kevin Foley's tenure in Treasury. Labor squandered money in the good times. This government, of which Jay Weatherill, the Premier, was a cabinet minister for every day, squandered money in the good times and now, when we find we need the money to support extra services in our community, there is nothing left.

I have not even had time to get into the Cavan issue, but I can tell members that this government has messed it up for 10 years, and South Australia deserves better.

Time expired.

Mr MARSHALL (Norwood) (12:04): It is my great pleasure to rise to speak on the Supply Bill proposed by the government. Of course, this is the bill which guarantees the money supply from 1 July this year until the time the Appropriation Bill is passed by this government sometime thereafter. In fact, what the government and the Treasurer are asking us to do today in the house is to authorise government expenditure of $3.16 billion without us actually seeing the budget and without us seeing what it is going to spend the money on.

As I have pointed out in my last three speeches in this house on the Supply Bill, I come from the commercial sector, and this would never ever happen in the commercial world. Never would you have a situation where a managing director or a chief financial officer would go to their board and say, 'I need you to give me money, but I am not going to be able to tell you what I am going to spend this money on,' and this is the precise situation that we find ourselves in here again this year.

Let me put on the record that other states in Australia are able to deliver their budgets in a timely manner. Other states in Australia are able to get their act together, work backwards from 30 June, the end of the financial year, which occurs on the same day each year, and get their budgets to the parliament for approval in time so that there is no need for wasting the parliament's time with this Supply Bill. Unfortunately, in the 10 years of this government it has not once been able to bring its budget to this house for approval in time, and it is a mark of its tardiness.

In reality, I think this government would like to defer this budget into oblivion, because we know that it is going to be a very tough budget. We have already had an indication of what is going to come. Yesterday, Premier Weatherill announced that the government would be closing seven of its eight overseas trade offices. Incidentally, the government has not been managing these particularly well. In fact, two out of the eight overseas offices have not even had any staff in them for the past 12 months. That is how well this government is spending our taxpayers' money.

Yesterday, the Premier announced that seven out of eight of these trade offices are going to close. This is, I think, a precursor to what we are going to see in the budget later this month. Of course, this has been lifted directly from the Sustainable Budget Commission report, which the government received in 2010. It received this report in 2010. The question is: why is the government leaving these decisions so late to implement? Why is it putting us in such a perilous situation?

Of course, the government has been very keen in the media and in the parliament to talk up the impact of those matters which affect our budget and which are beyond their control, so it wants to tell us all about the global financial crisis and the high Australian dollar. What the government does not want to tell us about is what is within its ability to influence. The government wants to be seen as the victim: 'Poor old South Australia. Look at what has happened with the GFC. Our GST receipts are well down. Oh, poor old South Australia. Our exporters aren't doing very well because of the high Australian dollar.' That is great. Let us take that as a given.

Again, going back to the commercial world, you would never have a situation where a managing director would go to the board and say, 'Look, I've done really, really badly, but it's not my fault.' Boards understand and parliaments should understand that there are things that are within the control of government and there are things that are outside the control of government. What we need to look at is: after 10 years of this government, how has this government performed in terms of those matters that are within its control?

This government has been in this place for 10 years and over this time we have had good years, from a macroeconomic perspective, and we have had poor years, and it is well documented. I do not need to go into it in too much detail, but this government has experienced what many refer to, both in this place and in the popular press, as 'rivers of gold' in terms of GST revenue and property tax revenues over and above what could have ever been budgeted.

The guts question to ask the government members is: how have they used that unexpected windfall gain into South Australia? Have they used it to reduce our debt? Have they used it to build productive infrastructure that is going to drive economic activity for our state moving forward? Have they used it in some way to build our capacity as a state? The answer to those three questions is, of course, no.

In each and every year of this government, despite having all this additional revenue coming into the state that they have never even budgeted for, this government has managed to overspend its own budget—the thing which is in its own control each and every year. In each and every single year of this Labor government, they have spent more money than they themselves budgeted. They have spent more money on the things they can control, not the things that they cannot control which they always want to talk about, but on the things they can control (their own spending). Each year they have failed South Australia.

Treasurer Foley knew this. He knew that his government was out of control in terms of spending, so in 2009 he set up the Sustainable Budget Commission to go into each government department and look at how they were spending the money and look for obvious waste that was existing within the government ranks. Interestingly, treasurer Foley decided not to release the information prepared by the Sustainable Budget Commission until after the 2010 election. He did not want to tell us about the pain which was about to hit us in South Australia, but he did recognise the need to rein in the spending of the government departments here in South Australia.

It would now seem evident that the government will be returning to that Sustainable Budget Commission report. The question is: why have they left it so long? Why have they left it until we are in crisis? Why have they left it until our AAA credit rating is completely and utterly in jeopardy? This is a government which has no-one else to blame except for itself.

In the Mid-Year Budget Review, only announced a few months ago, we heard from the Treasurer that there are going to be further deficits and further spending beyond the revenues that we are receiving. This financial year the government has predicted a deficit of $367 million. Next financial year, it is predicted to be $453 million. In 2013-14, it is predicted to be $348 million. We just have to look at the next three years of the forward estimates to see that this government is going to be racking up $1.168 billion worth of spending over and above the revenues which we are going to receive into South Australia.

It is a very frightening situation, but to calm people down the Treasurer likes to explain it in simplistic terms. He likes to say that it is just like running the household budget. Let me tell you, I would like to have a look at his household budget. It is just like running the household budget! In fact, at the time of the last budget, he said to the South Australian people that he would not be putting spending on to the household credit card. Let me tell you, I have just given you the three figures—$1.168 billion over the next three years that he is putting onto the credit card. He is putting it onto the state's credit card. We do not have money sitting in the bank; we do not have cash reserves to fund these deficits. The deficits come through additional debt.

That is spending on the current account—money in, money out—but that is only part of the story. Let's take a look at the capital account. In addition to the deficits that the government is running, it is also massively running up debt at the moment. In fact, in this financial year, the financial year we are currently in, if we add the deficit to the expenditure on the capital statement over and above the money coming back in on the capital statement, we will be running up debt in this state of $1.5 billion in one year. That is more than $4 million every single day. So, to go back to Treasurer Snelling's simplistic example of the household credit card, this government is putting $4 million onto the household credit card—not every week, not every month, not every year, but every day. Every single day of this current financial year we have spent $4 million that we just do not have, and that is what is ratcheting up our debt in South Australia.

Interest on the existing debt within the government is predicted by the end of the forward estimates to reach almost $2 million a day; so on our existing debt levels, as projected within the forward estimates, $2 million every day is just paying the interest on the debt we have actually already accrued. During these great years—rivers of gold, money coming into the state—we were still ratcheting up the debt, and $2 million a day is going to this process. What is the government's response to this increasing and spiralling debt? Its response, incredibly, is to increase the debt. So, we have a situation where our debt is out of control, we are paying $2 million a day in interest, and what is the government's response to this? Well, we will spend $4 million a day that we do not even have.

Cost cutting is of course part of the solution necessary at the moment. We have seen profligate waste within virtually every single government department. We often hear about examples of government waste, in terms of our spend of over $200 million a year on consultants, in terms of massive amounts on outsourced media advice—$156 million over three years is spent in South Australia—and that gives you a real indication of where this government's priorities lie when you know it can spend $156 million on outsourced government media advice, a key priority for this government. What about getting on with reducing wasteful spending within our government, getting our budget back into surplus, driving down the debt and investing in productive infrastructure in South Australia?

As I said, cost cutting will be a major focus for this government in the upcoming budget, but we need more from our government than just wholesale cost cutting. We need a government that is prepared to listen to people, listen to the business community, listen to the wider community, on how we can develop a shared vision of where we will go in South Australia. We need a lean and efficient government at this point. We do not need a government that is spending willy-nilly. We need a government that is focused on outcomes.

All too many times in this parliament, when we ask questions of the government about the performance of its departments, its answers only come back with inputs. They only want to tell us how much of our money they are spending on a process. They never want to focus on the outcomes for that process, which is absolutely crucial. Going back to the commercial world, you can imagine the scenario when the managing director sits down with the marketing director and says, 'Our sales are down; why are they down, we are performing really poorly?' and the answer comes back, 'Well, I'm spending lots of money.' Come on; get with the program! We need a government focused on delivering outcomes and not continually talking about what it is putting into the process.

We also need a government that is focused on delivering for every South Australian and not just for the ministers they serve. I strongly and genuinely believe that our government departments now spend too much of their time pandering to the needs of the minister. The minister is not the ultimate goal for our government. The ultimate goal is to serve the wider population. Too much of their time at the moment is running around creating photo opportunities, ribbon-cutting opportunities and press release opportunities for government ministers rather than knuckling down to do the hard work to deliver for every South Australian.

Our government departments are in complete disarray—there is no doubt about it. They need to be focused on outcomes for South Australia and, most importantly, we need government departments that are focused on value for money. We do not want to just cut spending without there being a focus on value for money. Where money can be spent effectively, we need to maintain that funding and that is one of the things that worries us in the lead-up to the budget, that money being spent and delivering for South Australia will be cut.

In my own areas cuts to BEC funding, funds cuts to CITCSA, to the SME IDP, to Innovate SA, to Small Business Week, are just a few examples that I can think of off the top of my head that were delivering outcomes for business in South Australia but have been cut. Yet the profligate waste continues in each and every government department here in South Australia.

It is also important for government to recognise the importance of the small business sector and the family business sector here in South Australia. These sectors are doing it tough and we need to ensure that the cuts that the government makes in this upcoming budget are not cuts that are going to significantly and permanently disadvantage our small business and family business sector. They are the backbone of the South Australian economy. This is a government that has turned its back on these two sectors. There is no doubt that we have seen massive cuts to these sectors already, and we need to make sure that this government does not cut into the muscle when it is trying to trim the fat that exists.

We need a government which is focused on delivery and a government which is less focused on the spin which consumes each and every government minister most of their waking hours. We need a government which, importantly, pays its bills on time. We have seen plenty of press lately and we have had admissions from the government that its performance in terms of payments is completely unacceptable. We heard only last month that the government's late payments last financial year topped $1.5 billion. This is money which should sit within businesses in South Australia. It is money that reduces their borrowings and therefore reduces their costs but, importantly, it actually provides capital which is so necessary to grow businesses in South Australia. If that money is not available to businesses then they cannot grow their businesses and they cannot employ South Australians.

Most importantly what we need is a government that thinks beyond the next press release (or rerelease); we need a government which thinks beyond the next election. We need a government which has a long-term vision for how we can move our state forward. I expect that this budget is going to be extremely tough, but what we need from government is not hours and hours in this house telling everybody, 'It's not my fault. GFC has overtaken us. The high Australian dollar has overtaken us. I'm the victim in this situation.' What we need is a treasurer, a premier or a government who stands up and takes responsibility and says, 'These are the things which I can control and these are the actions I am going to take,' not a government which stands up and says, 'Woe is me. All my money has gone. I can't help it. You're going to have to suffer the pain.' What I would like to see is a government that takes responsibility, takes action and delivers for all South Australians.

Mr VENNING (Schubert) (12:22): I rise to speak to the Supply Bill. This bill is necessary for the first three months of 2012-13 until the Appropriation Bill is passed through parliament and receives assent. I would like to take this opportunity to highlight the economic mismanagement of this government.

Despite a warning from the Auditor-General who said the state 'may have developed a culture of expecting growing revenues to continue to supporting increasing expenses', Labor has continued to spend more than it earns. This government is a high spend, high debt government. State debt will reach $11 billion once the new hospital is included, around the same figure at the time of the State Bank collapse. This debt factors in the selling of the Lotteries Commission and the forests, which I think is appalling. Total liabilities, including debt and unfunded superannuation, will soon reach $23 billion. Things will get even worse if the state loses its AAA credit rating, as interest rates will increase.

There has been an $800 million worsening in the 2011-12 budget position over the past four years. The government was forecasting a $424 million surplus for 2011-12 but years of unsustainable spending and waste have led to a $367 million deficit. This government cannot even call tenders properly. We have seen huge blowouts in many major projects, particularly the Bakewell Bridge and the Anzac Highway underpass. There is also the electrification of the Gawler line: it is three years since the tenders were called but nothing has been decided. A lot of money has been wasted—a lot of money from private companies tendering—but I understand that has not progressed at all.

We talk about this government having these austerity measures, with cuts being implemented in so many areas, but do we see a cut in the Premier's spin team? Expenditure of $186 million over the next three years on contract media services and $500,000 (that is half a million) for a United States company, Socialtext—and this is on top of the community engagement division the Premier has within his own department. What a disgrace in times like this. We do not see cuts here, do we? This is on top of the new initiatives, as described on the government's tenders and contracts website, over the next two years—and I quote:

Over the next two years, the Department of the Premier and Cabinet will be leading and trialling cutting edge public engagement initiatives...Through this procurement process, the Department aims to establish a panel of specialists' providers of communication and community engagement services...

How much taxpayer money is the Premier and the government going to waste on spin doctors? How can this be justified? When the Keith hospital needs a lousy $300,000 a year to remain open, how can you justify these huge expenditures? When Stirling CFS is out rattling the can to raise $180,000 to cover the shortfall for its new station, how can you justify the expenditure in the Premier's department? When country hospitals are having staff cut back in cleaning and maintenance areas, how can you justify it? When the budget for agriculture has been gutted, with funding to the Advisory Board of Agricultural ceasing this year, cuts to staff and the PIRSA budget totally devastated and when so many South Australian families are struggling to make ends met, how can you justify these huge, wasteful expenses?

I would like to hear how the Premier justifies the following expenditure. An amount of $32 million has been spent on consultants for the new RAH PPP. SA Water spent $33 million in one year on consultants, which is funded out of our water bills. And what about SA Water's office? As I drive through Victoria Square, I can see that massive office up there for SA Water—what it cost just to fit it out was huge. Then, when I drive along the country roads and see the Morgan-Whyalla pipeline rusting to bits—what a disgrace!—and I am told that it is even rustier on the inside.

You drive between, say, Spalding and Burra and have a look at the pipeline. It is a disgrace—it is rusting—and this is a most important asset to the community. Imagine what it would cost to replace that pipeline, for the sake of a coat of paint. It is rusting; it is terrible. Yet they can fit out the 'Taj Mahal' in Victoria Square. If you ever saw a government that has lost control and has lost its priority, that is a point in time. I ask members to go and have a look—I am not making this up. There are miles and miles of pipeline just rusting to bits and, if it is rusting on the inside as well, I am very concerned about that.

At least $68,000 was spent on Rann's farewell party, and there is an additional $100,000 for perks he will enjoy post politics. Almost $1 million was spent on printer cartridges by government departments, possibly at inflated prices and in exchange for personal benefits. Cartridgegate! An amount of $900,000 was spent by ministerial offices without the necessary approval. $900,000? I cannot believe that.

After 10 years of running the state's finances, Labor has got the budget into such a bad position, even though South Australia is the highest taxed state in the nation already and the budget already includes the revenue from the forward sale of the state's forests and the Lotteries Commission. It is already in there! So, what is left for next time? And the state is still faced with its credit rating being downgraded. I presume we will learn that, with the state budget coming up very shortly.

WorkCover's unfunded liability has now blown out to $1.17 billion. Labor's management of the WorkCover scheme has been an unmitigated disaster—and I sit on the occupational health and safety committee, which is doing the inquiry. Employers are paying the highest levies, and the scheme is suffering from the worst return-to-work rates in the nation, even after we revisited that in this parliament.

A large company in my electorate has brought a situation to my attention which demonstrates how, under this government, the WorkCover scheme has got out of control. A contract employee for this company (a cleaner) working approximately five hours per week for an 18-month period put in a claim for hearing loss and was awarded nearly $20,000. I will say that this person was in their later years, so it could be questioned whether that partial hearing loss can be attributed to old age, or whether it was in fact caused by their employment.

There is another case I am aware of where an employee went on WorkCover for an extended period of time due to stress in the workplace. At the same time, she was trying to get a wage increase. Her case manager said she could not return to work until her remuneration claim was worked through; basically, the employer was held to ransom. This small employer nearly lost his long-term business as a result.

I do not begrudge people being compensated when they are genuinely injured at work, but the escalating unfunded liabilities and the poor return-to-work rates demonstrate that it is not working. No wonder it is hard to maintain a business in South Australia, as well as all the other hurdles we put in their way.

Let's examine the health portfolio for a moment—more than a moment. The recently released report by the Health Performance Council has exposed what we on this side of the house knew would be the case: the dysfunction and community dissatisfaction that has been caused as a result of the replacement of country hospital boards with health advisory councils (HACs). We on this side of the house fought tooth and nail to see our hospital boards retained, to no avail. This report has exposed a litany of failures with HACs. I wonder how much this whole exercise has cost, and for what? Very little return.

In fact, I know of many long-serving, hardworking members of the previous hospital boards who remained when the transition to HACs occurred, but no more. Many have just walked away, unable to feel that they are able to achieve anything. These good people, who were loyal volunteers for many years, are now lost to the health system. HACs are nothing more than a mouthpiece to the minister, with all their powers to bring about change and be effective advocates for their community removed. I was also a member of a HAC, and that is absolutely how I saw it.

The Health Performance Council's 'Review of country health advisory councils' governance arrangements', released in December 2011 has found that:

...the ingredients for successful change were not evident, lacked effective implementation, or were still under development, despite these relationships operating for three years...

The level of satisfaction with the governance arrangements between [country HACs] and the local health system from the perspective of community members, [HACs] and local health service staff is low...

Country HACs...are not well supported or promoted by the health system.

This report clearly brands the minister's approach to true community engagement and decision-making about country hospitals a failure. It is clear that HACs are not being supported and have been set up to fail.

HACs are not the only failure of this government in health. There has been a $125 million overspend across the health portfolio, and a $15 million blowout in the cost of Glenside hospital. This blowout places at risk of cancellation or delay many of the new capital works projects announced in the 2011-12 budget, including: hospital redevelopments at Mount Gambier and Port Lincoln, expansion of regional cancer services at several locations, a dental clinic at Wallaroo, the upgrade of Mount Gambier's ambulance station, the upgrade at Cummins Hospital, and a project in Adelaide and the regions to upgrade the regions' BreastScreen SA's digital mammography.

Largely, the projects at risk are those in rural and regional country South Australia. Of course, the Barossa hospital is not even a dream anymore. I have had it on the wish list for a long time and I have to say that, with a litany of problems like that, it is even further and further away, which is very sad indeed. Other failures I wish to highlight include the $500,000 and counting which has been spent on consultants to try and fix the ministerial financial reporting mess—she's right; no problem; another half a million just to fix a mess that you have created—and the budgeted health workforce's blowing out by 458 positions. They are not doctors, nurses or orderlies: they are middle-order managers.

The number of full-time equivalent positions in the department of health's corporate headquarters has exploded from 938 in 2009 to 1,859 in 2011—two years; have a look at that. How can that happen? An increase of 921 full-time positions—almost double. Of these head office staff, those earning more than $127,000 has risen from 63 in 2010 to 136 in 2011, an increase of 116 per cent. If just three of those extra positions had not been created, there would have been enough money to finance the operating costs of the Keith Hospital.

Just last week we learned that maintenance and minor works for our hospitals have been centralised, with local, loyal staff being the ones to lose out. Who will fix the leaky tap on the weekend? They will not be coming up from Adelaide, I can assure you.

The shared services initiative is another one of the government's failures. It was a flawed premise from the very start, aimed at moving jobs from country areas—payroll in particular—and centralising them in the city. The most recent debacle saw 1,250 South Australian ambulance employees waiting for two or more extra days to be paid. What a disgrace that is.

The government estimated that this program would make ongoing savings of $60 million per annum once fully implemented, but this project also has been bungled. It was supposed to cost $128 million (compared to an initial budget of $60 million) and the Auditor-General has identified a savings shortfall of $93 million over the forward estimates.

The government is not confident about meeting this savings task and has therefore parked a contingency amount from the budget to cover the shortfall, which will not adversely affect the budget's bottom line. I quote again from the Auditor-General's Report 2010-11, Part A, page 13:

The budget continues to include a contingency to allow for the possibility that savings from Shared Services are not achieved.

What a damning statement that is. Aside from the budget blowouts in implementing the flawed shared services initiative, it was recently revealed that money unpaid by the state government to its suppliers of goods and services has reached $1.5 billion. This is what happens when services are centralised in Adelaide: local knowledge is lost and small and medium businesses are left out of pocket when they should not be.

In my own electorate office I have been embarrassed because accounts for the local newsagent, or similar, have been sent with a reminder sticker attached. I would bet that most other members would have similar examples. This is simply not good enough, and it further demonstrates the contempt that this government has for all South Australians.

The Labor government here needs to follow the lead of the Western Australian and Queensland governments, which have both abandoned this model. Queensland ditched its shared services scheme in 2010 following payroll problems and Western Australia followed suit in 2011 and scrapped its consolidated IT functions after substantial financial losses of $400 million.

Moving away from matters related to economics, a big change went through recently with the grain industry. Glencore, which is a Swiss company (the second-largest grain company in the world), has been bought out by Viterra (the sixth largest company in the world). So the main handler of our grain will now be the second biggest company in the world, and no Australian directors will sit on the board.

Now that deregulation of wheat marketing has gone through, the Wheat Exporting Authority will go. The WEA was there to implement the quality control of our grain and to maintain the standard. What will happen without it? Grain that is classed as feed quality will probably be used in our food supply. It is time for the Australian federal and state governments to become more involved with our food security. We see money being put into manufacturing; why not into protecting our food interests?

I should say that I am not against Holden at all. I think it is important that we have a car industry in Australia, but all this $270 million package is doing is compensating federal Labor's carbon tax. The government is taking with one hand and giving with the other. I understand that estimates of the impact of the carbon tax on Holden increased costs by $40 million or $50 million per year. Effectively, all this payment does is nullify the impact of this tax for five years.

I think it is important that we all stop and reflect on the result in Queensland. That result demonstrates that people are not going to put up with increased taxes. Over the forward estimates, the Labor government will collect almost $800 million in extra taxes above the 2011-12 levels and increase the cost of living. When the government is supposed to be governing for the people, it is mismanaging and wasting revenue.

The state Labor government here should take note: it spends money on items that really are extravagant—as I mentioned earlier—and millions of dollars for nothing, and it has nothing tangible to show for it. The hospital on the rail yard is such an example: it is a pure extravagance. The hospital will cost $3.2 billion (net present cost), not the $1.7 billion promised before the election. Taxpayer payments to the hospital consortia will be $1.1 million per day for 30 years, or $12 billion in total repayments—$12 billion on one hospital. What a disgrace! Where are we going? What of the future?

These costs exclude doctors, nurses and medical equipment. Private investors in the project will receive 12 to 15 per cent annual profit for investing, amounting to a total of $1.7 billion in profits. I cannot do that, even though I am a pretty good farmer. If you raise that sort of money, that is exorbitant. That really is a huge rate of return. It must be a bad investment, otherwise I cannot see why you have to pay quite so much.

The recent estimate that it will cost $40 million for a footbridge to link Adelaide Oval with North Terrace is ludicrous. A similar project—the Seafarers Bridge, which links the Melbourne convention centre and the Docklands precinct—was built for $17 million. How is it that Melbourne is able to build a similar footbridge, albeit a little smaller, for less than half the cost? Bob Ahrens and I inspected this site some months ago. I am very confident that his company could have built this bridge at a fraction of the cost, albeit not quite so glamorous.

Moving on to another topic that I feel very strongly about, I would like to say how appalled I am at the findings of the $370,000 report into ANZAC Day. The report was undertaken by the ANZAC Centenary Advisory Board. The report claims that the commemoration is a double-edged sword and a potential area of divisiveness because of multiculturalism.

Some 288 people were quizzed for the report. How can they even think to endorse such conclusions from such a small sample? I do not believe these findings reflect what Australians think at all at any time. It is a disgrace and another gross waste of money. This report is an example of another Labor government—a federal Labor government this time—wasting taxpayers' money, which seems to be the common theme of Labor governments.

The skyrocketing cost of living that many South Australians are experiencing is a direct result of 10 years of Labor's economic mismanagement. After a decade of neglect, families, employers, small businesses and our economy are struggling under Labor. In a nutshell, Labor has governed in South Australia for over 10 years. It has had the greatest windfall receipts with record GST payments—money to burn, and that is just what they did. They burnt it.

I was on the Public Works Committee from 2002 to 2006 and we saw no major infrastructure work at all with all this extra money. It was amazing. You just wondered what they were doing with it. Where did it all go? Well, I have just told you: waste, especially in spin teams, mismanagement, jobs for the boys, bungles, bad tendering processes. Generally everything that they have done has turned bad and now we realise, 10 years later, we are the highest taxed state in Australia. How can this be, and what do we have to show for it?

It is a disgrace and, as an MP, I am sick of being stereotyped: 'You MPs are hopeless.' Just look at our position: industry closures, ever-increasing cost of living, housing shortages, shortage of rental housing. It is a disgrace and I am not very proud to be an MP with this around.

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (12:43): I rise to support the Supply Bill. The $3.161 billion is to be given the push ahead into South Australia and it really gives me a great pain just to look at the state of play in South Australia at the moment, particularly with what has come away from the budget, and particularly with a government that seems to be focused on looking after the capital city of South Australia but continually ignoring the needs and the demands of the regions within this state.

The main concern that I have with the regions is that they are suffering. The regions are suffering while this government continues to push huge amounts of funding into projects that are really cosmetic. They are feel-good projects. They are not projects for the long-term sustainability of the state. We look at some of the rising debt over forward estimates—$8.2 billion. We look at a $263 million deficit in 2010-11. Financial liabilities will be up to $20 billion by 2014. That is a very, very scary projection of where the state will be in only two years' time.

The current government is unable to control spending, and it bothers me that they are unable to control spending as much as they are unable to control the waste. They are unable to control exactly how they can prioritise good spending. We look at selling off money-making assets and these large projects, particularly an election promise that we would build a rail yards hospital at a promised cost of $1.7 billion. All of a sudden, the rail yard hospital costs $3.2 billion. The Adelaide Oval promised cost was $450 million and not a cent more; all of a sudden, it is $535 million. Then we are going to have car parks and footbridges, all these added costs to an out-of-control spending program by this government.

The desal plant has been increased from a 50-gigalitre desal plant. I applauded that because I thought it was a great diversification, with Adelaide's water requirements and also as a drought measure. However, it was not accurately costed, and all of a sudden we realised that we would have to interconnect the south to the north with a large pipeline and pumping facilities at another cost of over $200 million. The government does not have a good concept of just what the cost will be into the future.

We look at country health, particularly in the regions and up in Chaffey. This government took away the rights of hospital boards. The boards disappeared and now we have the HACs. As the member for Schubert just said, those HACs are just a mouthpiece for the minister. They have not achieved anything concrete, they have not achieved anything with fabric that would embrace country hospitals. It created a lot of angst that those country boards were not able to embrace their hospital and move it forward, and we now have these HACs that are gagged.

If I go to a department, a HAC, or someone for some information, looking for some advice or just progress, those HACs cannot speak to me. They have to go to the minister to get his permission. It is called 'protocol'. It is just outrageous that this government can gag anyone who is prepared to come out and give out some information.

The Hon. J.M. Rankine: Your government established that protocol.

Mr WHETSTONE: Minister for Health? No. Again, more country people need to travel to Adelaide. There have been broken promises about surgery, particularly at the Renmark and Loxton hospitals. There were pledges that they would not take away services, they would not take away funding, and yet we have seen it disappear. Particularly in Chaffey, we have the Berri Hospital finally underway—two years late, and all of a sudden we are seeing staff taken away from the other hospitals and placed at Berri.

Funding has been taken away from other hospitals, particularly in the Riverland, and being redirected to Berri. That means patients have to drive over 100 kilometres to visit a hospital. Again, that is something for the regions that is completely different from the city and, again, it is a city-centric government that has no real balance in governing South Australia; it is a city-centric government that is governing for Adelaide.

The travelling time to country hospitals is increasing. Every time a service is centralised people have to travel further, and if they are not travelling further to a country hospital they have to travel further to Adelaide to receive treatment. Constituents are telling me that they are having their PAT scheme (accommodation allowance) taken away from them—a $50 allowance for a visit to Adelaide. They have to travel 300 kilometres to Adelaide, having to stay the night, for either treatment or surgery, and now the government is taking away that $50 allowance. It is outrageous, and it just goes to show that the people in the regions are given less and less priority when it comes to consideration for health.

The biggest ticket that South Australia is about to face is the cost of living, the cost of doing business here in South Australia. The average South Australian household is going to pay a projected $750 extra per year in government charges, taxes and other utilities. It is outrageous that South Australia, which is slowly slipping down the economic ladder in the national picture, is being told to pay more, and that is for an incompetent government with out-of-control spending. Water bills have trebled under Labor. The impact of spending money on these big projects, particularly the desal plant, is that every person in South Australia is paying for that.

We see the removal of the River Murray levy for those people who are not using the River Murray. So, why are there constituents in Chaffey, who are not using desal water, who are paying for the desal plant? It is outrageous. SA Water is being treated as a cash cow by this government. Ageing infrastructure will be the next cost to the incoming government. What we are seeing is that we are spending all of our money on buying and paying for a desal plant but, as the member for Schubert said, we are not looking at the infrastructure: the rusty pipes, the old underground cement pipes that are breaking, the upgrade of pumping facilities and the maintenance programs. All we are doing is looking after our own backsides on a day-to-day basis. It is very concerning.

Only 4 per cent of small businesses in South Australia support Labor policies. Most of that lack of support comes through red tape. A lot of those small businesses need approval to expand their business, or approval to move into a new market or have the facilities to enable them to be a part of a new market. They are continually stonewalled by red tape, and this government is so good at putting up red tape. It is driving those small businesses interstate, particularly with power upgrades and the concessions the government would give to underpin someone considering setting up a new business in South Australia.

I will move back to the desal plant. The interconnector pumping facilities are just now slowly having the ribbons cut. This government is looking at a ribbon-cutting exercise; it is not about getting those projects up and running. If we look at the desal plant, when is that desal plant going to be up and running? The desal plant has been on a promise for a long time now. I suggest that we will still be looking at that promise in another 12 months' time.

If we look at the funding that went behind that desal plant, it is absolute smoke and mirrors. There is $228 million of funding. All of a sudden we are looking at GST revenue being scaled back to offset the plant. If we look at the water that had to be given to the commonwealth for that funding, it was six gigalitres of water. I do not see that anywhere. It was never projected that the state government would have to spend taxpayers' money on six gigalitres of water, at a mere cost of $10 million to $12 million. The state government has a huge water portfolio that it does not need to use on an annual basis. Why did it not go to its water bank and transfer six gigalitres of water out of SA Water's cash cow account and put it into the federal government's account, rather than put the burden on the South Australian taxpayers? It really does make you wonder where its priorities are.

The $535 million Adelaide Oval upgrade: 12,000 seats for $535 million. Yes, it will be a great stadium. Yes, it will bring football back to Adelaide. But at what cost, for 12,000 seats? It is a government that has the polish on the spin, it really is. Look at the $3.2 billion rail yard hospital. Can anyone here today tell me that it is in a good spot? Is it in a good spot for parking? Is it in a good spot for access? Is it in a good central location for every person in South Australia? No, it is not. It is going to make it a more congested part of Adelaide.

We hear the Premier this morning saying that people need to walk more. Are they going to have to walk to hospital? Are we talking about the Adelaide council saying that we need to promote bicycles and we need to promote less parking in the city? How are people going to get to hospital? How are they going to park, exactly? Tell me there. We have got one railway line going past that hospital. Are they actually going to put a facility there for people to get off the train and walk into the hospital? To date, no, they are not.

I would like to just come back to the regions again. I think it is vitally important that we show a bit of foresight for what the regions are actually offering this state. Again, while we support having the Holden package of $50 million from South Australia as part of a $275 million package to protect up to 16,000 jobs, I wonder if anyone realises that the food industry here in South Australia is the biggest employer in the manufacturing sector—yes, it is the food industry.

Most people would say that manufacturing revolves around the automotive industry or the component industry—it is food. Not only is it the biggest employer in the manufacturing sector, we have the most reliance on the food sector here in South Australia. Yet, what we are seeing over and over again is that this current government continues to pull funding and pull support.

PIRSA's budget was cut by $34 million last year in the budget. Labor is ignoring the contribution of agriculture to this state's economy. Again, the biggest driver of this state's economy is agriculture. Mining is not there yet. We are still coming away from a sector that is not fully developed. We are looking at the mining industry which is perceived to be our saviour. Let me assure you that the mining sector is not there yet. Agriculture has been there for 100 years and will continue to be there for another 100 years and we need to give them support.

Again, we look at cuts to SARDI research spending; that is short-sighted. We look at $4 million of cuts to regional service. Again, I see that the women in agriculture and business have had funding cut and their role is absolutely pivotal. Every woman in this chamber today would agree that behind every successful man or business is a good woman. Those women are a huge support to industry, to business and also to their male counterparts who are in business. Whether it be in agriculture or business, again we see this government being focused on cost cutting and not looking at the bigger picture.

We look at biosecurity. It is being cut by $12 million and now we are seeing this government looking at some more cost recovery for biosecurity. It is outrageous. The priorities they have are so wrong. It must be there to protect South Australia's most valuable industry. Those biosecurity threats are not only fruit fly, phylloxera and citrus canker: it is the livestock diseases. More importantly, the livestock diseases in animal biosecurity are steadily and inevitably becoming closely integrated with human health. Those animal diseases are now being more and more closely related to humans being at risk of biosecurity threats.

Again, we have this government continuing to want to do cost recovery. They want to give the onus to the industry and take away the onus from them being responsible. Every South Australian relies on having the safety of biosecurity and no biosecurity threats. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.


[Sitting suspended from 12:59 to 14:00]


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