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

Second Reading

Second reading debate resumed.

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (16:23): I, too, rise to make a contribution and just highlight what inefficiencies and deficiencies this year's state budget has, in particular, to assist the rural and regional areas of South Australia. As everyone here knows, I am the representative of the regional area of Chaffey, which is one of the food bowls of South Australia. It is one of the agricultural capitals of South Australia with over 4,000 small businesses, and many of them are bearing the brunt.

We are regularly seeing businesses closing. It is about confidence; it is about these businesses being unable to go on. Just in the last month alone, I have seen over a dozen businesses close their doors in the townships of Renmark, Berri and Loxton. What it shows is that South Australian consumer confidence is at an all-time low, particularly in the regions.

It is not just Chaffey. I regularly speak to MPs for other regional areas and they say that the confidence level is struggling and when confidence is struggling, people are not prepared to invest. People are holding any savings that they have. Any plans that they have to increase their presence in their business or to invest in their business are just not going to come forward.

I am not going to touch on all the numbers. I think the leader and the shadow treasurer have done an outstanding job in giving an overview of what this government has done with the budget and the way it has mistreated South Australia. Really, once you push the gloss off the budget and look into the detail, it shows that this is a government that cannot be trusted. It is a government that continually puts smoke and mirrors in the way of the reality of what this budget will really mean to South Australia. What it means to regional South Australia is something that I will touch on.

It is quite clear that this budget has been a pre-election budget. There is no doubt about that. The election is coming up in March and there are sweeteners for marginal seats here in South Australia, for city seats here in South Australia. I did look at the budget on face value and I looked at some of the government's spending in some of the regions, but it is giving with one hand and taking with the other hand.

If we look at biosecurity, the government is giving a little sweetener in one area and taking a big chunk of the budget out of biosecurity. If we look at PIRSA, SARDI and Rural Solutions, they have been absolutely cut to the bone and, to be quite honest, I thought there was nothing left to cut out of those departments, but the government has found cuts that are going to hurt every institution in the regions of South Australia. Really, the state budget has failed to help stimulate growth in South Australia.

Small businesses with payrolls between $600,000 and $1 million will receive a temporary tax concession, while businesses with a payroll between $1 million and $1.2 million will receive a declining rate of concession. Why is this happening for one year? Why aren't we trying to stimulate the economy to drive some confidence into some of these small businesses.

This really says, 'We're going to help you this year, and then next year, you're on your own. There's no help at all.' Looking at how these tax concessions are going to help, it just makes the complexity of doing business here in South Australia that much tougher again. It makes it much more complicated. Again, these people are going to have to go to accountants and work out the change of this tax regime for one year only.

It is a bit like when the government gave water to permanent plantings, particularly in Chaffey. It allowed these people to be in business for one more year and then when it came to the next year, when they really needed it, when the drought really bit, they said, 'No, you're on your own. We're not going to give you help this year. We will give you exit strategies; we will pay you to leave the land, but we're not going to give you any help so that you can continue to be part of the food bowl of South Australia.'

You can continue to put food on people's tables—three meals a day, seven days a week—and that is just something that people seem to expect. In these food bowls in the regions of South Australia—whether it is horticulture, agriculture, viticulture, all the permaculture—these industries are there for the long haul and the government continues to treat them as a short-term prospect when in actual fact they are there for the long haul. They are not there just for one generation or two generations.

Many of the big agricultural businesses have been there for generations and they are there for a reason and that is because that is what they do as a business. They continue to help the state's economy; they continue to help with the state's bottom line. They continue to be one of the primary economic drivers in this state as they have been for over 100 years, and yet, when times are tough, they get pushed to one side.

We look at mining and we look at defence, which have come and gone over time. The hole is dug in mining and, when the hole is empty, they have received all their assistance, they have received all the tax concessions and they have received all the huge amount of diesel rebate, which is much, much more than the agriculture sector gets. It is one of these feelgood decisions: 'While we are in government for four years, we will make a decision that will last four years.' Again, that is why I continue to go on about what is going on with their priorities.

What is the future for food production? Will our future generations of farming families be able to come in and have a succession plan? Are we going to put these businesses on the line and watch them disappear? Are we going to watch foreign investment take over? Are we going to watch that foreign investment use their workforce to come in, harvest crops and send them back over to their country under a low-tax regime with no input to our economy and no multiplier effect, if you like?

With South Australian businesses, again, we compare land tax, WorkCover and premium rates with other states. I have constituents with businesses, constituents who are part of the labour force, who come to me and say, 'Living in South Australia is a disadvantage. We are going across the border. We are going to work there because we don't pay the WorkCover premiums that we do here in South Australia. We don't pay the payroll tax. We don't have the land tax that is an absolute killer to progressive small business, so we are moving.'

I get constituents coming to me on more than a regular basis to say, 'This is simply too hard. We are on low wages and our cost of living is astronomical. We just cannot afford to do what we are doing.' They have friends and relatives in other states who are saying that they are paying less payroll tax and their WorkCover levy is having less of an impact, for example, in Victoria than it does here in South Australia.

Everything is passed on. The council rates are higher. Why are the council rates higher? The RDA is now receiving no state government funding. The state government has now passed on a cost to local government, so that local government is now passing the cost on to the ratepayers. The RDAs are an essential part of our economic development, they are an essential part of progress in the regions and yet the state government have wiped their hands and given the responsibility to local government, with some help from the federal government, but that is a cost that they will pass on to their ratepayers and, again, that is a cost that will increase the cost of living.

Every one of these responsibilities that the state government pushes on to the next institution, or passes on to the next pain taker, is passing on the cost of living here in South Australia. We look at some of the costs and, obviously, the cost of living. After 11 years, we are in our third term of Labor and it is becoming as absolutely clear as the nose on your face that this government is continuing to pass on charges with the benefit of sweeteners within a budget cycle.

In the past year, property charges have increased at twice the rate of CPI, state taxes have increased at three times the rate of CPI, electricity bills have increased at greater than five times the rate of CPI, of course, gas bills have increased at seven times the rate of CPI and the big one is water. Water bills have increased at 11 times the rate of CPI.

That is why constituents are saying, 'It's too hard to do business here in South Australia. It's too hard to pay the bills. We are going. We are moving. We are going interstate. We are going to a place where the grass is greener.' Guess what? They get there and the grass is greener. It is easier to live, it is easier to do business and there is less red tape.

We have some big almond businesses up in Chaffey. They are a world-leading institution in the processing of nuts and are essentially a co-op, but they are now reducing their presence, reducing their footprint here in South Australia and moving to New South Wales. Why are they moving to New South Wales? The cost of doing business is much cheaper in New South Wales. Why are they growing their almonds in Victoria? Because the Victorian government want to help them. They want to put power on their properties. They want to help them with water security. They want to help them with R&D. They want to help them get on with doing business.

Again, that is another burden in South Australia. Every time business goes to the government looking for power upgrades or water security, the government cannot give it to them. They are not prepared to give it to them. They are prepared to spend many millions of dollars on their priorities with superways, overpasses and the Adelaide Oval. It is a fact of life that we are going to invest money into those infrastructure projects, but the government's priorities are wrong. It is not infrastructure that is driving our economy. It is infrastructure that is making their marginal seat campaign look good. It is propping up votes for a government that is desperate—absolutely desperate—to remain in power, and they will do that at any cost.

That is why this side of the chamber continually goes on about what this government's inefficiencies are with infrastructure spend, productivity spend, looking after food production and looking after the regions. I will go on about exactly what horticulture and agriculture mean to this state. The electorate of Chaffey has about 16,500 square kilometres and a population of about 40,000. As I have said, there are about 4,000 small business in that electorate and 3,000 of them are food producers, yet we are seeing them disappear one after the other. Why? Because the South Australian government cannot give them business security or the confidence that doing business here in South Australia is a good option or a good business decision. It is a good business decision for them, as they see it, to move interstate, because the cost of doing business is cheaper.

There have been budget cuts to core funding for research groups like Primary Industries and Regions SA and SARDI. They are having their budgets continually cut. I do not see where there is an increase in the budget for primary industries. Since I have been in this place for three years, we continually see that the budget is cut year after year. If we look at SARDI, the budget is cut. If we look at Rural Solutions, the budget is cut.

We have a primary industry research centre in Loxton up in the Riverland. That was one of the cutting edge and leading R&D centres of South Australia. We took that R&D to the world. We proudly hold our head high. As the member for Colton would know, South Australia leads in water efficiency. Why do we lead in water efficiency? It was because of those gains that were made at Loxton. It was the gains which were exported around the world and which led us to be world leaders in efficiency with water use, moisture monitoring, plant genomics and planting types. That is why it is important that we have these R&D centres within the region that they are designed to help.

We cannot have R&D centres in Adelaide looking after what is going on in the Riverland, the Mid North or the South-East because it is not climate compliant. The grassroots knowledge of what is going on at Waite is not reflective of what is going on in the Riverland. Those budget cuts at the core groups of research and development—and independent extension is what this state should be looking at, focused on giving us a competitive advantage. Whether we are dealing with our competitors interstate or overseas, or whether we are dealing with an export market—the export markets are what drives the regions.

We can comply with putting the best standard of food—clean, green, world-leading food—onto our plates here in South Australia, but we do have to compete on a world stage, because that is what drives our economy. That is what drives the R&D arm to make us better. But all of a sudden, without the R&D, without the independent extension, without the support, with businesses being harder and harder to compete with—as I have said, across the border or overseas—we are going to lose that expertise.

We are going to lose that competitive advantage that we have had for many, many years. In some cases, such as with water efficiency, we have gained that competitive advantage over 40 or nearly 50 years now. We did that with extension, we did that with the R&D centres that the state government provided. It provided that for one reason, and that was to make South Australia a better place, a more productive place.

The Minister for Agriculture says she is hopeful but cannot promise that this budget will not have a detrimental effect on farmers in South Australia. What sort of leadership is that? 'I'm giving you a budget, but I hope it won't hurt the viability of your farm. I hope it won't affect the viability of your performance in dealing with a world market.' What sort of leadership is that? That really does beggar belief.

The $17.9 million decrease in PIRSA's net cost of services across three initiatives, from an estimated spend of $97.6 million in 2012-13 to just $79.7 million in 2013-14, is another highlight of just how we are going to be left in the dust when it comes to competing with our interstate and overseas counterparts. It really does beggar belief that a government's priorities are so wrong.

Let us look at biosecurity in this state. As the member for Hammond suggested, it was great to see $1 million extra go into the budget over four years for fruit fly; so that is $250,000 a year going into the budget for our biosecurity. It is about protecting South Australia: it is not about protecting the Riverland. If we look further into the budget regarding biosecurity, while they are giving $250,000 a year to a state that is world-renowned as being fruit fly free, if we look across the page, they are going to take another $700,000 out of the fruit fly strategy for the sterile insect technique.

They are going to take that out. While they have their lights on when giving $250,000, they are taking $700,000 with the other hand. That is why this government cannot be trusted, particularly with the regions, particularly with food production, agriculture and horticulture. It is about having that edge on putting food on the table and doing it efficiently and effectively so that we are leaders.

Let us look at water. Obviously there is disappointment in the mothballed desal plant; that will happen, inevitably. Water prices have nearly trebled since the desal plant was announced. If we look at the one-off water rebate, which has now been scrapped, sadly, very few constituents in Chaffey were eligible for that because they were living on lifestyle properties. Living in Chaffey is a lifestyle now? That was just another smoke and mirrors exercise.

If we listen to the Premier, he has been the champion of the river, the basin plan, and yet he still has not signed up for the intergovernmental agreement. We still cannot get the funding out of the federal government because our Premier is too busy schmoozing up to the Prime Minister with other important issues now, because he has got his headline act with the basin plan. I think it is outrageous that every water user, every South Australian, has been hung out to dry when it comes to the Murray-Darling Basin agreement. I think it is just outrageous.

Rural roads have received very little funding over this budget period. Will we have to reduce the road speeds to deal with the backlog of road maintenance? It is very, very sad. In terms of the hospital upgrades, we heard the Minister for Health today say that he is going to do a review of PATS, which helps the regional people who need help with medical procedures when they come to Adelaide. I note that there is only one government seat that is eligible for that PAT Scheme. That is probably why the minister is not going to put another cent back into the PAT Scheme. I will continue my remarks at the next opportunity.

Time expired.

The Hon. R.B. SUCH (Fisher) (16:44): I rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill. I will make a few general points. We often hear people say that governments should be like households and operate in terms of expenditure and revenue. Well, that analogy is false because governments are not households. Anyone who has done any economics would know that that is a fallacy. That does not mean to say that governments should not be prudent and sensible in the administration of finances—they should—especially the federal government more so than the state government because they are the economy, in essence, and they control things like fiscal policy.

The other point that needs to be made is we hear a lot of people talking about deficits and surpluses. They are not an end in themselves; they are an indication of, I guess, a state of play and we should not be seeking to worship a surplus or, conversely, a deficit. What is important is how the money is expended. You can have a deficit as a result of spending wisely, investing, creating wealth and so on, or you can have the alternative—the opposite.

What we are seeing in South Australia now (and I think this is where the government has to be very careful) is that I think we are getting to a point where, with the increasing net debt and deficits, we are getting into a position where there is less flexibility, there is less choice, and there are fewer options for government in terms of making decisions which incur expenditure. So, whilst I am not one who is obsessed about deficits, nevertheless, you have to be mindful that if you have a deficit, a net debt that gets too far out of range, then it does constrain what you can do down the track. I think the warning signs are there that the government needs to be very prudent, and I am sure that is why this budget is a cautious one.

Some of the reasons for why we have a net debt that is increased and will increase even more in the next few years is because of some expenditure which I have always queried. One was, I think, the unnecessary over-the-top expenditure on the Adelaide Oval. I know the opposition was committed to a city stadium as well, but I do not believe that it was necessary to spend nearly $600 million of taxpayers' money on upgrading Adelaide Oval. I think if you look at the way our two teams are playing at the moment—Port did a bit better on the weekend—I doubt that the stadium will fill, even with the two teams facing each other.

The other major expenditure, of course, is the new hospital. Hospitals are great and we need them, but I think it was a very expensive option to go down that path of building a giant hospital when we could have had a modern updated central hospital to provide not just accident and emergency, but maybe one or two specialties and put the money into upgrading existing suburban and regional hospitals. I think it was an error. I argued against the new hospital, not because I am against improving and upgrading hospitals, but I think it was over the top in terms of the expenditure that has been incurred and will be incurred, and that is helping to increase debt that everyone will now face in South Australia.

We hear that the government should be cutting the Public Service. In my experience, we have a lot of very fine public servants who work very hard. I am sure that within the Public Service there are some people who may not be absolutely required in what they are doing. I think you should have ongoing review of the Public Service to ensure that it is delivering what the community wants all the time. The big hit suggestion of a massive cut at some point in time is unwise and impractical.

What tends to happen is you get an across-the-board cut and you lose some of the most important people. What you need is a group to have a look at the specific tasks that individual officers perform to see whether they are necessary and whether they could be reconfigured or done with a lesser number of people. When you have across-the-board cuts, I think you end up with silly outcomes and you often end up losing some of the best people.

The Public Service has grown, but some areas, for example, the environment and primary industries departments, have been cut back quite savagely, and I think you have to be careful that, in cutting back on the Public Service, that you do not cut your nose off to spite your face, as the old saying goes.

Reference has been made by various speakers to things like payroll tax and land tax. It does not come within the responsibility of state government alone to look at it, but the commonwealth in conjunction with the states needs to review the GST. I think there is a case for maybe slightly increasing it, with some offsets for people on low incomes, because it is a regressive tax and it punishes people who are less well off. That is the nature of the beast when you have a regressive tax like the GST—you are going to hurt people on pensions and fixed incomes, so you need some offsets.

But I think there is a case for looking at the GST to see whether in that process we can get rid of the insidious payroll tax and land tax and other, I think, prehistoric taxes. I am quite open and upfront about that and I do not think we should shy away from a review, and when I say 'we', I mean the federal and state governments. We should look at the whole issue of taxation, especially and including the GST.

Generally speaking, the budget did not seek to impose a lot of new imposts on taxpayers—the citizens of South Australia—except for one or two imposts. I think the combined penalty for driving an unregistered and uninsured car of $2,500 is excessive for people who genuinely have overlooked the renewal, and I think there should be a grace period so that the people who are not criminals, and who are not deliberately seeking to avoid registration and insurance, are not hit with this whopping fine.

If you want to hit the people who are deliberately avoiding car registration and insurance, then hit them hard because you take away the incentive obviously for not registering your car and not insuring it. I think with a $2,500 penalty, you are going to catch people who, as I say, are not deliberately trying to get out of their obligations.

With cost of living pressures, state governments can do some things. We know that they no longer control electricity, but water they do, and I think the state government could be more vigorous in trying to get reforms into the electricity market. I think we all being ripped off at the moment as a result of unnecessarily high electricity prices, and that is an area where the government needs to be more rigorous and more vigorous in pursuing genuine reforms to the so-called electricity market.

In terms of water, it is a two-edged sword. A higher price promotes conservation but people need water as part of daily living, and I think the cost of water now has become so high that it is really impacting on families. The other point is, it will deter people from maintaining the attractiveness of their property, their gardens and so on and, in the long run, I think could result in a deterioration in the overall aesthetics of our state.

We saw recently the signing of Gonski to supplement what is in the budget. I think Gonski is a good initiative and it particularly focuses a lot on assisting students with special needs and disabilities. I think one area in which it is deficient is that it does not really address the needs, per se, of those children who are talented and gifted. I think in many ways they are discriminated against in our schools and there should be more effort put into catering for those students who have particular talents and gifts which should be encouraged and nurtured. I do not see enough of that focus currently in our education system.

There needs to be a lot more emphasis on providing early intervention. I keep saying how I am concerned that we have a growth in prison population in South Australia. I do not think it is something that the government (or any government) should be proud of, that we have to build more prisons and have more prison beds. I do not think any government should be seeing that as a positive. I see it as a negative because it means that governments have not acted to try to stem the flow of people who are ending up in prison. We know from the statistics that half of them in prison cannot read or write, a lot of them have psychological problems, personality disorders—they are very difficult to treat, we know—psychiatric problems, drug addiction, alcohol addiction and so the list goes on.

More money needs to be put into resourcing early intervention. Any teacher worth their salt can tell you, even at the junior primary level, the students who are showing signs of behaviour which need to be addressed and, if they are not addressed, you could almost predict that those children will end up running foul of the law and some of them sadly will end up in prison. We need early intervention in relation to mental health issues, psychological issues, learning problems. They need to be tackled early and vigorously. While there has been some provision, it is certainly not enough.

There needs to be more early intervention and observation of young children in terms of what happens to them in their early years in the home. I am not suggesting a secret police force but the initiative to check young babies in their home, which I think is a great initiative. It was one I advocated a long time ago, and the then minister for health brought in that system which I think is a great system, but I think it needs to be expanded so that children aged two and three and so on could be checked to make sure they are not being subjected to inappropriate parenting and behaviour in the household and, if necessary, early intervention and action can be taken.

There is not a lot in the budget in terms of good news for the environment. It seems to have gone off the radar somewhat. We have seen significant cuts to the department of environment which I think is regrettable. I would have to say in fairness that traditionally Labor governments have been better at protecting and conserving the natural environment than Liberal governments. I wish that was not the case but I think that is factual. I see what has happened in Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales.

They are just basically prepared to do anything in terms of misusing and abusing the natural environment. I would hate to see that occur here. The current government in terms of its budget provision has not done a lot or as much as it should in terms of protecting the environment, creating national parks and looking after them. You can create them but you also have to maintain them.

I would hope that the Liberal opposition would not go down the path of Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales where they have introduced some very negative environmental policies and practices, including allowing people to shoot in national parks at the same time that you have the public in there. Queensland is allowing widespread clearing of vegetation, which I thought we had moved away from, and Victoria has been into some unacceptable environmental practices, too, encouraging grazing in national parks and so on.

In terms of this budget, the government only gets a very modest mark because I think it has lost its focus in terms of the environment. There is a lot that could be done and should be done in the urban environment. Much of Adelaide and the country regions looks tired and lacks greenery. Look at our arterial roads; they look terrible. Where there are a few trees put in, they are usually from Manchuria. I have nothing against the Chinese, they are a wonderful race of people, but I do not see why we need to have Manchurian pear trees along our arterial roads and in our parks. They are sterile and do not support local bird life or anything else.

There are a lot of other issues I could raise. In terms of road safety I think we need better signage. The current minister seems willing to adopt some sensible improvements in signage, warning motorists of 50 kilometres ahead, 60 kilometres ahead, all that sort of thing. I think neon signs as on Goodwood Road should be introduced in places like Main Road, Blackwood and in all shopping areas—Norwood Parade, King William Road—so motorists can clearly see that they are entering a high density pedestrian area and need to observe that reduced speed limit.

The government seems reluctant to commit to a robot for the Adelaide hospital. The new model will be available shortly and it can do wonderful things for people with throat cancers as well as the traditional prostate cancer surgery. I do not think it is asking too much to spend a few million dollars on the latest medical technology when it seems to be able to find $50 million to build a bridge across the Torrens.

There are plenty of other issues. I am not sure why we need more police per head than other states. Perhaps the people here have some lurking criminal tendencies that I am not aware of. We need a well-resourced police force, but I think some of the expenditure has gone into creating more positions than are really necessary. I think it is important that the police force be subject to an efficiency and effectiveness review. We are very proud of our police force here, but that does not mean to say that it should not be as efficient and as effective as possible and not simply have additional funding poured into it.

Speeding fines is one of my hobby horses; they are too high in South Australia. It is just blatant revenue raising; the level of the fine is far too high. We need an independent camera commissioner to have oversight. We need an independent body to look at contested expiations. That would free up the courts. Whilst I am talking about courts, I think it is time the court system was overhauled along the lines suggested by Thinker in Residence Justice Hora, who suggested that we do not need the very complicated system that we currently have in South Australia and we could have a simpler system with a much simpler appeal mechanism in place.

A lot of these systems are very expensive to run. We hear people talk about red tape. Often they do not give examples of red tape, but a lot of the institutions we have need to be continually reformed. That certainly applies to parliament as well as anywhere else. Some of these structures have been operating the same way for a long time and are overdue for a fundamental reform.

I do not think this budget will set the world on fire. I think South Australia faces a tremendous challenge in the next few years. We have to be very careful that we do not end up becoming a welfare state. We need vision, we need new projects, and we need new activities that can build on the intelligence and creativity of our people, otherwise we are going to stagger along in a way which is not in the best interests of the current population or future generations. The budget is a modest start, very cautious, but I think we need a vision that really lifts this state and directs us into greater achievement. I do not think this budget will help do that.

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (17:04): I rise today to make my contribution in reply to the Treasurer's budget. The first thing I would like to say is that in my relatively brief time here—a bit over three years—this is the fourth budget I have seen. It is the third treasurer I have seen, but basically that is all that has changed. This is exactly the same style of budget that we have seen in previous years. We are seeing a budget where, while incomes grow, spending grows even more, so deficits grow. We are seeing a budget where surpluses are forecast but never actually eventuate.

The Leader of the Opposition and the shadow treasurer have both gone into great detail explaining the numbers. I will include just a few of the very pertinent ones in my contribution, without going into much depth. Debt peaks at $13.75 billion, according to this budget, in June 2016, which will be the highest in the state's history. The general government debt ceiling, which it has set itself, will be breached in 2016, with debt being up at 54.2 per cent.

Total state liabilities in 2016 will be $28.8 billion, and over $30 billion after adding WorkCover and public sector workers compensation. The deficit will peak, according to the budget, at $1.314 billion in 2012-13. This is compared with last year's estimate, that was meant to occur at the same time, of only $867 million. The figures that are predicted are just not eventuating. In 2016-17, our state's interest bill—interest alone, not principal repayment—will be $952 million, which equates to $2.6 million per day.

That is $2.6 million per day, 365 days of the year, just to repay the interest and none of the principal. It is interesting to point out that the cost of our annual interest bill at that point in time of $952 million will actually be greater than the entire police budget in that year, which is quite extraordinary. We have four major government departments with budgets larger than our interest bill, then we have our interest bill, and that is larger than every other single government department's funding projection.

As I said, the government continues to forecast deficits in the upcoming couple of years, and forecast surpluses in the couple of years subsequent to that, but the surpluses never arrive. I have to say that, unfortunately, I pointed to exactly that last year in my budget reply speech and the year before in my budget reply speech. The government keeps spending. Income does actually go up, but spending keeps going up even more than that.

The government cannot say that it is a revenue problem, because revenue has continued to increase. We are actually going to have deficits in six out of seven years. The problem is that you do not just get back to surplus then and say, 'That's all okay now; we are back in surplus.' You actually have to pay for the overspending in the previous years for a long time before you can start to work on your debt as well.

This is the third treasurer in four years with exactly the same style of budget—nothing new whatsoever. We need a change. Clearly, the government is not going to change; clearly, the government is not going to improve. We need a change and we need a change of government. Our Leader of the Opposition laid out his core priorities for a change to get the budget back in surplus to repair the economy, which includes repaying debt, and to get South Australia back on track as the best state in the nation to live.

We all know it is a wonderful place. Even the people who are leaving the state know it is a wonderful place, but they have to go to start a business somewhere else because this is the highest cost state in the nation to run a business. They have to go to get a job somewhere else because the job opportunities are not here. They have to go for all sorts of reasons, and we have to get them back.

Small business is a key feature for us, a very important key feature. We need to create an environment where small businesses can be successful, and very successful. We cannot hold their hand and make sure that every single one of them will survive. That is business: it is tough and it is hard, but we need an environment where they are prepared to have a go and if they do the right things they will be successful. This is not because we want every business owner to be wealthy and successful in their own right: it is because we want them to be able to create jobs. If they are successful, they create secure jobs.

To have a secure job, you need to have a successful employer. That is why we push for small business. It is not because we want the businesses to be successful and that is the end of it; it is so that they can create the employment and the jobs that all South Australians need. As the Leader of the Opposition has said, the government continues to look for a tax and spending led recovery. It will not work. They have had years and years to improve, but it is just not happening.

This budget has done absolutely nothing for rural South Australia. It has done absolutely nothing for the people I represent in the electorate of Stuart and my neighbouring electorates around the state. There is one significant spending contribution—$21 million to contribute to the upgrade of a road on the APY lands. That is a positive move, no doubt about that, but really that is about it in terms of issues that have been asked for by the public, by the agencies, by the businesses and by the people of regional South Australia.

The government has said that it would put $6.1 million towards replacing two out of the five ferries that need replacement on the River Murray. They have not actually identified yet which two it will be. As far as I can see, those are the only two positive initiatives in this budget for regional South Australia, and that is in stark contrast to the $11.5 million cut to PIRSA, $7 million of which is directly targeting agriculture and fisheries. This is the area that we need to be investing in. This is the area that actually allows the people of regional South Australia to contribute to our state and allows them to actually create wealth for our state.

It is very important to remember that the vast majority of our state's wealth is created in regional South Australia and yet that is exactly where the government is targeting. This is added to the fact that the ForestrySA forward sale from the previous budget comes in this year. This is adding to the fact that last year's budget put an end to RDA funding. This is in addition to the fact that rural communities are crying out for support.

In health we have a situation where services are being cut every day. Just a couple of days ago I was told that at the Jamestown hospital last year a report recommended that their sterilisation unit be replaced. In a very positive way, getting on the front foot, the report said that it is starting to get old, starting to wear out, starting to get to the end of its life and needs to be replaced. It recommended replacement, and guess what? It is going to be decommissioned and somehow Port Pirie will now do all the sterilisation for Jamestown hospital.

That would be okay if it sterilised instruments that were then just put on the shelf at Jamestown. Perhaps that is what the government wants. It is not okay if Jamestown hospital is to continue to do all the surgery it currently does, because you need to have backup for surgical instruments. You cannot say, 'I've got one on the shelf.' If you actually do not have a spare in case something goes wrong or in case somebody drops one of those instruments, which can happen, you cannot actually embark upon the surgery. Rural South Australia is crying out for support.

A very important issue in education is speech pathology. That would be the single most sought-after service that is not available, or not available nearly enough, in regional South Australia. It is very closely linked to dyslexia. It is very closely linked to the fact that many children—throughout our state, I am sure, but particularly in regional South Australia—have dyslexia that is not picked up and not recognised for too long, not recognised until after learning difficulties and speech difficulties become apparent.

Shared services is an absolute disgrace and a shambles. I have said in this place many times that I get the fact that we need to be efficient, I get the fact that we need to take advantage of economies of scale, but that does not mean everything has to go to the city. That could mean that Port Lincoln could do all the purchasing for the entire state. It could mean that Mount Gambier could provide all the human resources services for the entire state. It could mean that Port Augusta could do all the IT for the entire state. Exactly the same technology that allows the service to be condensed in one office to provide the service for the entire state means that it does not need to be in Adelaide. It could be in a regional centre.

Let me turn to police—a very important portfolio and a very important service to this state. As the shadow minister for police, I guess the first thing for me to point out is the trumpeting of the $35 million increase in funding to the police that the government has included in this budget. The difficulty is it follows a $150 million decrease in funding that was announced just a few months ago. So, the government cut $150 million, then gave back $35 million because the police commissioner courageously said, 'If you take this money away from us, we can't provide the recruitment targets that you have promised to the people of South Australia.'

So, the government took away $150 million and gave back $35 million, but guess what? The recruitment targets have still been delayed. Going to the 2010 election, the government promised the people of South Australia and SAPOL that, by the 2013-14 year, it would recruit 300 new police officers. That is now going to be by the 2017-18 financial year, and guess what? The target is for the last 134 of those 300 to be recruited some time in 2015-16 or 2016-17 or 2017-18. I do not believe that any of us here have any great comfort that that will actually happen on time.

This follows a whole range of broken promises that the government has made in police, which it has not rectified in this budget. When the government went to the 2010 election, in addition to saying that it would recruit 300 police officers by 2014, it also said that it would put a StarChase system in 10 patrol cars. SAPOL has now identified that that system is not viable within the Australian policing environment.

The government said that it would put in 20 new mobile automatic numberplate recognition systems. So far, it has done eight out of 20 and only very recently, so I do not think that anybody believes that they will actually be done in this term of government. The government promised 150 portable fingerprint scanners. Guess what? No devices are operational. There is some concern around the legality of fingerprint scanners and a trial has been announced but is yet to commence.

Another promise from the government about police at the last election was that police officers would get 100 handheld computers. Where are we today? Nine pilot devices have been purchased. Another promise was reducing red tape to keep our officers on the beat. We know that is not happening. Commissioner Burns told the Budget and Finance Committee that his people are swamped with red tape and it is overtaking them night and day. The last promise, dealing with line-ups, was to amend legislation that will allow photograph or video in lieu of line-ups. Guess what? It was defeated by the parliament and did not happen.

Not one election commitment that the government took to the last election has been fulfilled, and this budget has not gone in any way towards addressing any of that. I would have hoped that, in this budget, the government would have said, 'Look, we're running behind, we're not getting there, we're not doing the things we said we would do. Here is some additional money for the police.' None of those things are actually going to happen.

Let me now turn to Corrections. The government has announced $67 million of additional funding over the next four years. Let us delve into that. Of that $67 million of total funding for corrections, $2.9 million over four years is for 30 beds in a bail-housing arrangement. Just before the budget, the government led us all to believe that it was going to build a facility, but $2.9 million will not build a facility. I think what the government will be doing is paying a non-government organisation to actually run a service for it.

It does not actually work out to a lot of people. When you analyse it down, 30 beds over four years for $2.9 million is approximately $66 per person per day. I agree that that is excellent value—absolutely excellent value—but I think that any clear-thinking person would agree that that is going to be a hell of an ask, an extraordinarily large ask, for the police to actually deliver on.

There is $6.3 million for the operational cost of the 20 beds nearly completed at the Adelaide Women's Prison. Why was the operational money for those beds that are nearly completed at the Adelaide Women's Prison not included in previous budgets? It would have been in the forward estimate period of previous budgets.

There is $6.1 million per year to meet the operational costs of the 108 new beds at Mount Gambier. We are nearly there with those 108 new beds but, again, why was there no money in previous budgets to cover the operational costs of those new 108 beds that are being built? The operational money is now being trumpeted as extra money when in fact it should have been in the budget all along. You cannot build additional beds at a prison but not provide money for their operation.

Moving on, there is $25.4 million to build 60 more beds at Mount Gambier, in addition to the 108 beds that are nearly completed and have just had operational funding announced. But guess what? No operational funding has been announced in the budget for those 60 extra beds. Why would you not put that in? You say today that you are going to build those beds and that is a positive thing, but you exclude operational funding in the budget for those beds. Yet you know, if you intend to fulfil the commitment and actually build those beds, that that operational money will be required.

There is $6.2 million over four years for operational costs for the new 20 beds at Port Lincoln. Guess what? Those 20 beds are already up and running. Those 20 beds are already operational. They are already there and they are already working, with prisoners using them. How is it that, in this budget, $6.2 million is trumpeted as a brand new announcement that is going to help the people of South Australia? This is money that should have already been in the budget.

This is all information that leads us back to the same conclusion: nothing is changing. The government predicts deficit, deficit, then surplus and surplus, but never gets there. One of the reasons, just as I am outlining here with Corrections, is that it is not a sensible budget with regard to including all the things you need. It does not include both the capital expenditure and the operational expenditure that is necessary over the entire forward estimates. It does not fool anybody to say, 'Here is $X million to build a brand new prison, and that is a positive announcement,' and then later on to say, 'Here is $X million new dollars for the extra beds at the prison.' It should be all organised all at once.

It is hardly surprising that the government predicts surpluses but cannot meet them when it leaves out expenditure that it knows is necessary. It leaves out expenditure that cannot be avoided. You cannot build prison beds but then not service them. You cannot not have the lights on, not have security or prison officers and not have electronic systems. You cannot not feed them, not have linen and all that sort of stuff. It does not make sense, except in trying to explain why we keep predicting surpluses that never arrive.

As I said, we have had deficits in six out of seven years in South Australia. You just cannot continue that way. The government is continuing that way. The government is continuing a gigantic surplus coming in the next 12 months, hoping to spend its way towards another election victory, and then promising that there will be surpluses, financial management and responsibility after that. It is a pretty thinly-veiled way of operating. It might suit the government's election campaign, but it does not suit genuine, sensible, fair and rational accounting, and it does not suit South Australia.

It does not suit South Australia when everybody now knows, both federally and at a state level, that we do not trust the government when it says, 'We are going to have a surplus in a few years' time.' We all know it is not coming. We all know that under this government those surpluses do not arrive. We need a new government. The Leader of the Opposition has put fairly and squarely what his priorities will be.

They are the things that will help South Australia. They are the things that will create jobs. They are the things that will get us back on track. For example, the issue with the Public Service is not about the numbers. The issue with the Public Service is about the efficiency of the Public Service. It does not matter whether you have one hundred or one million public servants, you need them to be operating efficiently, providing a service to the people of South Australia.

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna) (17:25): I just want to talk a little bit about the budget. Firstly, I congratulate the Premier and Treasurer on the superb job that he did compiling a budget under very difficult circumstances. I think he got the balance right between the prudent kind of behaviour that you would expect from a Treasurer and the ambitions of a government that has got a lot of things that it wants to do for our state.

I think we have a choice in our state between those who want to look to the past and who want to contract and run away from the future and those of us who want to embrace that future to make sure it is a glorious one for our children and their children. The budget that the Premier brought down I think is one that embraces the future, which recognises the need at this time in the history of our state for a government to be active, for a government to be investing, for a government to be building things.

Today I particularly wanted to talk about arts funding, perhaps a minor line in the budget, but one which is very important to me and, I think, important to the future of our state for a range of reasons. I also want to respond briefly to some of the comments made by those on the other side, and I will do that after I have spoken about the arts.

I was very pleased to see in the budget some additional funding in these tight circumstances for our arts sector, in particular to see some infrastructure funding for the Festival Centre and for Her Majesty's Theatre, and the additional funding to make the budgets of the Library, the Museum and the Art Gallery more viable. They were suffering under some structural problems which have now been addressed, which will ensure the viability of those great cultural institutions.

In relation to the Festival Theatre, it is obvious that at the age of 40 its infrastructure needs to be refurbished. The fact that it does need to be refurbished gives us an opportunity to think through the role of the Festival Centre in the life of our city and the dynamic that it can create for that part of the Riverbank. I know a lot of interesting work is going on about how we should do that. Clearly, the budget is not there yet to do it, but there is a commitment in the budget to start that process, albeit in a small way.

From my point of view, as somebody who had been involved as a minister for the arts for almost 11 years, I can say that I think that the thing that distinguishes our state from all of the other states across Australia in terms of the arts is the way we conduct and run festivals. We are truly a festival state, even if the numberplates no longer identify us as such. We do festivals better than anyone.

I refer, if I can, to a document prepared by Barry Burgan on behalf of Festivals Adelaide. This was a document that was produced in 2012 and analysed the festivals that we run in our state and the economic impact they have on our economy. It covers the Adelaide Festival, the Adelaide Fringe, WOMADelaide, the Adelaide Film Festival, the International Guitar Festival, the Cabaret Festival, Come Out, Feast, OzAsia and SALA. All of those festivals contribute to our state's economy.

I think many in the community, who think not very much about these kinds of issues, think that the investment in the arts is some sort of a frippery, and at times of financial tightness we should run away from investment in those fields. I was surprised to hear Mr Nigel McBride, as the head of Business SA, who I know has a strong interest in the arts, make a comment that rather than putting more money into the arts we should be putting more into some sort of business subsidy.

I think that is a failure to understand that the role that the arts play in society is more than just putting on shows that people can enjoy. It is more than just giving artists opportunities to express themselves. It is about creating a vibrant community which helps make the society more cohesive and more interesting, makes it more attractive for entrepreneurs to come here.

All of the research by Richard Florida and others would say this is the basis of their research, that a community which is interested in the arts is also one that attracts entrepreneurs, but it is also viable for the state's economy. We now have in black-and-white evidence that supports the thesis that many people in the arts have been making for a long time that the arts are important for a state's economy.

The paper I refer to, which was produced in 2012, analyses the financial impacts of all of those festivals. Without going through all of the detail, it states that across 2012 there were something like 63,800 visitors to South Australia as a result of all of those festivals. They spent an average of $118 per visitor night, and altogether there were over 300,000 visitor nights.

If you build it all up, look at all of the factors that were brought to bear there, they reckon the impact on the economy of this new expenditure was estimated at $62.9 million. That is $62.9 million that is spent in our state, that creates jobs and investment in our state. That was in 2012 and other figures which have come to light in the last few days are also very encouraging.

Last week, I think, the Fringe identified that the economic impact of the Fringe this year, 2013—a four-week long Fringe—was $64.6 million, which is a substantial impact on the economy of our state. The Fringe is just going from strength to strength. Every year, during the time that I was responsible (and now that I am no longer responsible), the Fringe has just grown from strength to strength. It is now an annual event and it occurs over the period of four weeks. The number of visitors, the number of shows, the amount of money being generated, is well worth the investment that the state puts in.

Today in the media there was an analysis done through Flinders University that looked at the Festival itself and tried to calculate not only the economic impact, but put a dollar figure on the cultural value of the Festival. It estimated that all of those factors together meant that the Adelaide Festival itself was worth $85 million. Those are figures that cannot be sneezed at, and I would say to those who think that we should retreat from arts' expenditure during difficult economic times that they should look at not only the arts' impact of that money, but also the economic impact of that money. The fact is that that expenditure makes Adelaide a place which is more attractive to people; it makes Adelaide a place where our children want to live, where their friends want to visit, and where entrepreneurs want to come and develop new products and new ideas.

I did not hear the leader's speech this morning but I am reliably informed that I did not miss very much. There was not a lot of content in it. I am not at all surprised because, over the 11 years that we have been in government, we have yet to hear a leader of the opposition present an alternative strategy in their address in reply to the budget. They have run the same argument fairly well consistently over the years that I have been in this place.

Their argument seems to be this: on the one hand they say that the budget expends too much money, that there is too much investment being made, there is too much expenditure and there are too many public servants, and the like. Then they go through line by line and say, 'Why have we cut funding for this line; why aren't we spending more on hospitals in the country; and why aren't we putting more money into a whole range of pet projects?'

You cannot consistently run an argument that there is too much money put in the budget, that the government spends too much money, and yet then go through a whole list of things which you want more money spent on. You have to be able to come in here and say, 'If you want money spent on the priorities that you think are important, what are the priorities which you would like to cut?'

In particular, I refer to the comments made today by the member for Waite, who took that a step further by talking about infrastructure. He made the fairly bald statement that infrastructure was not being built in our state. That is what he said, or words to that effect. I wrote that down. 'Infrastructure not being built' is what he said. Then he went on and lampooned the government for various infrastructure projects which he said were not appropriate. He, of course, went back to his old favourite, the RAH, which I think he said was a poor priority, it was money that was not appropriately spent.

He talked about the $100 million investment the commonwealth made over the weekend into the biomedical and health precinct around the new RAH site and he said that was money that could have been spent on something else. That investment was not very worthwhile, according to him. He then, once again, criticised the tram extension; that was not something that was very good. He thought rail electrification for passengers was not a very good idea, and he thought the South Road superway was not a very good idea.

The one-time leader, would-be leader again, I guess, of the Liberal Party comes in here and says, 'We're not spending any money on infrastructure; infrastructure is not being built.' He then identifies a whole range of projects where we are investing in the future of our state. All are projects which I think we should be proud of; all are projects which will assist the development of this state and make it a competitive place, yet he says they are the wrong priorities. What is the opposition's alternative? Well, they will have a committee. Essentially it is a committee—a productivity committee—and they are also going to have an infrastructure committee, and I think they are also going to have an audit commission, which is another committee.

The Hon. P.F. Conlon: They have promised us some meetings, have they?

The Hon. J.D. HILL: They have promised us some meetings—three sets of committees which will meet. The audit commission will tell them what to do with their budget, so they are outsourcing their thinking about what their priorities are, and what the size of the budget would be to an audit commission. They will not tell us how many public servants they will cut. They will say it will be moderate: 'We will go through and we will need to look at the books and we will work it out over time.'

We know what that is code for. That is code for: they will cut as much as they can possibly cut. Of course, the former leader of the opposition identified 25,000 to 30,000 public servants, and we know that that is really at the heart of their thinking. We know that that is exactly what the opposition would do if they were given the opportunity to do it. So they are going to have a commission that looks at the size of the budget, then they are going to have a look at a productivity commission, which is going to look at how to make the state more productive—no ideas of their own.

They cannot tell us, they cannot tell the public of South Australia, what they will do, what their priorities would be and what their focus would be on. They will have a committee to do it and, of course, an infrastructure committee. They are saying that the infrastructure we are building, which seems to be supported by most of the sensible people in our community, is not approved by them. They would get another committee of people—and who knows who would be on that committee (and who knows which mates of the Liberal Party would be appointed and what their interests would be?), who will then tell the government of the state if they happen to be the government of the state, what they should build and what they should invest in.

That is not the way I think a decent government does business. What a decent political party does when it comes to an election is to say to the people of the state, 'Here are our priorities; this is what we stand by. You vote for us if you like it; don't vote for us if you don't like it.' We do not hide behind committees and say, 'We'll have a look at all of these issues and after the election we will then tell you what the priorities ought to be.'

I have to say I found it amusing that the member for Waite in his criticism of the Royal Adelaide Hospital sought to link my name with it as if it were something that I would be embarrassed by after I leave this place. Well, I can assure the member for Waite that my pride in this hospital will not diminish once I have left this place. I am absolutely certain that in five, 10, 20 years' time, because the Liberals have distanced themselves from it so much, it will always be considered to be a Labor project, and the public of this state will love this hospital in the same way they love the existing RAH and will be proud of it, and will know who has tried to stop it.

When they use that hospital, when they get the best service in their single rooms with the appropriate standards of the day being applied to them, they will know the difference between what a Labor government stands for, what a Labor government will fight for, what a Labor government will provide, and what the alternative would be, because the alternative on that site would have been a football stadium, and that is their priority for that site.

It would have been a football stadium if the member for Waite had had his way, and their priority for patients would have been a refurbished clapped-out hospital down the road which is no longer capable of providing services, or will not be capable of providing at least modern services to the public of South Australia. I commend the government on this budget. I think it was a very balanced, well thought-out, sophisticated piece of financial planning—

The Hon. P.F. Conlon: It's all improved since we left.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: Yes. A very good piece of financial planning. It modestly expands expenditure in areas which I think are needed for our state. It commits us as a government, as a state, to investing in projects which will be of long-term benefit to the people of our state and in the short term create jobs, economic activity and wealth, and I would have thought that that is something that all South Australians would want.

Mr GOLDSWORTHY (Kavel) (17:39): I want to make some comments in relation to the budget that the house is currently debating. I have been elected to this place since 2002, so that is coming up to my 12th year as a state member of parliament, and this is the 12th budget brought down by a Labor government that I have had the misfortune to deal with in this place. I cannot remember whether any of these 12 budgets has been achieved. I cannot recall one ever coming in that reflected what it actually had forecast over those 12 years, particularly when we have seen six deficits delivered out of the past seven budgets. I will come to some facts and figures in relation to the past seven budgets during the course of my contribution.

Talking about facts and figures, I think it is very important that we present facts and figures when we speak to the budget because we get all the glossy rhetoric, all the lines run from the government members and the Treasurer, but it is very important to get down to the tin tacks of reality and what this budget actually presents. It presents a record deficit of $1.314 billion—a record in the state's history of the operating deficit. We also have a record debt approaching $14 billion, so that is what this budget represents—a record debt, a record deficit. As I said, this government has delivered six budget deficits in seven years after promising the budget would be in surplus in each one of these years. As I said before, in the course of my contribution I will focus on those facts and figures.

As has been articulated on this side of the house, in the house and out in the public domain, Labor has put the handbrake on our economy. The state economy has gone backwards for two consecutive quarters. The domestic economy has gone backwards for three consecutive quarters. South Australia's consumer confidence is the worst in 16 years. South Australia's business conditions are the worst in the nation, with insolvencies at an all-time high. We heard the leader speak earlier today, giving some accurate information in relation to the number of businesses going to the wall on a daily basis here in South Australia. The budget position is so bad that it has resorted to raiding the funds of the Motor Accident Commission to pay for some of its promises.

In relation to the financial situation, the interest bill that Labor owes over this debt will reach $952 million a year and our interest payments will be larger than the police budget. That is a staggering statistic. If you think about interest being a government department, it is the fifth largest department in the state in relation to the budgetary commitments. That equates to $2.6 million each day. About 12 months ago, the opposition estimated that the interest payment on the debt and deficit was about $2.2 million a day but that has blown out to $2.6 million which is almost an additional half a million dollars a day. I heard the Treasurer on radio on the Friday morning after the budget was brought down on the Thursday and he was emphatic in saying that the deficit does not increase our debt.

The Hon. I.F. Evans: Who said that?

Mr GOLDSWORTHY: The Treasurer. The deficit, in layman's terms, is like an operating overdraft. Having been a banker in a previous career, I can tell you that in banking terms an overdraft is regarded as a debt. For the Treasurer to say that the deficit is not part of the state debt, or is not a different debt, I believe is incorrect. He is saying, 'Oh no, it is all one debt, it is all one debt.' I believe that is what he was saying and, having some experience in these areas, that it is another debt. It is equivalent to a business or a personal overdraft liability.

After 11 years of Labor, South Australians are struggling. Premier Weatherill and Labor simply cannot be trusted to manage the budget. Labor cannot be trusted, because we have seen a string of broken promises. They have broken promises and commitments that they have made over the years. In making commentary further in relation to the budget, this 2013-14 budget position has weakened by $1.4 billion. It was initially promised as a $480 million surplus and this has now turned into a $911 million deficit. This underlines how fast a budget position can deteriorate under this government. It is clear that not much confidence can be placed in Labor's forecast of a $375 million surplus in 2015-16.

As I said, this government cannot be trusted to deliver on its commitments. As I said before, I want to make some commentary in relation to the forecast budget deficits and surpluses. Back in the 2008-09 year, the government forecast a surplus of $75 million. What was the actual result? It was a deficit of $233 million. In the 2009-10 year—that is a bit funny; that was coincidentally an election year—it forecast a surplus of $208 million. What did we see? We saw a surplus something less at $187 million.

The following year they thought it might bump up by roughly $90 million, to $278 million, but alas, they did not quite make it. The budget for the 2010-11 year came in at a deficit of $53 million. The same thing, the government being the eternal optimists, thought the surplus in the 2011-12 would bump up to $424 million, but again, what did we see? We saw the deficit continually spiralling downwards to $258 million. In the 2012-13 year, they forecast a budget surplus of $304 million, but that is where we see things run right off the rails and we have a deficit of $1.314 billion—a record deficit in the state's history; worse than the State Bank crisis, that Labor was again responsible for.

In the 2013-14 year, this current budget year, they had forecast a $480 million surplus. What do we see? We see a $911 million deficit. Again, in previous years they forecast in the 2014-15 year an $840 million surplus; again plunging still into deficit of $431 million. Further out in the forward estimates, they are forecasting a surplus in the 2015-16 year of $375 million and in the 2016-17 year of $661 million.

That again shows that you cannot trust the government on its figures. When they first announced back a number of years ago what their forecasts were in the 2015-16 and the 2016-17 year, they first announced that it was going to be a $591 million surplus in the 2015-16 year and a $763 million surplus in the 2016-17 year but they have reduced those amounts, as I said, to $375 million and $661 million.

How wrong can they get? How wrong can they be? We have seen these figures vary wildly, significantly and vastly different from what the government has projected and forecast, and it comes down to the fact that you cannot trust this government to deliver anywhere near what they are projecting in their budgets, and particularly into the out years.

I would also like to talk about the AAA credit rating. Back in September 2011, the then treasurer, the member for Playford, was quoted in Hansard as saying: 'We are committed to making sure we retain the AAA credit rating.' Also, the previous treasurer (Hon. Kevin Foley) said that the loss of the AAA credit rating would send our state spiralling down into an abyss of debt. I do not say this lightly about the previous treasurer, but Kevin was right. He was not right very often, he was often wrong; but he was right in this instance.

There is some history I want to provide to the house in relation to the AAA credit rating. Labor lost it. Labor lost the AAA credit rating as a consequence of their abysmal management concerning the State Bank. They plunged the state into an economic crisis. What did we see? The Liberal Party, through the two policy initiatives of the long-term lease of our energy utilities and the introduction of the GST by the federal government (led by the Hon. John Howard) saw the state retrieve the AAA credit rating.

It was the Liberal policy that recovered the AAA credit rating, and now we see this current Labor government losing the AAA credit rating. Back in the early 1990s, it was as a consequence of Labor's poor management that we saw the AAA credit rating lost and it was through Liberal government initiatives and clear policy directions that we saw the AAA credit rating recovered; and then we see, again as a consequence of this Labor government's policy direction, the AAA credit rating has been lost.

Let us look at state taxes. We have always said that the government has not had a revenue problem. Even with the supposed downturn in the GST revenues (and the leader has enunciated this), the GST revenue is continuing to climb. The graph is on the incline. The state has never really had a revenue problem—particularly in the first seven years of this government when, I stand to be corrected, I think there was $500 million, on average each year, of surplus GST revenue coming into the state over and above what the government had budgeted.

What we have, really, is an expenditure problem. For whatever reason—I cannot understand it—the government just cannot get into their head that they have a spending problem. The Auditor-General, in his report I think over three consecutive years, had the alarm bells going. Warning! Warning! Warning! There was a TV show, I think—

Mr Gardner:Lost in Space.

Mr GOLDSWORTHY:Lost in Space. We won't go there; I won't make comment about that.

Mr Gardner: Lost in government.

Mr GOLDSWORTHY: That's a good point by the member for Morialta—lost in government. The Auditor-General himself had the warning lights flashing that the government's spending was basically out of control. In relation to that and, as I said, in relation to state taxation, unfortunately we now have the reputation of being the highest taxed state in the nation, and what does that do? That puts pressure on every one of those 140,000-plus small businesses in the state. That puts pressure on every household in the state on the cost of living. It puts pressure on every family in South Australia in relation to increasing the cost of living pressures.

I could go through a whole range of taxation revenue that we have seen from the 2001-02 years to the current 2013-14 year where the total taxation has seen a percentage change of 92 per cent from about $2.193 billion to $4.206 billion in the budget. Taxation has been going through the roof here in South Australia and, as I said, that impacts on pretty much every South Australian business and every family.

As I said previously, the forecast debt of $13.7 billion is well and truly above the state debt that we saw back in the State Bank crisis. I have said this before and I will say it again because it is the reality of the situation. I believe it to be the fact of the matter that pretty much every Labor government since the seventies, since the Whitlam years, has been a tax, borrow and spend government. It has been a feature of pretty much every federal and state Labor government around the country.

Labor governments are addicted to spending. At the moment they are trying to borrow their way out of trouble. It has not worked federally and it cannot work on the state scene. It is old, out-of-date economic management. That economic model and economic management style is from back in the 1950s and sixties. You cannot necessarily tax, borrow and spend your way out of economic difficulty, and the leader this morning articulated that. There are other elements to the state economy that need stimulation to be able to pull us out of the mire that we are currently in.

All in all, it is a very disappointing budget. The priorities are wrong. The government is clearly taking the state in the wrong direction, and I believe the people of South Australia are certainly looking, requesting and seeking a new direction for this state. Only a Liberal government elected on 15 March next year can deliver that to the people of South Australia, and get this economy and this state back on track for the wellbeing of all South Australians, not just for some South Australians. We have heard members on this side of the house talk about regional South Australia. Unfortunately, that has been neglected.


[Sitting suspended from 17:59 to 19:30]


Mrs REDMOND (Heysen) (19:30): I would like to say it is a pleasure to rise once again to speak on this budget—but I really cannot. There is such a sense of deja vu about it. Other people have mentioned how many budgets they have been here for, and I can't wait to hear the member for Schubert tell us how many here he has been for. It must be just about a quarter of—

Mr Venning: Twenty-three.

Mrs REDMOND: Twenty-three budgets. I have been here for a mere 12. The thing about it is there is this sense of deja vu, except that it gets worse. Some of the people in this chamber may be old enough to remember a comedian by the name of Bill Cosby. Bill Cosby had this saying: 'Never challenge worse.' Never say things cannot get worse, because they always can, and this government is the living proof. This government proves time after time that, indeed, things can get worse as long as you leave them under the Labor management of this state. It is just appalling.

Other people have spoken already about the level of our deficit and the level of our debt. In fact, I was interested to hear the member for Fisher talking about the fact that you cannot really liken a household budget and running a household to running the state. I respectfully disagree with the member for Fisher, but I also want to make the point that, in fact, a lot of the time I think the reference to a household is merely to explain to people what the debt is and what the deficit is.

The debt is like your mortgage. That is like the big debt that you have on your house, called a mortgage. The deficit is the amount that should be a surplus. Every year, theoretically, you would like to earn more than you actually spend and that would be your surplus. Indeed, you could use some of that surplus to pay down the debt, but not this government. This government actually works in a very funny way where they decide that, every year, they will spend more than they have got. The most frustrating thing about the level of debt, our biggest ever, and the level of deficit, our biggest ever, is that it is so unnecessary.

For the first seven years that this government was in place they were getting rivers of gold from the GST and from a property boom, the likes of which this state had never seen. It was just fabulous. On average, every year, they were getting $500 million over and above what they had budgeted for—every year, year upon year. Having made their budget, they had presented it to the house, we had all got up and given our speeches and, over and above what they had expected, they got $500 million a year, on average, for seven years. Not only did they spend all of that, with nothing much to show for it, but indeed they have given us a massive debt in addition.

That debt exists even though they have sold the forests of the South-East—an income producing asset that produces in excess of $40 million a year of income—and even though they have sold the Lotteries Commission, which is another income producing asset producing over $100 million a year, I think, in the last year of income. In spite of all of that, and in spite of warnings, year upon year, from the Auditor-General saying, 'Your problem is not how much money is coming in: your problem is that you are addicted to spending,' year upon year this government continued to spend.

The result is that we have this massive deficit this year of $1,314 million and a massive debt of something like 10 times that amount—$14 billion. The reality is that that debt is going to cost the people of this state $952 million a year just to pay the interest—not to pay the debt down, just to pay the interest on the debt that this government has run up for us, and therein lies the difficulty because that is $2.6 million every day, day upon day, year upon year. This government will continue to go backwards while we continue to be under a regime which not only does that to us but keeps making it worse and worse.

When you look at this deficit for this year—$1,314 million for this year—this government, of course, three years ago, was promising that this year would be a surplus year. This year was going to be a return to surplus—$304 million. Then, every six months when we got the Mid-Year Budget Review or the new budget, the progress got worse and worse. Now, instead of having a $304 million surplus, we have a $1,314 million deficit.

We cannot keep going in a state like that, which is costing us $2.6 million a day just to pay the interest on the debt that is left after we have sold all the assets that we had. The problem is that this state will not get better, as the member for Stuart said in his contribution before the break, until we have a change of government. These guys clearly do not understand what they are doing to this state—clearly, because they keep doing the same, only making it worse and worse. That is the problem we have.

I think the reason people refer to the household debt scenario is so that people out in the community can understand what we are talking about, and to bring it down to the level that they are actually affected. Most people think, 'Oh well, that's just government money.' They do not understand the impact that this mismanagement of the economy is having on them on a day-to-day basis. As has already been pointed out, our electricity bills are up 150 per cent in a period when the CPI increase over the same period was only something like 38 per cent. We have the highest water bills in the capital cities around the nation, with a 249 per cent increase in the period in which we have had only a 38 per cent increase in inflation. It is not just those things; it is licences and registrations.

Then we have business taxes but, before I get onto business taxes, let's talk about this new car park tax. The government has this idea that we are going to have a new car park tax and somehow that is going to improve things. To me, it flies in the face of reason that this government on the one hand wants to talk about creating a vibrant city and yet on the other hand is doing everything conceivably possible to stop people coming in to the city. I do not know if they have noticed, but suburban shopping centres actually have lots and lots of people who never come in to the city.

At the moment we have some 23,000 people living in the City of Adelaide. Back in 1915, we had about 45,000 people living here. Admittedly, they had a much smaller area per person, on average. We do have amongst the highest square metreage per person in the world in terms of the living space that we now like to have. They did not have high rise either and yet there were more than double the number of people living in the city 100 years ago. If we want to create a vibrant city, we have to get people to come in. Not everyone is going to live in the CBD.

Even on its best case scenario, this government could not possibly believe that in the next 20 to 25 years we are actually going to double the population back to what it was in 1915. So what do we do? We have to rely on people coming in to the city. Why would people come in to the city when this government's whole philosophy is, 'Let's make this place as congested and difficult as possible'? Cities like London and other places around the world have introduced a congestion tax to try to keep the congestion from becoming worse and worse and clogging the city.

Instead of our government saying, 'You know what, we've got something we can trumpet here. We actually have a really liveable city. We have broad boulevards, because we are the planned city. Apart from Canberra, we are the only planned city in the nation'—and who wants to go to Canberra after all?—we could actually have attracted people here on the basis that this is an easily accessible city. It is a place that you can easily come to, find your way around, get a car park at a very reasonable rate and enjoy a day.

What happens at the moment is that people from Victoria, or even from New South Wales, come up the coast on the wonderful Great Ocean Road and the Victorians have basically signposted for everyone to do a U-turn and head back into other parts of Victoria instead of us saying, 'Hey, come on, keep coming. You can come to South Australia. You can come into the wonderful City of Mount Gambier, our biggest provincial city, and see the wonderful Blue Lake and all the other attractions of that area. You can come up to the home of Mary MacKillop at Penola.' In fact, they have those wonderful wood carvings on the road as you come up from Mount Gambier.

They are fantastic if you have not stopped to see them. 'You can come up through the Coonawarra and that wonderful wine region. You can go into Robe, to the best lobster fishing port in the country. You can come up the internationally recognised Coorong all the way into Adelaide, and you can come into Adelaide where we have these broad boulevards and great heritage precincts. We have the best city in Australia. Come over and visit us.'

I am sure we could have done something like that; but, no, this government saw that another country and, indeed, other cities around the place, have a congestion tax. These guys have not actually called it a congestion tax at this stage, but they have decided to introduce a $750 per place car park tax for this city—no justification. In fact, I have spoken to the owners of car park accommodation, who own multilevel car parks in the city, and they have said, 'We will just have to close. We will not be able to operate with the impost of such a car park tax on us.'

I do not know whether they talked to any of the traders, but the reality is you are not going to get everyone out of cars, you are not going to get everyone to travel on a bus when they are going to buy a flat screen TV, a piece of furniture, or whatever it might be. They are not all going to get on a pushbike; they are not all going to get onto a bus or tram to do those sorts of things. Unless we make the city a place that people can access as easily as possible, I think we are going to go backwards in terms of this supposed vibrant city idea.

I mentioned earlier that I would get back to the issue of business taxes. This government just does not understand that, in order for the state to do well, private enterprise has to do well. The government seems to think that you can do well simply having government spending money. So, the leader in his speech earlier today spoke about a tax-led recovery. In fact, I would say that it is a tax-led and spending-led recovery that this government is trying to achieve, and they are spending money like drunken sailors.

The fact is private enterprise has to succeed in order for people to have jobs, in order for people to feel secure about the future, in order for them to then buy houses, cars and all those sorts of things. However, this government does not recognise that they must have private business succeeding in order for people to have jobs, in turn to have money to spend. They must have the private sector succeeding in order for businesses to pay the taxes which are what enable the government to fund the services to the community.

But what has this government delivered? It has delivered high payroll taxes, it has delivered high land tax, and it has delivered high stamp duty. Other speakers have already mentioned the fact that what that does is it gets businesses to go interstate. I have spoken more than once in this chamber about the fact that I had a constituent come to my rooms in Heysen, up in Stirling, who told me that he had spent his entire adult life, virtually, building up a property portfolio. That property portfolio amounted to about $15 million worth of residential property, and from that he earned his living. He was responsible for the maintenance and so on.

He came to see me to say, 'Look, I cannot actually contain the cost of holding this property in this state. I have to sell it and go elsewhere, and I've come to tell you, as my local member, that the tax regime in this state is forcing me to sell my entire property portfolio and go elsewhere.' He said, 'The first six months of rent goes just to pay the land tax, and then I still have to pay the council rates, and I still have to pay the maintenance, and the insurance, and all the other costs associated with holding that property.'

He said, 'I'm lucky if I make one to two weeks out of the rental that I receive every year as actual income. I'd be better off having the money in the bank.' Of course, that chap is just one of many selling their properties in the state. In fact, I seem to recall an earlier treasurer who had his investment property in Sydney in the Darling Harbour area for the very reason that you cannot afford to hold property in this state.

The problem is that people then move their business interstate and move themselves interstate, and that has a ripple effect because it means that people have not got as much property to then rent, and rents go up. What happens when rents go up? They become less achievable and less affordable. This government does not seem to recognise that most businesses in the state end up paying land tax, because most of them work out of rented premises.

The vast majority of our 142,000 businesses—the small business sector of the state, the small to medium enterprises—work out of, by large, rental premises. Although they cannot have the actual land tax imposed, I can guarantee you that every landlord, when they are resetting their rental for a property, has to take into account what it is going to cost them to hold that property. So we have that problem.

Then we have payroll tax. What this government has done with payroll tax just beggars belief. They have the audacity, the gall, to stand up to try to sell as a positive some $11 million input to make a benefit for the payroll tax budget for the people who pay payroll tax; it is just a nonsense. We all know and clearly remember that prior to the last election we announced a policy that said, 'You know, at the moment you pay payroll tax for all your employees, but if they're trainees or apprentices, you get an 80 per cent rebate. So, let's do business a favour, let's make it a 100 per cent rebate and make it so that you don't have to pay it in the first place. So, payroll tax will not be applicable to all the trainees and apprentices.'

The government decided that they would make that same promise so, a couple of days after we announced it, the government decided they would announce it, and they matched our promise, and they kept it for the first budget after the election—there it was, they kept that payroll tax improvement. Of course, next budget, it was gone again. They change the whole system and they generously say, 'We are going to give you back $11 million benefit in payroll tax concessions and changes,' having taken by that one mechanism something like $120 million back from the people who are struggling to pay the payroll tax in this state.

And, of course, in relation to stamp duty, it is just laughable that this government can suggest that we are going to have a 12 per cent increase in stamp duty year upon year through the period of the forward estimates. I know a lot of people in the real estate game and they tell me that, from where we bottomed out—and we are starting a slight bit of recovery, but from where we bottomed out a couple of years ago in real estate, our prices had dropped so significantly that the market will not recover back to where it was pre-GFC for about 10 years, which means we have still got eight years to go of really struggling in the real estate sector.

We already know that dozens of businesses are facing insolvency and, as the leader mentioned in his speech this morning, it is not just Spring Gully, it is dozens upon dozens of businesses that are struggling to pay the taxes in this state, and struggling to survive as a result, and the state cannot survive if small business cannot survive.

Then, to add to all of that worry, we have WorkCover. WorkCover in this state is a disgrace. This government inherited a WorkCover regime where we had improved it. Without taking away workers' rights we had improved WorkCover in the state. We had reduced the overall contingent liability, the unfunded liability, for the future down to something like $59 million at its best, and this government has blown it out to over $1.2 billion—$1,200 million of unfunded liability for WorkCover.

In the course of doing that, not only have they diminished the workers' rights—here, a Labor government has diminished workers' rights to achieve an outcome—they did not achieve the outcome they promised anyway. The contingent liability, the unfunded liability, did not continue to reduce, it continued to blow out. What is more, through all of that we have a levy which is more than double the average of the rest of the states, and we have the worst return to work rate. How is business meant to survive in this state when that is the tax regime that this government has delivered them? It is just a nonsense.

Then the government says, 'We are going to give our work to local people.' What do they do? They say one thing and they do entirely the other. Just to give one example: we all remember 'cartridgegate'. This government says there is no corruption here but we all remember 'cartridgegate' where the government ended up with a situation with people buying particularly expensive cartridges for computer systems and so on and, in return, they were getting things like flat screen TVs and all sorts of wonderful gifts.

Okay, it is good that it was found out, it is good that it was acknowledged and there was an investigation and we stamped that out, but the government's next response was to say, 'Well, in order to make sure that can't happen, we're going to use a sledgehammer to crack this walnut. We're going to make it so that all of the government purchasing comes through one tender.' So they include in that tender the supply of all the stationery requirements for the schools.

Our schools throughout the state have been supplied by newsagents around this state and by a company wholly owned by the newsagents, in a cooperative, for about 40 years, and for our newsagents that was a good, guaranteed source of income for them, buying all those things and with the local schools getting all those things either from the newsagents direct or via this company that the newsagents actually own.

So, what does this government do in setting up that tender? They do not even have enough foresight to recognise that those people cannot possibly tender to supply all the office requirements for the whole of this state, so they put in a sort of a tender, but they could not really tender for it because they simply were not equipped to do it.

Of course, the result is that they do not win the tender. It goes off interstate and overseas, so more money goes out of the state and, for every newsagent around the state—and there are 380 or something like that around the state—the reality is that they then cannot afford a casual on a Saturday morning, or whatever, and that person then cannot afford to buy their caffe latte at the shop afterwards. It has a ripple effect. Every time you take something out of private enterprise in terms of employment in this state, it ripples through our economy. We have this massive problem in this state and it is the government not recognising that they have actually damaged our private enterprise so badly.

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (19:51): I rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill 2013 which is to approve the budget for our state finances for 2013-14 and the forward estimates. I take the position that as a member of the parliament that the government of the day has the exclusive privilege to decide how our money is raised in this state and how it is spent. That is the prerogative of the winning team, so to speak, after each four-year election.

What is unacceptable to me and what is unconscionable is not the selection of the priority of projects, provided they comply with the process of equal to all in that process, accessibility to all, transparency of process—that is the prerogative of government. But as I say, what is unacceptable to me is when a government acts in such a reckless way that it overspends its commitment, it runs up a debt for the future and it wastes money.

Unquestionably in the 11 years I have been here, whilst there were times I have said to the government, 'I think this is a good idea,' or, 'This is a poor idea. It is not a choice we would have made. It is not a preference we would have shared,' we are now at a stage where this government are guilty on three counts: they spent too much, they borrow too much and they waste too much.

The problem with that is that it does not just encumber the future generations, it places a burden on the existing residents of South Australia, a wearying stone of burden, that impedes their capacity to be able to provide for those in the community who either cannot work or are unable to access an income stream of their own. Clearly, we in the parliament, but the government in particular, have an obligation to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves.

What is disappointing to me is that the government appear to have no understanding of how their policy decisions cripple the very enterprises in the state—that is, the small and family businesses of South Australia, some 142,000 of them—into a state of stagnation when, in fact, if they were to just give them some opportunity, some life, some oxygen, you would actually have a living, breathing oxygen tank for the recovery of the state. That is the disappointing aspect.

For the government to come out and say this year that it is a strong budget for a strong government, strong business, strong communities, I think is a complete misdescription of what is actually crushing to communities, and we could talk all day about a litany of the social impacts that are negative and undermining of our communities. I am not going to do that today. I think there are plenty of examples where the government could face reality.

If there was just one stark reminder, it would be the front page of the daily paper that described to us the 'house of horrors'. How could it be that four government departments were so utterly bereft of any understanding, assessment or surveillance of a family of 21 people living in a household with multiple children who we now know were the victims not only of criminal offences but the most gross and obscene neglect that I have seen in a very long time? That is a stark reminder.

The government has certain privileges. The other aspect I would mention about this new treasurer and his first budget is that if ever there was an example of having a part-time treasurer with another principal role, namely as premier, this should be an example of what you do not do, and that is have a combination of those roles. However, I did find it curious that the Premier announced in his speech that there was to be recognition of the importance of strong government and that strong governments had been obviously instrumental in the development of the state.

Indeed, he quoted Sir Thomas Playford and Don Dunstan, I presume only to suggest that he was in some way in the same league as those two premiers of the state. I could start with the list of broken promises of Don Dunstan when he was premier. On day one, after getting into office, of course, he promised the Chowilla dam and that evaporated, pardon the pun.

I turn to Sir Thomas Playford. If the Premier is attempting, in his recognition of Sir Thomas Playford's era of 26 years of service as premier of this state, to say it is in some way reflective of his own importance and/or success, then he has missed the mark sorely. To compare a premier such as the ilk of Sir Thomas Playford, who was a major investor in this state, with the already wasteful era under the Weatherill regime I think is an insult to a great leader of our state.

I can pick out other previous premiers of this state. Sir Richard Butler is one, the father of the current federal Labor member for Port Adelaide. He too had an extraordinary history and contribution to this state. He was the architect of the Housing Trust of South Australia, then was Liberal premier in South Australia. He has a history to be proud of.

There are plenty of premiers of this state who have worked cooperatively with industry and business and have ensured that the rewards were shared by the general community; but to suggest that the wasteful era of Weatherill is in some way consistent, or in any way comparable, with the era of previous administrations certainly misses the mark. As they say, self praise is poor form in the sense of a capacity to be able to genuinely assess the credibility of a particular aspect.

What we have actually found, though, is that there is a consistent failure of this government to meet its own budgets. That reckless disregard for financial management has been referred to by a number of speakers in this debate. I will not repeat them. The record debts, the record deficits, the consistent failure to be able to deal with policy decisions in the management of projects, all of course focus on a consistent failure to properly manage. That is well documented. We have also gone through an era already in the short term of the Weatherill government of selling whatever is left. Sadly, that means that we also have very little left in the Reserve Bank for South Australians' future provision.

This is coupled with the 'spend at all cost' as a spend-led recovery policy to spend one's way out of trouble. This is not a new idea. Previous governments around the world—we have one in Canberra at the moment which takes the view that the best way to be able to secure jobs and secure re-election is to spend your way out of the situation. Run up a bit of debt; that doesn't matter; just keep on going. That is a way to be able to get through the difficult times, convince the people that we live with debt, that it is a natural part of our economic environment and that all will be well. That is not acceptable to this side of the house. It is certainly not acceptable for the generations of South Australians that are to receive the legacy of debt. If the government and in particular the Premier/Treasurer had any respect for our children's wellbeing, they would understand that.

The other aspect I would say is this. It is a feature of this government that there appears to be the government world and the real world, and there is a marked inconsistency between what is expected as a standard of behaviour in the government world compared to the rest of the world. Whether it is a non-government enterprise, a private enterprise or an individual employment at consultancy level, or any other form of employment outside of a direct relationship with government, the inconsistencies are stark.

Let me give a few examples of the inconsistencies in regard to the obligation that the government, as a parliament, with its bevy of rates, taxes and regulations, expects of the rest of the world and where I think the government has the gall to be critical of enterprises outside the government's economy and also insist on taking the high moral ground about some sort of carnivorous mala fides of people outside its own world.

The first example is this. The government expects (unlike its own management of the budget) the private and independent world to actually stick to their budgets. As we know, in the real world if you do not stick to your budget you have consistent blowouts and, of course, you go broke. We even have laws that insist that the independent sector cannot trade when it is insolvent. It is, in fact, illegal. There is a major legislative umbrella around the independent sector which would insist on a certain standard and compliance which does not apply to the government world at all.

Let me give another example. The government can pay its bills when it feels like it. It does not matter whether the creditors of the government might fall short in their own capacity to run their businesses or stay fluid or afloat. They do not have to pay on time. In fact, we have laws that protect governments against even being sued for the recovery of debt. On the other hand, the independent world—the real world out there, all the rest of the world outside of the government umbrella—have to pay exorbitant interest when they default in any way or delay and pass a payment; and, of course, they could also face civil litigation and, in some circumstances, criminal prosecution. There is a real heavy regulatory hand on the real world.

Then, of course, just one example of an entitlement of an employee within an enterprise is superannuation. There are commonwealth laws which require contributions to be paid on a regular basis by an employer for their employee. Failure to do so means, of course, that they can be prosecuted and there can be very substantial penalties on the employer for failing to meet those obligations. What does the government do?

The government, of course, is self-funded. It can run up an unfunded liability which is now well over $1 billion and toss away the care about any repercussion of having that extended liability. It does not even model its own standards on what it expects the rest of the world to comply with. Much is said about the expectation of government in regard to the independent sector and the overloading and overly burdensome taxes, rates and regulation, but they do not even meet the same standard.

I will just use another example, and that is the responsibility to staff. They are, in the real world—in the independent sector, in the non-government world—a valuable asset. They must be treated with respect and properly supported. They give a good productivity return to the enterprise, whatever it is, and hopefully a strong sense of social wellbeing and cohesion in the industry or economy to which they contribute. That is very important.

In fact, if that most important, most valuable asset of the independent world is treated in some disrespectful manner, then they obviously rebel, and the way they do that is to march off and work for somebody else. They have the capacity to do that, but there is a very high expectation and a very high standard imposed on employers. Of course there is a myriad of legislation and tribunals to secure that for the benefit and protection of employees, but what about those who work for the government?

What of the 100,000 public servants, some part-time, now in the state government? What respect are they shown? It is one thing to have security of income and security of employment, and doubtless there are a number of significant unions that at least present as securing some of these benefits to government employees, but let me put to the house an issue that is of great concern to me, and I think the greatest insult of the government to its own people, who do provide an extraordinary high level of service, largely, to South Australians even though in a productivity efficiency dividend process they do not necessarily overall stack up at the Australian level.

We have plenty of other entities at the national level that identify South Australia as not being as high performing, not necessarily because of the work that is being undertaken by many good public servants but the productivity of the service provision is low in a number of areas because the government is repeatedly putting in more and more money. In fact, very often they proudly boast that they put in more per capita to students in schools than anywhere in Australia, more per capita for the number of beds in hospitals and more per capita in police numbers on the streets. All that sounds good at first blush, but the reality is that we are actually spending more and the delivery of the outcomes, sadly, is at the lower end of the pecking order of the state status.

It does concern me that the government in that environment promises employees within the Public Service that they will have security of employment, security of tenure, high wages and more jobs available to them, and they rush out to make provision for that and they make announcements. Then in the very next budget—in all the budgets I have been here for—the announcement is made that there has to be an efficiency dividend and that someone in each of the departments has to go through and axe people. They axe them, of course, by paying out redundancy payments, voluntary separation packages and the like.

If that is not an insulting way to reward good employees, I do not know what is. In the real world that would not be acceptable. It would not be acceptable to promise a panacea of support and opportunity for employment one minute and then pull the rug out from under them the next. That is the absolute insult that, disappointingly, had little attention from the union representatives of these people. Sadly, it has been completely ignored in the entitlements of the Public Service, I think, to have a level of respect, and the government has utterly failed in that regard.

People in the Public Service who are largely providing the very significant areas of service delivery in South Australia are entitled to some respect; they are entitled to have some expectation that if they work well they will continue to have that opportunity and that the people looking after the money are managing it in a meaningful, sensible and efficient manner so that they do not have to be put into this perilous situation of facing efficiency dividends, as they are described, which really is just another way of axing those who are often innocent and who, through no fault of their own, are going to be cast aside because of the financial mismanagement or fiscal lack of discipline of the government.

I want to mention just one project as an example of probably all of the sins of financial mismanagement of the government, that is, the rail electrification project to Gawler. I will canvass that next time I have an opportunity to address the house.

The Hon. M.F. O'BRIEN (Napier—Minister for Finance, Minister for Police, Minister for Correctional Services, Minister for Emergency Services, Minister for Road Safety) (20:10): In 2010 the economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University published a paper called 'Growth in a time of debt'. The authors used OECD economic data to show a causal inverse link between a country's debt and its economic growth. Their purported findings were that countries with debt to GDP ratios of above 90 per cent have historically incurred a slightly negative growth rate.

The paper came out at a crucial juncture in world politics. It offered the justification for policymakers intent on a pivot from stimulus to austerity. The paper became a sacred cow of the self-proclaimed guardians of fiscal responsibility. Reinhart and Rogoff's 90 per cent debt to GDP tipping point theorem began being treated not as an hypothesis but as an iron law of economics every bit as durable as the laws of supply and demand.

In April, a response written by Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst exposed three methodological errors. Their response showed that Reinhart and Rogoff selectively excluded years of high debt and average economic growth. Secondly, they used a peculiar weighting in their comparisons which falsely equated country data. Finally, and perhaps most damningly, an Excel coding error fully omitted Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada and Denmark from the analysis—all economies which grew steadily despite assuming debt burdens.

After several unsuccessful attempts to replicate the findings, it was eventually realised that they were obtainable only through flawed methodology. Nevertheless, these results formed not only the thesis of an earlier book, but set in motion ruinous austerity drives around the world. I quote the words of Mike Konczal, an American economist and fellow of the Roosevelt Institute who stated:

Let us hope that future historians will note that one of the core empirical points providing the intellectual foundation for austerity in the early 2010s was based on the accidental omission of spreadsheet data.

The Reinhart and Rogoff debacle contains lessons for policymakers. The catalyst for crisis may have been speculative investment and inadequate financial policing but its propellant has been austerity.

The Leader of the Opposition has been one of the most vocal crusaders on this subject. He has delivered impromptu public sermons in this very chamber, singling out public debt as the biggest danger to our state. According to him, we are in danger of spiralling out of control and consigning South Australia to a moribund economic future.

I would like to take a moment to describe the differences in the societies imagined by the Leader of the Opposition and by the government. As we have so far heard little in the way of a substantive policy position from the leader, this description is, by necessity, somewhat deductive. However, there is still ample evidence of his disinterest in the public good and his debt monomania. I wonder what the Leader of the Opposition would say—

Mr GARDNER: Sir, point of order: I think that the minister is straying a very long way from the substance of the bill in question and I think he should be drawn back to it.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I don't think there is any point of order. The minister can continue.

The Hon. M.F. O'BRIEN: I wonder what the Leader of the Opposition would say when presented with the dual revelations of the Reinhart and Rogoff episode and the news that the European states which most vigorously pursued austerity have had the least success in managing their debt. I wonder what he would say about the release of data which shows that Europe is in the midst of its longest recession. I wonder, in fact, what he would say to the news that, on the eve of the state budget, the IMF released a report on its approach to the Greek economy which amounted to a mea culpa.

The Leader of the Opposition attacks this government's economic management with gusto, all the while hoping that South Australians do not recognise an inconvenient truth: his jeremiads are not supported by reality. Undeterred by an inconvenient reality, the opposition believes that the best way to manage our debt is through deep fiscal cuts, the likes of which have been implemented overseas. This would deprive South Australia of not only the public goods and services needed to enrich our quality of life, but of the economic activity needed to repay that debt. We are told that, in effect, our economy must be destroyed so that it can be saved.

A recent feature in the Australian Financial Review flatly contradicts this approach. In documenting the increasingly rancorous debate between Reinhart and Rogoff and Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist turned newspaper columnist, the article points out that gross government debt in Australia is expected to peak at no more than 25 per cent of GDP. While this sum ought not to be dismissed with a wave of a hand, it demonstrates the fundamental solidity of the Australian economy.

The so-called wanton profligacy, of which the leader spoke today, is actually the cost of providing broad services to the greatest number of people. Nevertheless, this government is working toward key public sector savings which will be made without the undue curtailing of services. Hence it has established the telecommunications taskforce, consolidated administrative functions into Shared Services and committed to the trimming of public sector FTEs. The result will be a leaner, more efficient government sector still capable of high calibre service delivery.

The South Australian Labor government is committed to making the structural reforms needed to keep our economy competitive and our budget sustainable. It is on track for return to operating surplus by 2015-16. However, it knows that these reforms can be made without unduly increasing unemployment and risking recession. Throughout it has observed that the best way to maintain growth is not through the doctrine of austerity, but instead through the expansive social program it has been committed to since its first day in office.

The charting of a sustainable measured path back to surplus does not just displace or defer the costs of structural reform. It lowers them because it does not allow for the emergence of a class of long-term unemployed which find it substantially more difficult to resume from where they left off. To paraphrase John Maynard Keynes, it is the boom, not the slump, which is the time for austerity. Now, this is not an abstract dispute. It is one which will affect the future of many, if not all, of our citizens.

An article published in the InDaily on 23 April tells of the opposition's plan, should it be entrusted ever with the levers of power, to immediately divest itself of all responsibility to govern. Under a Liberal government that responsibility would fall to a throng of unelected and unaccountable private sector-led commissions.

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. M.F. O'BRIEN: This would enable it to evade any responsibility—

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. M.F. O'BRIEN: —for bad news and to shirk its obligation to make difficult decisions. We are told of a decade-long handbrake on our state economy, but hear of no credible solutions. We are told that the Leader of the Opposition has come from the real world of small business. Speaking as a former small business owner, let me say that no world is more real than this one in the parliament. This is a world that compels us to make decisions which affect the livelihoods of South Australians and to make those decisions every day.

This is your opposition, Mr Deputy Speaker. In his book The Affluent Society, the American economist John Kenneth Galbraith spoke of the need for public services to stay abreast of private demand. By his reckoning, when a society does not provide the goods and services that form the architecture of public life, it succumbs to an atmosphere of private opulence and public squalor. Public squalor is the by-product of excessive thrift.

Since the practice of criticising policy without offering a credible alternative belongs exclusively to the opposition, let me now speak about the legacy so far left to our state by this government. By the reckoning of The Economist, Adelaide is the world's fifth most liveable city. This liveable cities index uses a matrix of criteria across five broad categories: stability, education, health care, culture and education and infrastructure. These categories are then divided into 30 factors to produce a score from 1 to 100, with 100 implying the ideal city.

Adelaide scored 96.6 and was good enough to secure fifth place in the 2012 index, four places higher than a year previous. Our reason for moving four places higher was our commitment to infrastructure. We were below only Melbourne, Vienna, Toronto and Vancouver, not that you would know this from the opposition's unceasing complaints. From this, two points emerge: first, that this is a stamp of approval from a publication which has no reason to either praise or slate Adelaide.

The second point is that the legacy of these cities is the legacy of men and women who believe that government is the primary instrument by which inequality is curtailed and life improved. In South Australia that legacy belongs to this government, which has pledged to provide the means for a generous and inclusive society. This vow has been vindicated many times over. In addition to the livability index, the Chicago Tribune recently wrote in glowing terms of Adelaide, calling it one of the world's best designed cities. National Geographic is filming a documentary, which will feature Adelaide as one of 18 smart cities. This will be an opportunity to showcase the city's thriving urban culture.

Although the acclaim is now pouring in, there was a time when these plaudits were scarce. This is not a coincidence. It is the passion and dedication of this government, the arts community, urban planners and the city council that have earmarked a vibrant city and assisted in our renaissance. Incidentally, the vibrant city concept is one of the seven strategic pillars of this government. The extent of this investment in infrastructure by this government runs deeper still.

Concrete was recently poured on the second storey of our new hospital, while work is nearing completion on the SA Health and Medical Research Institute. The government is making significant improvements to transport infrastructure to develop its trade corridors and improve access. It is enabling an environment amenable to our small business owners by offering payroll tax relief, whilst spending almost $20 million to support art and culture. All the while it is ensuring that advanced manufacturing has a future in our state.

These are some of the fruits of a bountiful public life. The opposition attempts to discredit a record it could not emulate. There is no better way to bequeath our admirable quality of life to the next generation than by investing to keep South Australia at the vanguard of prosperity and opportunity. Liberal democracies are committed to the notion that men and women ought to be in full control of their destinies, yet our theoretical freedom to live life on our own terms means little if society is organised in a way that denies us that opportunity.

Because this is a government that wants more South Australians to attend the best of all possible schools and universities and have access to world-class vocational training, it has made historic investments in education. Because this is a government that wants all South Australians to have affordable access to quality health care, it has spent generously and wisely in that area. Because this is a government which recognises that a decent job not only pays the bills but nurtures the spirit, it has committed to improving our state's infrastructure and industry. If ever you should hear that government ought to get out of the way, understand that claim for what it is, an abdication of duty and a capitulation to ill-informed interests.

We should not shy from the debate about how to extend the privileges enjoyed by some into the opportunities given to all. The opposition would have us believe that we can no longer pay for the world's fifth most liveable city and, by extension, the world's fifth most liveable state, and that we can no longer afford the society which made it so. This government rejects that proposition. This government points with pride to over a decade of providing jobs, infrastructure and opportunity. It affirms a commitment to continue doing so in the service of all South Australians.

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (20:25): I am delighted that I was here to listen to the speech of the Minister for Finance.

Ms Thompson: Do you understand it?

Mr WILLIAMS: I did indeed understand it. I will paraphrase because he quoted John Maynard Keynes. When I studied economics I was told to go and read a heap of John Maynard Keynes.

An honourable member interjecting:

Mr WILLIAMS: It was a long time before the leader, actually. I was a bit surprised that he only started economics in 1983. I think I started studying economics about 10 years prior to that. John Maynard Keynes was pretty big in those days and even before I went to my first lecture I was told to read The Affluent Society. I will paraphrase because I have not written anything down, I just heard what the Minister for Finance said, that it is the time of the boom not the time of the bust for austerity measures, which fits in very well with what I was going to talk about.

I have a little table here that I have compiled of figures out of the budgets over the term of this government. In the early years of this government we did have a boom. In the early 2000s South Australia enjoyed probably the best economic years it had had for at least 30 years, and probably since the post-war boom. What did this government do? I will give some credit, it did pay down the debt, but it also started on the path of the culture which it has stuck with; that is, to spend every cent it can get its hands on.

In its first year, the budget year of 2002-03, the government spent $184 million more than it budgeted for. It received some $528 million, over half a billion dollars more than was in the budget for that year. It got better at it. In the next year it spent $467 million more than it budgeted for, but it received $794 million more than the budget for the 2003-04 year said would be the revenues. This is those really good times: the boom. Did the government indulge in austerity? Did it set up a future fund? Did it put away any money for a rainy day? No; it kept spending.

The next year (2004-05), $487 million more than was budgeted for was spent. Fortunately, revenues kept going up and the revenues exceeded the budgeted figure by $595 million—no problems happening yet. In 2005-06, expenditure was $370 million in excess of the budget, but revenue was still $521 million over the budget. So, notwithstanding that the government was spending a lot more than it was budgeting for by hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars the revenues kept building and kept it out of trouble.

In 2006-07, the same thing: expenditure was $374 million more than the budget, but revenues were $493 million more than the budget. This is why the debt got paid off, because not even this lot could spend the money as fast as it was coming in. It was going to come to an end, but not quite yet.

In 2007-08 expenditure exceeded the budgeted figure by some $304 million but the revenues were a whopping $739 million more. The 2007-08 year is an interesting year, because it was in August 2007 that what has become known as the global financial crisis started to break out. That was when there were the first signs, August 2007. By late 2007 we saw the collapse of major banking institutions in the Northern Hemisphere, and we saw the global financial crisis begin.

In 2008-09, what happened in South Australia? Revenues started to come back a little bit; they only exceeded the budgeted figure by $276 million, but by this stage the government was getting right into its stride. It spent over the budget by $670 million. Did the government see that there was going to be a problem? Not really, because in the next year it spent another $599 million more than the budget. It was somewhat buffered from any ill effects of that because revenues continued to climb, coming in at just over $1 billion, $1,090 million, more than the budget had estimated. That was 2009-2010. The government still had not learnt the lesson, but it kept talking about this global financial crisis.

The real crunch was the next year, when revenues were actually $69 million below the budgeted figure. Of course the government panicked, and spent $406 million less than the budgeted figure. I will not go over all the details that my colleague the member for Davenport, the shadow treasurer, and/or the leader gave in this debate, but certainly in the year 2009-10 the $1,090 million that I just talked about as increased revenue came about because the federal Labor government poured hundreds of millions of dollars into South Australia to try to save the neck of this government in an election year.

In 2011-12 the government still spent $174 million more than it had budgeted, and revenues almost matched that, being $178 million over the budgeted figure. In the most recent year, revenues are still $190 million more than what was in the latest budget, but expenditure was some $637 million more than what was budgeted.

Those figures just show the problem we have got ourselves into in South Australia. As my colleague the member for Davenport, the shadow treasurer, said, unlike what the Premier, the part-time Treasurer, would have us believe, that we have a revenue problem in South Australia, the problem we have is an expenditure problem. This government has a serious expenditure problem. It cannot curtail its desire to spend, spend, spend.

It is only because we had those fantastic revenue years in the early part of the 2000s that this government got away with it and got itself re-elected. It had already established this spendthrift culture. We have now got to the point where the revenues have plateaued. They are still going up; in fact, they are still going up at a greater rate than inflation in this nation, but the government still has not accepted that fact.

I was reading some Francis Bacon recently, and I think the piece I was reading dates back to the late 1500s. He made a comment that made me put a note in my copy about the similarity between his complaint then and this particular government. I will paraphrase, but he said something along the lines that it is always the complaint of the governing party or group that the times that they live in are difficult. This government keeps complaining about the times we live in. It keeps complaining about the global financial crisis. Let me remind the house that the global financial crisis became evident in that 2007-08 period; that is five or six years ago. This government has been complaining about the impacts of the global financial crisis for five or six years.

They have not changed their culture. They did not do anything to respond to the reality that our revenues were not going to continue to go up at the rate they did in the early 2000s. Not only that, the Premier and part-time Treasurer would have us believe that we are going to get back to those halcyon days within the next couple of years and that the revenues are going to rebound so dramatically that he can deliver a surplus and get the state's debt paid off within a few short years.

As the member for Davenport pointed out, we have, in this current budget, the biggest deficit ever for this state. We have accumulated the biggest debt this state has ever had, yet the part-time Treasurer—and that might be part of the problem—would have us believe that our revenues are going to turn around so dramatically that within a few short years all of that will be paid back, that the budget will come back into surplus and we will pay down that debt. It is absolutely unbelievable.

The evidence is quite stark: you look at what this government has been saying year on year and then you compare that with the evidence that is produced after we go through the time period they predicted certain things would happen. They are in cloud-cuckoo-land, and they have been in cloud-cuckoo-land for a long period of time. They keep predicting that things will miraculously turn around; they never have. Nothing that this government predicts actually occurs, nothing that this government promises is actually delivered.

The Minister for Finance waxed lyrical about how wonderful it is to live in this state. We are very lucky that we have a great place to live; we enjoy great weather. He talked about the layout of our city as if to say that that was delivered by this government. I think that it was established by Colonel Light a long, long time ago, and thank God for that—

Mr Gardner: 176 years.

Mr WILLIAMS: Yes—because this government would not have delivered what our forefathers did. The Minister for Finance talked about the spend on infrastructure. Let me talk a little bit about some of the infrastructure this government has spent on; for example, the electrification of the rail line out to Gawler. They started spending millions of dollars of commonwealth money—I understand that some $51 million still resides in Treasury that has not be spent, and the government has been pleading, cap in hand, for the commonwealth not to ask for it back; goodness knows what might happen there—erecting all the poles out near Gawler, at the northern end, and they said, 'Whoops, we've run out of money. We'll put that on the backburner; we'll stop doing that. In the meantime, we'll proceed with the southern extension down to Seaford and we'll electrify that. How good are we?' Of course, that is all being paid for by the commonwealth.

Mr Whetstone: Marginal seat campaign.

Mr WILLIAMS: Yes, marginal seat campaign as well. They have been changing the minister for transport fairly regularly over the term of this government, but some bright spark from the department conjured up the courage to knock on the minister's door and said, 'Minister, we've got a bit of a problem.' 'Oh,' said the minister, 'What problem could we have?' 'Well, we've got a problem; we're going to be running electric trains down south of the city and our service depot is out at Dry Creek, and we have no way of getting the trains from the southern part of the network to Dry Creek to service them.'

So, all of a sudden, the government has a brainwave. They spend millions of dollars between Dry Creek and Gawler, and now they have to come back and spend millions of dollars to get electrification from the city to Dry Creek just so that they can service the trains—not so they can carry one passenger—in order to operate on the line down to Seaford.

I think I heard the Minister for Transport interject across the chamber in question time today, 'And you don't have a transport policy.' Well, if that is the sort of transport policy this state needs, I am glad we do not have it. It is an absolute disgrace that, when this state is on its knees financially, we have a government that makes those sorts of stuff-ups.

Let me talk about the desal plant. This government made a political decision to spend an extra billion dollars of taxpayers' money to double the size of the desal plant. Thank God for the commonwealth Auditor-General, who did an inquiry into this, because we have now actually got hold of some of the facts. I can tell you, sir, I spent the last seven or eight years trying to get hold of some of the facts, and it is the hardest thing to get information out of this government; it is the most secretive government in the history of this state. But the commonwealth Auditor-General has spilt the beans: there was no cost-benefit analysis.

How can the Minister for Finance say that it is a great thing that we are spending money on infrastructure when this government does not do a cost-benefit analysis on that sort of expenditure? How would he know whether or not it was a good thing to spend the money on that piece of infrastructure when nobody had actually done the work? Not only is the government lazy but they are also incompetent, and that is the problem that we have in this state today: we have a government that is both lazy and incompetent.

We had a government that spent a billion dollars more than it needed to on the desal plant—a plant that will probably never be used inside 30 years; that has been confirmed by the commonwealth Auditor-General. It is money which should not have been spent on that project and which may have seen the complete electrification of the line all the way to Gawler. Indeed, it may have seen a couple of dollars spent outside of metropolitan Adelaide, on that 30-odd per cent of the population that does not live in Adelaide and that contributes greatly to the economy of this state. When I looked through this budget, I saw precious little being spent outside of metropolitan Adelaide. Again, that is another problem of this government.

We look at what has happened with infrastructure spend throughout the state. The Premier stood up in question time today and said, 'We have tabled in this place the details of the contract with Holden, and it is there for everybody to read.' This is plainly wrong; there has been no tabling of the contract. There has been no tabling of the documentation. Unfortunately, the people of South Australia have been deceived by this government for far too long, and they are only now coming to this realisation.

The government has run out of ideas, and it has certainly run out of money. That is why the only thing left for this government is to keep jacking up taxes. As the Leader of the Opposition says, this is what is putting the handbrake on the economy of South Australia, this is what is squeezing small business in this state, this is what is causing the ongoing problems with this state, and this is why I and those on this side of the house do not believe the Premier and part-time Treasurer when he tries to tell us that revenues will return dramatically in the next few years and that we will all be saved. We just do not believe it because the evidence is quite strong.

For 11 long years, Labor has been telling the people of South Australia about all the wonderful things that are going to happen. For 11 long years, Labor has failed the people of South Australia. For 11 long years, Labor has been spending money they did not really have; they have been spending money recklessly. We had only today, again, in the house, talk about the university's plans to build a new medical school down on the western end of the city.

The Hon. S.W. Key: What's wrong with that?

Mr WILLIAMS: What's wrong with that?

The Hon. S.W. Key: Yes, what's wrong with that?

Mr WILLIAMS: It is a total waste of money, just like shifting the hospital down there was a waste of money—that is what we said in the first place. If you shift the hospital, you have to shift the medical school. You have to shift all those other ancillary services and functions that are currently delivered at the eastern end of the city. Not only have we wasted billions of dollars building a new hospital when we should have rebuilt on the same site, now we have to shift all of the other services and all of the other functions down there as well.

We had the government say, 'How good is this? We are getting some investment.' I think we would be better off if we invested in something new rather than rebuilding something that we have already. That is why you do a cost-benefit analysis, that is why this government continues to get it wrong and that is why this state will continue to languish until, hopefully by this time next year, we will have a new and better government.

Time expired.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens—Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy, Minister for Housing and Urban Development) (20:45): It is amazing, after that contribution, that he was deposed as deputy leader—it really is. Hell hath no fury like a deposed deputy leader. I have to say that listening to the member for MacKillop speak is like looking at an old calendar: yesterday's argument, yesterday's news, arguing the old fights, bringing up the 2002 election, the 2006 election and the 2010 election and then pouring scorn on the people of South Australia for electing this government over and over again.

He cannot believe it keeps on happening. 'How silly can they be? How stupid can they be? They keep on electing this government. Can't they see what I see?' Can't they see what the member for MacKillop sees? He is like the old calendar just sitting on your fridge: old ideas getting crinkly, the end parts turning over, the magnet not quite working and sliding down the fridge. Once fiercely independent, he is now just fiercely angry—that is all he does. He is just angry—that is all is he has got. Why are they angry? Because we are governing.

Mr Whetstone interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Now we have interjections from the campaign strategist from Chaffey—the man whose stunning campaign won the safest Liberal seat in the state. He had a cunning campaign plan. Are you ready for this? It was 'vote Liberal'. He convinced Liberal voters to vote Liberal. He is a genius.

He is the guy who was the mastermind behind the Martin Hamilton-Smith challenge. Remember that one? Challenge No. 3—that went well! Then, after he got his mate up, he got promoted to the backbench. That was the reward for all his hard work and endeavour—the backbench.

Mr Whetstone: Anyone laughing?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Everyone is laughing.

Mr Whetstone: No-one's laughing but you.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Everyone is laughing. Today, I listened respectfully to the Leader of the Opposition give his budget—

Mr Gardner: You spent your whole time on the internet.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I listened to his budget reply. I saw him speaking, but he did not say anything. After 11 years of opposition, you would have thought that the opposition may have thought it appropriate in time to talk about some of their policies. The Leader of the Opposition spoke at length about small business, and that is fine.

Mr Gardner: You have got a budget that you are not even wanting to talk about in your speech.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I have only just started. I will talk about you in a second. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten you. It is okay. Don't worry, you are one of my favourites. He spoke for a great deal of time about small business, but—

Mr Whetstone: The brains trust of the Labor Party, Tom.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Now you are using my lines about you. The difference is my lines about you are right. Yours are just sad and pathetic.

An honourable member: Just like Winston Churchill.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: And I haven't heard that since primary school. They keep on getting better and better. What else have you got?

Mr Whetstone interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: There we go. Yes, that's what I thought. The reality was, in his speech today, that the Leader of the Opposition had an opportunity to tell the people of South Australia, with less than a year to go to the election, what his plan is for South Australia. Given the article written by Michael Owen in The Australian, I thought that the Leader of the Opposition would have been stung into action, because it was quite a scathing article about his tactic to not release any policies until after the federal election.

What I have heard around the corridors was that, at the end of Mrs Redmond's leadership, one of the complaints amongst Liberal backbenchers was that this small target policy strategy was not working, that they did not want to wait until after the federal poll and they wanted a steady release of policies. That was one of the platforms that Martin Hamilton-Smith and the current Leader of the Opposition were running on to depose the members for MacKillop and Heysen. The first challenge failed and then we had this awkward situation where the former leader of the opposition is in place with a deputy who voted against her. That was never going to last. That was always going to come crashing down. Then obviously the Leader of the Opposition took over when Mrs Redmond resigned the leadership and he took the position. After he took this position up he promised the people of South Australia a fast and steady flow of policies.

Thus far, the policies I have heard from the Leader of the Opposition are: an audit commission, which he changed today to a productivity commission; he is going to replicate Infrastructure Australia with Infrastructure South Australia; and he is going to fire Tony Harrison. They are the policies I have heard the Liberal Party announce. They have not announced a regional policy or any regional roads policy. They have not announced any policy on health or education. They have announced that old chestnut of getting police to do less paperwork and more time on the beat. Every opposition since Frank Walsh has announced that policy. Thus far, there has been nothing new.

You have to ask yourself, after that budget reply speech today, what can South Australians assume the opposition has in store for South Australia? What is their strategy leading up to the election? I think it is safe to assume that, as the government outlines its vision for the state in the budget and outlines its program of building on infrastructure—something that the Leader of the Opposition started off by saying, 'That was false economy spending,' and then came back later and said, 'Actually, debt levels are quite good,' but today said, 'Debt was immoral.'

We are in this contradictory position where the Leader of the Opposition says that debt is immoral and, if it is immoral, where is the plan to lower that debt? If it is a moral challenge—we are less than 12 months out from the election—where is the plan to reduce debt? He said in his speech today that he did not like the idea of efficiency targets being across all portfolio areas at the same level—1 or 2 per cent. He said, 'Why can't you have 6 or 7 per cent on one portfolio and nothing on another?' So, you look at the budget—

Mr Whetstone: That's not what he said.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: It is exactly what he said. If you look at that you think, 'He said 6 to 7 per cent of one portfolio area.' One department gets 6 or 7 per cent, but he didn't tell us which one, so I will take a guess. Let's say health, which is the largest-spending department in the government. If you say to the health department, 'Your efficiency dividend is now 6 per cent. You will make 6 per cent worth of savings.' Well, that is two metropolitan hospitals closed. That is putting all nurses on individual contracts. That is closing almost every regional hospital.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I believe it. I have seen it before. I have seen the Liberal Party in government and I have seen what they say at an election and what they do in their budgets. I have seen the difference. I have seen members of parliament, who used to sit on this side of the house, say they will never sell ETSA full stop, and then come into the parliament directly afterwards and sell ETSA. I have seen them say that they will not slash police numbers and close police stations. I have seen them say that they will not close any schools and close schools. I have seen all this happen before.

It seems to me that, if you are going to promise Infrastructure South Australia and a productivity commission—two bureaucratic bodies that already exist on a national scale, which serve South Australia, and serve South Australia quite well. Infrastructure Australia is headed up by a South Australian, and Jim Hallion, our chief executive, is on Infrastructure Australia. I would have thought that perhaps we would take advantage of these national bodies rather than trying to duplicate the bureaucracy. The thing I think most South Australians have the most anxiety about is Public Service numbers. I wish I had the member for MacKillop's direct quote here but, directly after Ms Redmond issued her 20,000 to 25,000 public servants being dismissed, he said to The Australian that every person in the Liberal Party shadow cabinet agreed to that policy to a man. That was his quote.

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Yes, to a man; that's another issue. That is the policy. Mr Marshall today said that his baseline for job cuts is our total amount—5,000 or so—so anywhere between 5,000 to 20,000 will be the number, but he will not tell us until the election campaign. You have to ask yourself: why would you keep that quiet? I think the Leader of the Opposition is entitled to release policies now based on current budget projections and, if in the Mid-Year-Budget Review those figures change, he would be entitled to say, 'Our policies will therefore change.'

That would be an honest debate; and who could criticise him for doing that? Who could criticise the Leader of the Opposition for saying, 'We relied on the budget figures in June, but now in the Mid-Year-Budget Review in December they've changed; therefore, we are changing the scope of our promises.' That is reasonable. Who could possibly argue against that? But Mr Marshall will not do that. Mr Marshall and the state Liberal Party are going to curl up into a ball—

Mr GARDNER: Point of order: we have been for some time under the instruction of the Speaker not to use people's names, and we have let it go a few times tonight.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, you should try to refer to the member by the name of his electorate or as Leader of the Opposition.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Sure. The Leader of the Opposition is going to curl his political party into a ball, and their campaign is going to be 'It's time'.

Mr Whetstone: We're united over here.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Yes; I saw your former deputy leader and your other former deputy leader and the other deputy leader and your leader.

Mr Whetstone: This is today.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Yes, this is today, not four weeks ago. They are going to wrap themselves into a ball, and their argument is going to be—

Mr Whetstone interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: —that it is their turn. Our argument is going to be that we are going to offer a vision for South Australia. Their alternative is going to be that it is just time for them to have a go. Now I think a lot of South Australians probably right now are sympathetic to an 'it's time' argument, but they are not fools. South Australians will not accept an opposition who attempts to enter government without espousing any policies.

We are not talking about one or two one-liners. We are talking about a detailed health policy, a detailed education policy, a detailed law and order policy, a detailed regional policy, a detailed infrastructure policy. Thus far, the Leader of the Opposition has ruled out any infrastructure spending. His counterpart in Canberra, Mr Abbott, has ruled out any federal money towards public transport, so there will be no commonwealth money if they are successful in any Liberal promises.

So, we have to ask ourselves: how will he then face this massive moral challenge that he says is about getting our debt levels down faster than we have projected? Well, there is only one way to do that. You either increase taxes or you privatise and sell assets. You have to ask yourself: which assets would the Leader of the Opposition likely attempt to sell? My instincts are that he will probably close a hospital—he will not rule that out. He will probably introduce toll roads—he refuses to rule those out. He will close schools—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Rule it out.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Mr Whetstone: Are you writing our policy now?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Rule it out. That's the idea.

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: This debate could end instantly. All the opposition has to do is rule out closing any hospitals. Rule it out.

Mr Whetstone: How many schools did you close in the last 12 months?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Are you going to rule out closing the hospitals forcibly? Are you going to rule out closing any schools forcibly? Are you going to rule that out?

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: And that's the point.

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: The point is that members opposite, who are so tangled up in their inability to actually talk about what they are for, because all they talk about is what they are against, have no ability to talk about—

Mr Gardner interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Hang on, darling, I will get to you in a minute. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten you. They have no ability to talk about what it is they want to do. All they have the ability to do is talk about what they do not like, and that is easy. Anyone can howl at the moon, which is what members opposite do. They talk about infrastructure and they talk about how Darlington is a better option, but they rule out committing to Darlington.

There is an offer on the table by the commonwealth opposition, which is heading to a poll on 14 September to become the commonwealth government. They have offered a certain amount of money for the Darlington upgrade. The current commonwealth government and this current government have committed to an upgrade of South Road between Torrens Road and the River Torrens.

It makes sense then, you would think, that the opposition would take advantage of what they think may be a successful election campaign by the commonwealth opposition to then commit to funding that part of Darlington, and they will not. They will not commit to any funding at all because they cannot make a budget, because when they commit to spending and say that debt levels are immorally too high but will not tell us how to get those debt levels down, you can only assume one thing: they are going to cut.

The question members opposite will not rule out is what they are going to cut. You can get a few of them to speak honestly about it. The former leader of the opposition spoke honestly about what their plans were and so did the member for MacKillop, when they talked about cutting 25,000 public servants. That is what they legitimately believed was going to be their plan to lower debt levels and improve their budget position if they came into office.

Mr Whetstone: You need to send this Hansard to all your tax advisers.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: What was that?

Mr Whetstone: I said, who are you going to send this Hansard to?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: It just shows you the level of bravery of members opposite because you just changed what you said.

Mr Whetstone: Waffling. You haven't touched on the budget once.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I am touching on the budget.

Mr Whetstone: Not once.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: You might have noticed that South Road is in the budget.

Mr Whetstone: Not once.

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I often wonder about the member for Chaffey. You think to yourself: why is he here? Why does he want to be in the state parliament? What is it that he believes in? What is it that he talks about? What questions does he ask of ministers in question time? Since Mr Marshall has taken the leadership, he has only asked questions on one day. He draws a salary of over $100,000 a year and does not ask any questions.

Mr Whetstone: Who paid your speeding fines?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: What has that got to do with anything?

Mr Whetstone: Is that taxpayers? Did you pay them?

The SPEAKER: Order! The minister has the call.

Mr Whetstone: Did you pay them?

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: It seems to me that when you scratch the surface, what you get is an angry little man who has no vision, no plan at all, and nothing positive to say about anyone. If the opposition is to become an alternative government, they need to start talking about what their plans are, and I think that is good for South Australia. I think South Australians deserve it and they demand it. I think South Australians deserve to have two clear choices. I think they deserve to have an argument and a debate of ideas. I think they deserve to see a government and an opposition talking and fighting about the future of South Australia. They want to see a passionate debate between two sides who have two opposing ideas; sometimes they agree, sometimes they disagree. We should have a contest of ideas rather than rants of rage.

I think if we have a contest of ideas, with one side saying they think our debt levels are immorally high, why can't we have a debate about how to get those debt levels down? Why can't the opposition say, 'If they are immorally high, this is how we would get them down?' Why can't we have a debate about public health care and public education. Why can't we have a debate about infrastructure? Why can't we have a debate about taxation, about land tax and stamp duty?

Why can't we have a debate about all of those issues and let the people of South Australia choose who they want to govern them, instead of trickery, instead of a political party that is so afraid of its own ideas that they do not have the courage to tell the people of South Australia what they stand for, less they get found out, less people actually see who they really are, because if they see who they really are, they get the member for Chaffey, and it ain't pretty because he is just an angry little man with nothing positive to say at all. It is just personal attacks, abuse. That is all it is—no positive vision for the future at all.

There are some members of the opposition who actually want to talk about policy but they are not allowed to have a say in this new Liberal Party. They are not allowed to talk about announcing policies. I think there are plenty of members opposite—and I can see one here who is a good and decent person who wants to come out and say what his plan is for the people of South Australia and put it to a debate, because he is not afraid of his ideas. He wants them to be tested but, of course, the Liberal Party has been taken out by people who shout the loudest.

They are the ones who are running the Liberal Party now, the ones who shout the loudest. Their ideas people, the quiet thinkers, the ones who probably come from the Playford legacy, have been pushed to the side. What you have are the thugs and the bullies and the people who have no plan at all. They are the ones in charge now and their vision for South Australia is about dividing the community, talking South Australia down, saying what is wrong with us rather than trying to put up a point of view about what is right about us.

The most important thing the Leader of the Opposition said today was that health and education should be partisan and business should be bipartisan. I say the opposite. I say we should have bipartisan support for health and education and we should debate what we do for business. They are two opposing views that cannot stand.

Mr VENNING (Schubert) (21:06): I was shell-shocked after the last couple of speakers from the other side. This is my 23rd budget in this place and my last. I have to say that this is one of the worst budgets that I have ever had to sit through when you consider the ramifications of it. I remind the house that I was here during the debate on the State Bank, both the budget before it and the budget after it. Then the Labor government was in denial as it is tonight—absolutely the same.

South Australia has suffered 11 years of financial mismanagement and reckless spending under this Weatherill government and we cannot take any more. This is a very serious matter and all members ought to be concerned about it. In listening to the speeches tonight and particularly from the Minister for Finance, I could not believe that here was a businessman with some nous and a bit of a track record spouting on about going into debt. It is all very well. I am the same.

I have a business background, too, and, yes, I have used debt over the years to succeed but you do it when the climate is right, you do it when the interest rates are right, you do it when you have capacity to pay it back and you do it when you can invest in assets you know have a direct return to you instantly, and you buy it and you do it when the market is the other way around. This budget does not do any of that.

I believe members opposite are in denial and I have heard that before, as I said. I have some time for the member for West Torrens, but that was just a diatribe. State debt is fast approaching $14 billion, the highest in our state's history. Debt has been growing at $4.2 million per day every day for eight years. Our interest on this debt is set to reach $952 million; that is more than the police budget. Currently we are paying $2.6 million per day in interest. Imagine what that could be spent on. Three weeks of that would pay for a new Barossa hospital, and haven't I said that before!

But when you get to this point in life and you are in so much debt, I believe that our basic debt is about 53 per cent of our GDP. I always said in business you should not get above 30 but here we are at 53. Of course, we do not have to worry about that, do we? This government is not going to have to pay it back. No. Nobody is personally responsible about that except the members will be at the election. I wonder whether those members have thought about that. The mess we are in—I wonder whether people who are facing the firing line at the election had input into these decisions that have been made because they are going to pay the price of it.

I just wonder how the Labor Party works in relation to decisions that are made, whether the backbenchers are allowed to put up their voice during their caucus meetings or even during cabinet meetings whether everybody gets an entitlement to take on the bureaucrats and indeed the powerful three up the front. This year's deficit exceeds $1.3 billion, the highest in the state's history. In fact, our deficit is more than New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania combined. Irrespective of the rhetoric, all the politics in the world, that is certainly a worrying statistic.

We are building a new hospital, one we really cannot afford. Yes, it is nice to have it, but we really cannot afford it now; you build it at a different time. What do we do with the old one? It will cost a fortune more just to either demolish it or to refurbish it. It has not been considered. And of course the desal plant. What a joke! The government did not want to have a bar of this desal plant and then, of course, it said yes, yes, yes and they built one twice the size that we actually needed. So instead of a small white elephant we have a large one—$800 million worth of a large one. That is really a grossly bad decision.

Who makes these decisions? I really do wonder who makes these decisions. Is it Rod Hook, who I have a lot of time for? Is it him? Does he make these recommendations to the government? I wonder who makes these decisions and whether every member of the Labor Party, particularly the backbenchers, particularly those who are going to face the electors in nine months' time, whether they have a say about this, because really that was reckless; that was reckless to spend so much money. We really hoped that we did not need it, but go to one twice what we needed was ridiculous.

The Labor government has presided over six deficits in seven years, yet all the deficits were predicted to be surpluses. How can we possibly believe Premier Weatherill when he says we are going to go from the highest deficit to the highest surplus in four years? Given their track record, the Premier and this government really cannot be trusted. To say, as he did, that the budget will be back in the black within three years is plainly dishonest. The budget indicates nothing that is going to turn this around—nothing at all. Premier Weatherill has attempted to cover up his own financial mismanagement by blaming revenue downturn. On the ABC, on 20 March, he said:

...we've had about $3 billion of revenue gone from our Forward Estimates because of the change in the world economic situation.

But do not be fooled, sir. The facts are that revenue has actually grown by 3 per cent per year for the last four years. Over the 12-year history of this Labor government, it has spent nearly $4 billion over budget. The Labor government has spent $637 million this year, not budgeted for. How can you do that? Why have a budget when you can spend that sort of money over the top? Why do we have that? Of course, $637 million is 11 Barossa hospitals. That is the money you spent over your budget.

South Australia's GST revenue will still grow by 3.1 per cent a year over the forward estimates. That is above inflation, so you really cannot blame that. This government does not have a revenue problem; it has an expenses problem, a spending problem. In an attempt to meet the shortfalls from the poor financial management, what does the Labor government do? It increases taxes and charges. Tax revenue has increased by 92 per cent under Labor.

Any politically smart person—and there are a few in this place—would understand that the people of South Australia will not cop that; they will not cop it. Under Labor, South Australia has become the highest taxed state in the nation. Nobody refutes that. It is a statistic we really do not want, a crown we do not want to wear, but we have it. This has been confirmed by two independent reports: the Commonwealth Grants Commission (CGC) and the Institute of Public Affairs.

According to the CGC, land tax was levied 36 per cent above the national average, the worst of all states. Stamp duty was levied at 27 per cent above the average, which is the worst of all states as well, and insurance tax was levied at 42 per cent above the average, again the worst of all the states. Yet the Premier disagrees with the reports produced by these two independent bodies and said again in an interview on the ABC on 25 March about the state's economy:

Some taxes are higher here than other places—but in terms of the overall net effect on business competitive environment here in South Australia comes out on top.

The findings from the Commonwealth Grants Commission, which details the increase to land tax, stamp duty and insurance tax, demonstrate that this just is not true. The Premier cannot be trusted. Just in the last 12 months, property charges have increased at twice the rate of CPI. State taxes have increased at three times the rate of CPI. Electricity bills have increased at greater than five times the rate of CPI. Gas bills have increased at seven times the rate of CPI. Water bills have increased a staggering 11 times the rate of CPI, and land tax, a suffocating tax killing investments, especially the rental and housing market, is the highest in Australia.

I think the apathy in this state has been pretty high over the years, but I tell you that this is hurting people, and whether they are Labor, Liberal or Independent, at the election they will send a very strong message. This is, I remind members, the election budget. There is nothing in here that is going to change their mind.

The cost of living has gone up under Labor since 2002 for average South Australian households. A 10-year driver's licence renewal is up by 77 per cent, and that is $170. Public transport multitrips are up by 61 per cent, or $650. Speeding fines are up by 170 per cent, and that is $214. Water bills are up by 227 per cent, or a staggering $536. All I can say is: wow! Electricity bills are up by 155 per cent, or $1,176. Gas bills are up by 113 per cent, which is $444. The introduced carbon tax, which excludes utilities, is an extra $265. The solid waste levy is up by 863 per cent, or $42.

This will hugely impact our councils and, in turn, the ratepayers. Again, our constituents are going to get hit in the hip pocket. Services are being lost. Country people will not be getting their local paper, as I said this afternoon, thrown out at their gates, as our family has done for nearly 100 years. Why? This government legislation is handcuffing the contractors with its restrictions under the safe work legislation and the subsequent red tape and bureaucracy. Is nothing sacred?

Shared Services is another debacle that everyone could see was going to fail from the start. The government announced in 2006 that it was attempting to develop a single human resource administrative department, centralising human resources, payroll and accounts into a single department. Shared Services was supposed to be completed in 2009-10 for an up-front cost of $60 million, to save $60 million each year. However, the project implementation has cost $93 million so far and rising, and what are the savings? We do not know. All we know is it has caused a lot of disruption in our country regions and it has been a total disaster.

I try to be positive sometimes, but you have to really look hard to see some of the decisions of the government that have actually worked. There are some projects out there that I am quite pleased with but, when it comes to a decision-making capacity, there is very little else. I have had some experience with the government's workers compensation scheme because I sit on the committee, and it is the worst performing scheme in the nation. Labor has promised lower industry premiums and better scheme performance but has failed to deliver. Industry premiums are still the highest in the nation.

The total workers compensation unfunded liability is over $1.8 billion, and we not only have the highest WorkCover levies but also we continue to have the worst return to work ratios in Australia. The problem is we do not seem to have the will or the capacity to address this. We have a $1.8 billion liability, which is just staggering. We all know there is a problem but we have not done a thing about it. There has been some goodwill about this on the other side by certain members (and they know who I am talking about) but, again, we have not taken away this impost on business in South Australia.

Government waste has increased, which includes over $200 million spent on consultants and contractors each year. Remember that they were going to reduce that. That is actually three Barossa hospitals. Over $70 million has been spent on advertising each year and approximately $25 million spent on government travel each year.

The bridge painting—nobody questioned the cost. I know people laugh about this bridge painting and, yes, you did not think I would do it, but it happened. Call it a gimmick or call it what you like, but it was not designed to be a gimmick. I will not go through how or why it happened because I do not want to upset anybody. What happened?

An honourable member: You saved taxpayers money.

Mr VENNING: Okay, the bridge was painted, but the big issue is that nobody questioned the $630 million it was going to cost, which was absolutely patently ridiculous. I painted it for $2,000, as you know. Go and have a look. It looks beautiful. I actually have not finished. I have been asked to do the rails on either side.

An honourable member: No, you haven't.

Mr VENNING: I have.

Mr Whetstone: $630 million?

Mr VENNING: No, $630,000, sorry. I correct the record. That is what the price was to paint the bridge. Nobody questioned that, and who should? Who put the figure on it? Was it some crazy government contractor or a bureaucrat? Who put the price on that? It was really over the top and this is why you wonder, when you put a price on something like the new hospital, who was checking on that? Did that get scrutiny? How many Rolls Royces do you have built into that that you do not need? This is just an indication of really why the story had legs in every paper in Australia except The Advertiser. I did not send out a single press release. It just grew like Topsy. It just went, thanks to the ABC.

Mr Pederick: How about the radio coverage in Sydney?

Mr VENNING: Yes, it was on two nights on the drive show on 2UE. Two nights in a row they put out this story about this South Australian MP who for four years pushed to get their bridge painted and they would not do it so he did it himself. It is a good story, but the problem is that I am just amazed that the government did not question the price. I did push minster Conlon for probably nearly three years on this issue, so in frustration, when somebody from over there said, 'We're sick of hearing about this—you paint it,' I did.

Who in this government has the business experience? I was a bit concerned to hear the Minister for Finance a while ago. Who in this government has business experience? I believe he is the one with the greatest experience on the other side—the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Correctional Services—and he was right when he courageously said some time ago that we should not be borrowing money to pay Public Service wages.

Dead right, and he said it and I think he got into a little bit of trouble for saying it. In fact, he might even have been demoted, but good on him. But then he comes out tonight and makes a speech about good debt being the way to go. There is good debt and bad debt—we have heard that one before, haven't we? There is good debt and bad debt—and just think about the State Bank. Just think about that and have a good look at what happened.

There are two sides to that whole thing—good debt and bad debt—and that is what I think the minister was forgetting. You have to be able to pay your bills. It is all very well to borrow money; it is great to buy assets when you need them, when you get good value. Now is not the time to do that because we do not have the contractors here to give us a competitive price. You really are at their behest. You really get ripped off, I believe. And this $40 million footbridge—my God!

An honourable member: Ridiculous!

Mr VENNING: Absolutely. A voice from the deep, who shall remain nameless but, Madam, you are dead right.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: And who is out of order, as well.

Mr VENNING: Thank you. Seven and a half million would have built a bridge that would have done the job quite well—7.5, not 40. It would not have had the bells and whistles, but it would have been adequate and, when you are broke, it would be quite okay to spend that sort of money. Many on this side have business experience, but just compare this government's administration of our state finances with a normal household budget. You pay off your mortgages; you do not just keep spending.

There has been some discussion here today particularly from the member for Heysen who talked about how we run our household budgets ourselves and you have to watch it and you have to pay back your mortgages. You hope to have a few dollars left over every year to kick the mortgage and eventually you get rid of the mortgage, but not this government—they just keep on going. Every Labor member will be pressed on this at the next election and I just hope that they had input into these decisions because they can certainly wear the kick.

Also, on the cuts to primary industry, the Governor in his speech opening this parliament said that the government would give a priority to clean, green food. What hypocrisy! Yet another cut from $89 million down to $77 million, and this at a time when we really need very good independent, professional advice. We are all talking about food security and we are always concerned about overseas interests coming and buying our capacity to grow the food and what do you do? You cut the budget again.

Yes, Mr Deputy Speaker, this is my last budget and I certainly hope it is the government's last. Country people have paid a huge price over the last 12 years under this Labor government. Thirty per cent of South Australians live outside the city. You would not believe that when you look at this budget. I call them the forgotten one-third.

My electorate of Schubert totally missed out; it got nothing in this budget. There is no new Barossa hospital, no new dialysis service and no roadworks, and I do publicly apologise to them because there is nothing in it for them apart from the two new ferries. We do not know where they are going, but hopefully one could go to my electorate in Mannum. No doubt there are three more to build, and the Liberal government would probably build them.

I congratulate my leader on his speech in reply today. I have the utmost confidence in the team we have to address this crisis. I think the speeches today were some of the best I have heard in this place. They were fired up and full of merit, particularly those from leader Marshall, who is certainly the person for the moment, our shadow treasurer Iain Evans, the shadow minister for development Martin Hamilton-Smith and the member for Goyder, Steven Griffiths—they all have lots of business experience.

Even though I will leave this place in nine months' time, I have every confidence that with these four people on the front bench we are in very good hands to rein this in. It is not too late—or not quite. I am hopeful that within four years—we will not be out of this mess in the first four years but we will certainly turn it around. We just have to be careful what we spend. We all have to be a little less greedy and say to our constituents, 'I'm sorry we can't afford that.'

I know that the first Liberal government will not build a new Barossa hospital but all I can say is that I hope that they will have started it so that people in the Barossa know something will be there. This ends my last reply to the budget. I just hope that there is a miracle (and I believe in miracles) and something will happen and we can get out of this malaise very quickly. All I can say is that I certainly support the Liberal Party and that we are very much concerned about the budget.

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (21:26): It was interesting to listen to the Minister for Finance talk about Reinhart and Rogoff and the 90 per cent rule they had been postulating and espousing, and then to see that a computer glitch stuffed it all up for them—and that is not putting it too finely. However, there are economists out there who still espouse a similar line, that the bigger the debt the more impact it has on the growth of the economy—and they use Italy and Greece as examples.

As the member for Schubert said, in his 23rd budget speech—and I congratulate him on his last speech—there is good debt and bad debt. To say that all debt is bad debt is completely wrong. When you listen to people in this place who have run businesses and had overdrafts to manage and managed those overdrafts, you should take notice. There are similarities between managing the state budget and managing a household budget but there is even more of a similarity in managing a business budget and the state budget.

I remember when my wife and I first came back to South Australia from Western Australia in 1984. We started a veterinary practice and we were paying 17 per cent on the mortgage and 23 per cent on the overdraft. People complain about interest rates now but you try paying 17 per cent on your mortgage and 23 per cent on your overdraft—you have to make sure that your budget is working. You have to be working very hard yourself to balance that budget and make sure that you are not borrowing to pay recurrent expenditure and you are not putting everything on a credit card and you are not putting everything on the never-never, because your children and your grandchildren cannot pay it off.

However, that seems to be what is going to happen with a lot of budgets around the world and a lot of economies around the world—and in South Australia we have a very large state debt. Who is going to pay it off? It is not going to be the current generation, it is going to be my children and my grandchildren who are going to be paying this debt off. It is a shame that after the four, five or six years of prosperity that we saw in Australia with high revenues coming in, to see this state ending up in this situation.

Listening to the Minister for Finance talking tonight it seems a complete contrast to what he said in 2010 at the Lakes Resort, Lakes Terrace in Mount Gambier, when he was talking to the community about the forward sale of the forests. Minister O'Brien—'honest Michael O'Brien' as he gets called—told the meeting:

...essentially the credit rating agencies are quite happy with the way that we are bringing the budget back, ultimately, into surplus.

That was three years ago, and how things have changed. I wonder if the minister would say that now. This was the state of the state as it was then, and I don't see a lot of difference now. This is what the minister said:

...we are effectively operating on an overdraft-style operation. We are actually having to borrow to pay wages. Now that is unsustainable...

This is from Media Monitors transcripts of Matthew Abraham on the morning program. The minister, Michael O'Brien, continued on to say:

...now we're in a position as a government, if we were being financed by the banks, they would pull the overdraft on us, because we're currently, year on year, operating in the red and that is borrowing. Now the worst thing you can do is basically borrow to pay our wages. Now we've got to haul ourselves out of this situation really, really quickly. We have got to get our longer-term debt—what we're dealing with is short-term debt—stuff like that that they are saying we have got to get our longer debt under control...

That is what the minister was saying back in 2010. We seem to have a different attitude to the debt now. The fact that we have got a recurrent debt that minister O'Brien was saying at that stage was being used to pay wages is a very serious concern for all of us in this state.

I know that the Minister for Transport in his contribution made good political points that he thinks are worthwhile espousing in this place. I know his family has a background in small business down in my electorate and I guarantee that his parents—his mum and dad—would know how hard it is to run a business and the hours you put in and how you have to balance your budget and your books and you have to make sure that your income is greater than your expenditure and you cannot borrow to pay your wages; it just does not work.

So, we do have that experience on both sides of this place, but unfortunately that experience does not seem to be driving the Premier, who is our Treasurer also, to make sure that the state of the state is where it should be. This is my eleventh budget. In my very first budget I said that meteorologists were put on this earth to make economists look good. I had to do penance at the bureau and apologise to meteorologists for having said that then.

I am certainly not implying it now, but what we are seeing now is economists who have given all sorts of predictions for all sorts of outcomes for the way countries are managing their debt. What we are seeing here in South Australia is a variation on that theme with the Minister for Finance saying now that, even though a debt of 90 per cent of gross state product has been seen to be a crisis point, that is not something that we should be actually getting too worried about.

Well, I would certainly be worrying about it if we are getting to that stage and what I want to make sure is that this state does not get to that stage by working on good policies that will be revealed in due time. We will make sure that the people of South Australia are able to see where the Liberal Party wants to take this state, though the leader today did talk about some of the things he wants to do.

He wants to be able to make small business and family businesses thrive and survive in South Australia. He wants government to get out of their way. He wants small businesses to do the job required of them and that is to build the business and build the economy. When I borrowed on my overdraft, when I borrowed with mortgages—we had huge mortgages sometimes—you just bit off a big chunk and you chewed like hell.

You get a sore jaw from chewing like hell on these mortgages, but you make it work and that is what small businesses in South Australia want to do if we get out of their way, if we reduce the burdens on them, if we reduce their WorkCover, their power bills, their utility bills, if we reduce all the red tape, the hours they spend on accreditations and duplication of accreditation in some cases.

We need to have quality control, obviously, but when you are having to duplicate information for government services it is a real issue. There is a need to make sure that businesses are able to do what they want to do. I know the Minister for Finance with his broad experience of business will know that that is the right thing in South Australia. I do not see it coming from this government though.

I do not see any direction from this government towards assisting small business do what they want to do, and that is employ people, build their businesses and bring the prosperity back to South Australia—prosperity that South Australians deserve. We have seen this government time after time after time raising expectations and failing to deliver. The classic example was last year's budget.

The opening line was all about Roxby Downs. It was going to be the El Dorado, and what has happened? It is a fizzer. It is going to be a good thing to have in the metaphorical mining bank for us, but certainly it is not going to be the El Dorado that the former premier and last year's treasurer was saying it was going to be. We need to make sure that South Australians are able to get what they need.

We know what they want, we know what they would like, but we need to make sure they get what they need, and that is cheaper power prices and cheaper water prices. We need to make sure that they can have an economy that is going to allow them to raise their families and enjoy the lifestyle that this state can afford them. It really is the best state in this nation and it will always be if we make sure South Australians have a government that will deliver what they deserve, namely, good government. We are not seeing that under this government; after 11 years we have seen a significantly high debt and deficit that, as I said, our grandchildren will have to manage.

Let us look at the figures in this budget. The total appropriation is about $12.25 billion, which is for South Australia a lot of money. When you look at budgets in the past they were $4 billion or $5 billion, but it is $12.25 billion in the Appropriation Bill we are discussing tonight. The Department for Communities and Social Inclusion is about $1.2 billion and the Department of Health and Ageing is almost $3 billion. They are significant percentages of the total appropriation that we are considering with this bill.

The problem is that we have all that money that has come in and is being appropriated to these various departments (and they are two departments I am dealing with in my shadow portfolios), but you have that shadow in the background and the economic storm—the thunder is sounding and you can just about see the lightning flashes on the horizon. The economic storm is brewing. We have to make sure that we take cover and that South Australians survive that storm. When you look at the budget figures it will be one hell of a storm for us to survive.

It is really disheartening to see the state budget deficit of $1,314 million and a debt approaching $14,000 million in the 2013 budget; it is a figure that none of us would ever have expected four, five or six years ago. We were promised that it would not happen, we were promised that we would be in surplus, but it has not happened. Labor budgets have been in deficit for six of the last seven years.

Labor accused us of selling ETSA. I have a 1993 election poster in my office 'Never again'. It has some terrific quotes from The Advertiser at that time and it talks about the issues we are facing in this state. Even the former auditor-general in his reports said that the long-term lease of ETSA was a necessary thing. Privately I have been told for a fact that members on the other side—some of them retired now—actually agreed with the move to long lease ETSA because they knew it would reduce the debt.

The auditor-general said in his report that it was the best thing that could have been done to help reduce the debt. We were paying these Belgian dentists about $2.5 million a day in interest; I think we are paying about $2.6 million a day currently and it will go to about $3 million a day in interest, to who I do not know—not the Belgian dentists, but it is going off to some other bankers somewhere else. It is a terrific amount of money to be paying out day after day. That money could be used for so many things and South Australians are missing out.

The government accused us of selling ETSA and of doing the wrong thing, but what has it done? It has sold the forward rotation of the forests, sold off the licences of the Lotteries Commission, and it has sucked $100 million out of the Motor Accident Commission. They are looking in every drawer and up every hollow log to try to find a bit more money to save themselves from another downgrade of the credit rating.

Let us not forget who lost the AAA credit rating. It was this government, and we are going down and down with our credit rating. It is completely unacceptable after the opportunities we have had, but unfortunately because of the mismanagement of the budget its a very sad picture.

People talk about the deficit not being as high as this or that. I am relying on some of the economists who have given us information here, and they look at three different measures of deficit: the net lending deficit is $1.45 billion; the cash deficit is $1.3 billion; and the net operating deficit is $911 million. So on all three measures we are in serious deficit.

Year after year I remember reading the auditor-general's report where he had warned and foreseen the issues that were coming for this government because they have been overspending. The auditor-general warned them about overspending. I will quote from the auditor-general's report in 2005-06, when the budget was overspent by $370 million:

Given the forecast expectation that such revenue growth may not be sustained, control of expenses will be important.

In his next report, the then auditor-general said:

The state may have developed a culture of expecting growing revenues to continue to support increasing expenses.

In the third (the trifecta) budget report the auditor-general said that:

The state has received large amounts of unbudgeted revenues that enable net operating surpluses.

Unbudgeted revenues. You cannot rely on winning the lottery. You cannot go and get the scratchie and think, 'Oh, I've won $50,000, so we can factor that in year after year because we will buy some more scratchies.' You cannot do that. You cannot rely on luck alone. It has to be good management. It has to be a solid base that you are going to do your financial management on. We have seen that in South Australia's case that has not been given to us.

Labor has locked itself into spending and now South Australians are locked into spending. Whether it is the hospital, whether it is the stadium, whether it is other infrastructure, we are getting some big builds in South Australia but what is the cost and what is the benefit? I went and had a look at the $800 million superway. As an engineering project it is fantastic. Whether it needs to be as big and as strong I do not know, I am not an engineer, but it looks amazing, but where is it going from and where is it going to? What is it solving?

At the moment it is going from the Port River Expressway, and if you want to put the new northern connector in there you have to spend, I think, another billion dollars. It then goes down to the traffic lights at Regency Road and then it stops. It will be years away before anything else is done with the whole length of South Road. We want it to happen. It needs to happen, and yet we are seeing delay after delay, but we have a superway on the way.

I was talking about the costs on business before. When I had industrial relations in this place we went through a change to the legislation to try to improve WorkCover. I know there were members on the Labor Party side, the government side, who were very concerned about the legislation that was being put in place. I certainly put the argument up that you did not need to reduce benefits to workers to produce a good outcome for all South Australians, not just the workers but also the employers and the state scheme.

What we have seen in 2001-02 is an unfunded liability of, I think, $51 million or $61 million, but now we are seeing an unfunded liability of $1.4 billion. People are saying, 'Well, that doesn't have to be all paid out at once.' The liability is there. You do have to pay it out. You do have to manage the whole system so that if there is a surge in claims you are able to pay it out. It is an unfunded liability.

To get to the stage of $1.4 billion from $61 million is something I cannot fathom. You talk to people in the private work cover insurance, the big companies that self-insure, and they are doing a much better job than the state scheme. We need to make sure that the state scheme is not imposing undue burdens on our businesses. We know it is now because WorkCover premiums are twice what they are in other states.

Payroll tax is up 42 per cent on what it was in 2001-02. Stamp duty is up 39 per cent, and this is after CPI. Land tax is up 203 per cent and other property taxes are up 17 per cent. Tax on insurance is up 48 per cent. Tax on motor vehicles is up 26 per cent, and that is after CPI. So, South Australians are really suffering under this government. They have suffered 11 hard years of Labor.

We cannot afford to continue on this way. I just hope that when the federal election is out of the way and there is an Abbott Liberal government in Canberra the state of the nation will be improved. We will see where the federal government is going to take this nation and we will be able to fit in and lock step with them as a state Liberal government to make sure that this state gets everything it deserves, everything it needs and everything it wants.

What we do need to make sure of is that the people of South Australia are not blinded by the political spin of the other side and the, 'She'll be right, mate', the raising of expectations and then failing to deliver. We cannot allow that to happen. As a Liberal opposition we will be making sure that we do everything possible to come out with a position that is very clear and very understandable. We are not going to put it out there early.

Congratulations to the member for Schubert on the drug driving legislation that he has been pushing year after year, because today the police announced that 10,000 drivers had been tested for drug driving since testing began seven years ago. The member for Schubert is, if nothing else, persistent about getting his good ideas up through this place, whether it is painting a bridge or whether, in this case, it is something that I think is absolutely fantastic for road safety in South Australia, and that is drug drivers being tested.

I was very alarmed, though, to see that 4,262 drivers tested positive for methylamphetamine, 2,537 tested positive to THC or cannabis, there were 93 positives for ecstasy, and 3,140 positives to a combination of more than one drug. How people can do that I do not know. Had this government listened to people like the member for Schubert the drug driving legislation would have been in a lot earlier and possibly more lives would have been saved than are being saved by the good action of our police doing this testing on the roads, and I congratulate them on that.

Regarding the budget, there will be a lot more to come in the estimates process. I think the estimates process is a lot of work for a questionable return, when you see the way the Dorothy Dixers are put up, the way that the time is used up by the government. I hope that will not be the case this time; I hope the opposition will be given the opportunity to really question the ministers on what is in their budget. If this budget is as good as they say it is, give us the opportunity to question it. Let us have the committee process, work like the committees here, let us talk about every detail in the budget.

Time expired.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. M.F. O'Brien.

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