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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, First Session (53-1)
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Budget Measures Bill 2014

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 19 June 2014.)

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (15:47): I rise to speak to the Budget Measures Bill 2014, and I indicate to the Deputy Speaker that I am definitely not the lead speaker on this bill.

The Hon. S.W. Key interjecting:

Mr PEDERICK: I know that's sad, but we will keep struggling on. This is a bill that coincides with the Appropriation Bill which we have just been debating in this place, and this is the bill which brings in some insidious taxes to our state to prop up the Labor government's failed budgetary measures and outcomes, especially after the preceding 12 years of economic mismanagement.

One of the main factors in this Budget Measures Bill is what the government is calling the transport development levy, but in plain English (and it is a lot easier for Hansard to write down) it is 'car park tax'. The car park tax is going to inflict on our car parks in the City of Adelaide an annual fee of $750 which then will be indexed at the consumer price index for the ongoing future, if it manages to get past this house and if it goes through another place.

I sincerely hope this tax does not go through. We have been loud and vocal in our opposition on this side of the house to the car park tax. It is a disgraceful tax and it will be very destructive to business opportunities in the city. In fact, I am sure that there are many business owners who are just absolutely petrified of this tax coming in. There has already been, I think, a KPMG report that indicates that it will have an economic downturn impact of $12 million on the local economy in the City of Adelaide.

The reason for that is that people find a way not to park at places that are expensive. That has already been proven when parking fees were introduced down at West Lakes. I know that for a fact because I have family who live down on the Lefevre Peninsula and they will drive to the other side of Adelaide to go shopping because they do not want to pay a car park fee. This will have the same impact in the city as happened down at West Lakes. People will refuse to come into the city. It is just a simple fact that the Labor Party has not worked out.

The Hon. T.R. Kenyon: They already pay parking.

Mr PEDERICK: The member for Newland indicates that they already pay parking. I can assure the member for Newland that they already hate the amount they are paying for parking. The people from the good areas of the regions, including the seat of Hammond, are already paying very large parking fees, and if you do not pay them and you get caught parking on the street, you pay quite significant parking fines.

The issue is that people are finding a way to do their business and do their shopping anywhere but Adelaide. People are already doing that, and now, with this extra impost, people will just vacate and I fear that it will put businesses out of business especially in the Rundle Mall area. Business is already struggling in this state. We know that we are the state with the highest fees and charges and yet, here we go again. We will find a way to tax the poor citizens of the state. It is another measure to extract tax from the overtaxed public of South Australia.

We are seeing regional areas get more services; there are already a lot more services that people can access in Murray Bridge. A lot more shopping has opened up and there are a lot of small businesses that people can deal with locally and if they cannot access the exact services they want there, they can travel to Mount Barker and get a lot of their shopping or business needs attended to. This is just another tax to keep people out of the city.

The government will not get it because it thinks that the way out of a budget is to tax, tax, tax. That coincides with another part of the Budget Measures Bill, which is the fun tax. It is the special events tax which the transport minister is putting in place. It is for events where an event manager might decide that he thinks there are 5,000 people coming along and he has to notify the minister, I think, within as close as possible to a six-month time frame, and if he cannot do that, he has to do it as soon as he can.

Here we have a tax to tax the people to drive into the city and then if you want to get on public transport—which this government has been advocating for long and hard, but it does not realise the shortcomings of public transport in this state—the government is going to tax that as well. So, what do you want? Perhaps Stephen Yarwood will realise his vision and have everyone on bikes. I certainly cannot see the good people of Hammond riding all the way into Adelaide on their pushbikes, but that is where we are heading to. This is just crazy stuff.

This events tax is the fun tax. I was at the Adelaide Oval on Sunday, sadly to see, as I mentioned in the house the other day, the Power lose. Events like the football, concerts or the cricket in Adelaide—the supposition behind bringing all the sport into one venue was so that people could enjoy themselves and enjoy the so-called vibrancy of Adelaide.

We have already learned, through what happens on game days, that a lot of businesses do not even open up for meals because of penalty rates and other costs inflicted on them for running a business. Business owners cannot seem to get the message through to the Labor Party that it is just unviable for their businesses to open, whether it is for breakfast, brunch, lunch or dinner, on a game day on a public holiday. There are plenty of business owners who are saying, 'If we open up and we only manage to get $300 return, it's not worth opening the door.'

Especially with regard to the Adelaide Oval, we have a venue that can seat over 50,000 people, yet we are going to tax everyone to come in and park. If you come in on public transport, you get taxed anyway. As I said, if you happen to ride a bike, I do not anticipate you are going to come from any further than a few kilometres. This will have a great effect, especially on regional people in this state. These are draconian measures. The car park tax, combined with the fun tax, will just be another turn-off for people attending events.

It is no secret that the AFL, with regard to football, is promoting football for as many nights or days as they can over an extended weekend. They want to have football played on Thursday nights through to Monday nights. That is because it seems that the emphasis is not so much on filling grounds—I am sure they would still like to see grounds filled, and there has been a bit of backlash, especially against Monday night games, some Sunday night games and even Thursday night games. It is still the Friday night and Saturday games that I think are the most well attended. However, the AFL is into the billions with its TV rights.

It is not very hard to make an excuse to sit at home and say, 'I am just getting taxed if I get in my car. I am getting taxed if I go on the bus, the train or the tram. I can just stay home, have the fire going'—next to the fridge if you want a light refreshment, and enjoy the football in the ambience of your lounge room.

The Hon. T.R. Kenyon: What?

Mr PEDERICK: That's the option, member for Newland. He may laugh, but it is pretty easy for people to vote with their feet with something like this. In regard to other matters in the Budget Measures Bill, it also talks about the royalty rates on extractive minerals. This is essentially rubble pits and the like. This is going up from 35¢ a tonne to 55¢ a tonne. After talking to a couple of people in the local community at the football over the last couple of weeks, they are already getting the notices and it is causing quite an impact. It is a huge increase on their extractive royalty and now they have to factor that in for the rates that they charge for those metals when they leave the property. Once again, it is a greater tax burden on the good people of our community.

We have a lot of problems with the Budget Measures Bill. I will be very interested to see whether it does get out of this place. It will be interesting to see how the member for Waite and the member for Frome vote in regards to this bill. I assume they will run with the government because it is a money bill, and they will be firmly wedded to the government, as they now are.

When I think it will get interesting is when this bill gets debated in the other place. Quite frankly, I think the government will have difficulties at least getting some of these measures through the parliament because they are draconian, they are retrograde and all they are doing is impacting on the good citizens of this state who already, as part of the Appropriation Bill, are being belted with an emergency services levy rise that, over four years, will raise over $330 million extra for the state coffers.

As mentioned earlier in this place, this is going to have a huge impact on our regional communities, with it essentially being a land tax on farmers. We will see some people, because they have quite successful operations and have been operating for generations, all of a sudden having emergency services levy accounts of over $1,000.

For that, what do we get? We get the bodies of fire vehicles put together on Isuzu trucks in New Zealand. We have a government that, with these extra hundreds of millions of dollars that they will be raking in from the emergency services levy, cannot even support local business. It is outrageous that they have to bring in vehicles from New Zealand when we have perfectly good fire truck-body builders in this state and in my electorate.

The Hon. J.M. Rankine: What are defence doing?

Mr PEDERICK: This is a state issue.

The Hon. J.M. Rankine: The defence industry?

Mr PEDERICK: Alright; okay.

The Hon. J.M. Rankine: What are defence doing?

Mr PEDERICK: The member for Wright is challenging me on what the defence industry is doing. I will refer to the defence industry for a little while, if I may. My brother works in the defence industry. He was a warrant officer in the Army. He served for 23 years and is a loyal man, unlike some. He served in Iraq and served in Rwanda. Since leaving the industry, he has joined up with General Dynamics in the north of Adelaide, and he rebuilds ASLAV armoured vehicles. These are eight-wheeled armoured vehicles that are sometimes repatriated from either Afghanistan, at the moment, or Iraq. They have got plenty of work with these defence vehicles.

There are opportunities for defence, and I implore the state government to explore these opportunities in the future as potential options for the Holden plant. I think there are some great options there for defence into the future.

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan interjecting:

Mr PEDERICK: I note the interjection, 'There are great options for Holden.'

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan: There were great options for Holden.

Mr PEDERICK: 'There were great options for Holden.' Thank you, Minister for Transport. There were great options for Holden. Holdens are great vehicles. I have a 1989 model V8 ute sitting in my shed at home that does not come out often enough. Be that as it may, Detroit made a decision, and when they made the decision, the Labor Party needed to understand that what they said was, 'It would not have mattered how much money was thrown'—

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan interjecting:

Mr PEDERICK: —this is a fact, so don't mislead the house—'we were going to leave the state'.

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I remind members that it is out of order to interject and that it is also out of order to respond to interjections.

Mr PEDERICK: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your protection. People really need to check the facts on what is happening because, when you have a multinational company that says it does not matter how many billions are put into an operation, it is just not going to happen, I think you need to listen to the chiefs in Detroit to see what is really happening.

I have digressed, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I thank you for that. Getting back to the Budget Measures Bill in the little bit of time I have left, these are regressive measures. The car park tax is an absolutely disgraceful measure which will put a lot of people out of business, and I say that sincerely. People will find a way not to use those parks and, as I said earlier, people are already doing it at shopping centres in the urban suburbs. They drive 20 or 30 kilometres to shop elsewhere because it is just too hard. If you go to a movie and you overstay the time, you are instantly paying for high-parking fees, so the government needs to have a look at that.

Then there is the fun tax. We have a government that carries on about public transport, forgetting that 97 per cent of the state does not have public transport and access into the city—and it is probably higher than that. I would love to have public transport out to Murray Bridge and Goolwa in my electorate but it is not Metro-funded public-ticketed transport. People in my electorate do not get the benefits of getting on heavily subsidised Metro-ticketed public transport, and that is a fact, and people in my electorate are crying out for that access. I know that the Minister for Transport, on the radio—

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan interjecting:

Mr PEDERICK: Madam Deputy Speaker!

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I have asked the minister to refrain from interjecting and you just need to ignore him completely.

Mr PEDERICK: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I have already done it once—just ignore him.

Mr PEDERICK: The transport minister was on the radio the other day claiming that the fun tax had to be implemented in order to make public transport viable. It has never been viable as it is subsidised at about 85 per cent from public funding. To say that you could put on a tax to make it viable—well, I am not going to wish them to tax it to make it viable, because that would need a ridiculous amount of funding.

The Minister also talked about the LinkSA services. Yes, they do have services out in my electorate, but they are not at Metro-ticketed rates. I want to see proper public transport reach further out into my electorate so that some of the ministers in the Labor government can see the full effect of what it really costs to get proper Metro-ticketed services to the regions so that people can access the city, whether it be for education, work, their pleasure or leisure.

Time expired.

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (16:08): I rise to speak on the Budget Measures Bill before the house at the moment. I indicate that I will be the lead speaker for Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, and it is with some pleasure that I lay out some of our concerns on this side of the house regarding the Budget Measures Bill which is currently before us.

Of course, the state budget is in a complete and utter shambles after 12 years of mismanagement by those opposite. Every single year we get this fanciful projection of how this government is going to return our state budget finances to surplus. Unfortunately, those promises, those commitments that are made to the people of South Australia, are never actually realised.

If we look at the last seven years, the years since the global financial crisis—a term which is often used by those opposite as an excuse for their poor performance over an extended period of time—if we look at the budget forecasts that this party has laid before the people of South Australia regarding our projections, we see $2.6 billion worth of surpluses which have been promised by this government—$2.6 billion worth of promises.

If we then fast forward to what this government has delivered over that time, it is a very sad tale of $3 billion worth of deficit. So, there has been a $5.6 billion underperformance by this government against their own budget—the budget that they set themselves in this house every year when they bring down their budget.

This year that we are currently in, the government originally promised that we were going to have a surplus of $840 million. We support that. We would love to see a return to surplus for this state. The government promised an $840 million surplus. Yet, when we got around to the budget, when we finally got around to the budget this year, that was revised down ever so slightly to a loss of $479 million. I mean, what is the reason for this massive turnaround in the projection? I put it to you, Deputy Speaker, that it is the chronic mismanagement of this government's budget by those people opposite in the Australian Labor Party.

Each and every successive update to this house has seen an increase in the deficit projected by this government. Every time we see that we find it more and more unrealistic to believe anything they have to say. The major reason, of course, for the blowout in the budget position has been this government's inability to stick to a budget. Every single year we have seen a massive blowout in unbudgeted expenditure; last year alone, it was $311 million. That is $311 million worth of unbudgeted expenditure by this government in a single year. The year before it was $356 million worth of unbudgeted expenditure in a single year.

Nearly $4 billion worth of unbudgeted expenditure this government has had in place since it came to government in 2002. That is a massive sum and that is the reason why we find ourselves in the perilous situation that we do as a state at the moment. So, it is no surprise to us that in this most recent budget, again, we see the government introducing a whole pile of budget measures which are going to result in further anxiety for those people already struggling with our extraordinarily high cost of living, cost of doing business and taxes in South Australia.

Rather than take some of the pain themselves, rather than deliver a budget that they promise, they would rather stick their hand in the pocket of the taxpayer in South Australia. We are already the highest taxed state in the nation. Read it for yourself: it is on page 54 of Budget Paper 3. We are the highest taxed jurisdiction in the nation and we have been in that position for an extended period of time. The government does not care about that and that is why, when it brought down this budget two weeks ago, it increased the state taxation revenue forecast for this state by 10 per cent—10 per cent in a single year—and somehow, magically, those opposite believe that by increasing taxes they are going to stimulate activity in South Australia.

It has never worked before and it is not going to work now. It has not worked in the past. We have been the highest taxed jurisdiction in Australia for an extended period of time. We have had that mantle, that unenviable mantle, for an extended period of time and, guess what, our economy has been contracting. Our state domestic economy has contracted for the previous two quarters: the December quarter and the March quarter. When the June quarter results come out I bet we will have a further contraction of our state domestic economy, and that is because people are giving up, they are giving up in South Australia. The tax burden is too high, the regulatory burden is too high and they have a government which just does not understand.

The government has to get off the back of the small business sector so that they can go out and create jobs in this state and keep our next generation, our young South Australians, with some hope for a future of living here in South Australia. I speak to many young people and they love this place, they think South Australia is the best place in the world and I agree with them. This is a fantastic state.

We have so much going for us, but young people are leaving the state, not because they do not like living in this state but because they have given up, they have completely and utterly given up hope of finding a decent job in this state so they are moving to Melbourne, they are moving to Sydney, they are moving to Brisbane, they are moving to Hong Kong, they are moving to London, they are moving to a jurisdiction which has set itself up to favour the productive component of the economy, that component of the economy which creates jobs and keeps young people in the state.

It was a great pleasure for me to spend some time with Denis Napthine last week. He told me that he had created 18,000 jobs in the 12 months to the end of May. What an outstanding performance. Their economy is very similar to ours. They have a heavy reliance on the manufacturing sector. They do not have a significantly large mining sector, so their economy is very similar to ours, but in Victoria in their budget they are reducing taxes—they are reducing payroll tax, they are reducing stamp duties—and they are creating jobs in that jurisdiction.

I also spent some time with the Premier of Queensland. Let me tell you that it is an even more impressive turnaround scenario in that state. Campbell Newman has done a marvellous job at creating jobs, and I have had a look at the ABS statistics for Queensland. They have created 60,000 jobs in the 12 months to the end of May and, not only that, Campbell Newman has underpromised in his budget and overdelivered when his actuals come in. In fact, there is a $1.5 billion turnaround in the promises he made in his budget in June 2013 as to what he reported in June 2014—a $1.5 billion turnaround. We can only dream about those sorts of situations in South Australia.

We always have a $1 billion or $1.5 billion turnaround, but it is not in the positive direction: it always in the negative direction here in South Australia. We have a government which is addicted to spin, a government which overpromises and underdelivers, and who are the people who are suffering because of this? It is the people of South Australia. It is the people of South Australia who have put so much into this state in the past, but they are giving up hope under this tired, divided, dysfunctional, incompetent state Labor government.

Of course, there are some aspects of this Budget Measures Bill which we have publicly stated we are at odds with on this side of the house. We give notice now that we will be seeking to amend the bill as it stands before the house. This is not an issue we take lightly. It is an extraordinary decision, in fact, by the Liberal Party in South Australia to amend a budget measures bill, but we do it after careful consideration and we do it specifically in relation to the car park tax in South Australia.

The government first told the people of South Australia that they would be introducing a car park tax or, as they like to call it at the moment, the transport development levy. They first talked about this in December 2012 which, Deputy Speaker, as you would appreciate, was a very long time ago. We have been asking questions in this place during question time—which is aptly referenced as question time because that is what happens in question time: we ask questions. It is not referred to as 'question and answer time' because there are no answers. You never get a straight answer from those opposite, and we have been seeking to clarify the situation regarding the introduction of the transport development levy for an extended period of time.

Many people are very anxious about this new budget measure, but the government has not seen fit to come clean with the people of South Australia until we received this Budget Measures Bill on budget day. It was appalling that they left so many people out there hanging and that they still do, and I will tell you why they do. We have indicated that we will not be supporting this measure, so we have no idea whether or not this will pass into legislation, so people out there who own car parks quite rightly have no idea whether they should be putting their prices up, keeping them down or whether it is going to go through.

If the bill goes through and they have not put up their prices, is it going to be retrospective to 1 July and would they be out of pocket? Alternatively, if they put their prices up anticipating what the government has in its Budget Measures Bill and it does not pass, what is the situation then? Are they to pass that money back to consumers? It is a mess. The government has had plenty of time to make it clear to the people of South Australia how this is going to operate, but they have not sought to do this.

It is a very unpopular tax. Nobody likes a new tax, I grant you that, but this one is particularly unpalatable. I will tell you the reason why. The government has been out there talking about the need to improve CBD vibrancy, and we support them on that. I think that it is a good objective. The government thinks that CBD vibrancy is all about painting some blue lines on Bank Street. As attractive as those blue lines look, I am not sure anybody is going to say, 'You've got me! I am going to come into the CBD every single day because those blue lines are very attractive.' As attractive as the new trees on Leigh Street are, nobody is going to say, 'That's the reason I am going to stay in South Australia. Forget about the job offer in Victoria or Sydney; I am going to stay here; there are blue lines on Bank Street.'

Let me tell you that this CBD tax, the car park tax, is completely at odds with the shared objective we have in this parliament, both sides of parliament, to increase city vibrancy. It is putting a penalty on everybody who comes into the CBD and uses a car park. This has been tried in plenty of other jurisdictions around Australia, and let me tell you how this sorry tale goes. They introduce a tax. It is usually quite a nominal tax, but look at how it grows, year in, year out.

In New South Wales, in Sydney, in 1992 they introduced a car park tax at $200 per space per annum. It was doubled in 1997 and today it stands at $2,210 per space in the CBD. This is how it happens: it starts off quite small, but where does it end up? The car park tax introduced in Perth has grown tenfold—10 times the original introduced amount—since 1999. Are we going to have that in South Australia? Are we going to have a $7,500 plus GST CBD tax in place? We say we are not in favour of that whatsoever. It is a similar situation in Melbourne, and it is completely unpalatable.

This has very little support. We know that the Property Council is against it. We know that Business SA, the Rundle Mall Management Authority, the Real Estate Institute of South Australia, the Urban Development Institute of Australia and the Local Government Association are against it. We know that the Adelaide City Council is against this. Even the Premier's own Citizens' Jury is against it. He did not think it was enough to just go out and speak to people. We had this extraordinarily expensive Citizens' Jury, which cost $150,000 of taxpayers' dollars. They walked out and asked them: do you want a car park tax? Answer is no.

I did the same survey that the Premier's Citizens' Jury did. It did not cost $150,000: it cost nothing. I was happy to do it. That is the sort of guy I am—I am happy to walk out and speak to people on the street, get a bit of vitamin D, shake some hands, give them a smile; it costs nothing. Oh, no, that is not good enough for this Premier. He wants to convene a Citizens' Jury, where people are hand-picked, and some of them are exceptional people.

Mr Williams: You might even know one of them.

Mr MARSHALL: I might even know one of them—and what a fine contribution he made to the Citizens' Jury. I think what really upsets us so much on this side of the house when we spend money on these sorts of follies the Premier embarks on is that when the results do not come in as the Premier likes he completely ignores them. The people who sat on the Citizens' Jury, the people who gave their time to make a contribution to try to improve the vibrancy of city were ignored—ignored by this government, by those opposite, who simply do not care.

We know that the imposition of this tax is not supported. We know that the imposition of this tax is likely to increase on an ongoing basis. If you need any proof of that, you need only take a look at the solid waste levy in South Australia which, as you would know, started off at a very small amount. Look at it now—it is more than $50 per tonne. It was a few dollars when it started out, but now it is more than $50 per tonne. It is a massive cost to every household, every business, every council right across South Australia. What do they do with the money? It sitting in the bank. They are not even deploying it in the way in which the act provides.

That is another speech for another day, but I make the point that when these levies come into place they start at one point and they end up at a completely different point. We are all about supporting small business here in South Australia. We do not want to create any further burden for those people coming into the CBD. We canvassed, we spoke to a lot of people, and we made it very clear to all South Australians in the lead-up to the election that we did not support the car park tax. The government made it very clear that they did support the car park tax, and we went to the poll.

Let me tell you what happened in that poll: the Liberal Party won 53 per cent of the two-party preferred vote and the Labor Party won 47 per cent of the two-party preferred vote. The Labor Party's primary vote was at a staggeringly low 36 per cent. In fact, less than 36 per cent of the primary vote went to the South Australian Labor Party, which was out there advocating, day in, day out, to impose the transport development levy.

As I said, we do not arrive at this position lightly. It is an extraordinary decision for us to vote against the budget measure, but we are going to do it in this instance because this was an issue which received a lot of debate in the lead-up to the election, and the people of South Australia voted. If we did not follow through with this, I think we would be letting down the enormous number of people who voted for us. In fact, the Liberal Party, at the state election, had in excess of 92,000 additional votes over those opposite. It is an incredible increase in the number they had, and we want to honour those people who did not want a car park tax.

Those people want to grow the size of the South Australian economy. They favour small business, they favour economic growth, they favour jobs for the next generation, and that is why they do not want to support a car park tax, and that is why we will not be supporting a car park tax. As I have said, when we get to the committee stage of this debate, we will be moving amendments to that effect.

The government, of course, made an enormous promise to the people of South Australia. They said in February 2010 that they wanted to create 100,000 new jobs for South Australia and, again, we agree with the government on this measure. It is important to create hope for the next generation, it is important to create jobs, but nearly 4½ years into the government's six-year time frame for this promise, it is extremely sad to note that we are further behind; in fact, we have lost jobs. We have fewer people employed in South Australia now than when the government first made that promise.

Mr Bell interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Mount Gambier needs to be his seat so that I can call him to order. I remind him that the Speaker's scoreboard doesn't have his name here, so I am calling him to order.

Ms Redmond interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: But he is now, and I am calling him to order now.

Mr MARSHALL: The member for Mount Gambier, Deputy Speaker, you have reminded me, is an outstanding member of this chamber. He, like all of us on this side, understands the importance of jobs for the South Australian economy and, in particular, jobs in regional South Australia, and when we look at those job statistics, they are absolutely going backwards in South Australia because this is a government that does not have any interest or any confidence in people in the regions growing our economy in South Australia. He is going to be here working as hard as he possibly can for the people of Mount Gambier, for the people of regional South Australia, to create jobs and to grow jobs, and it is a great pleasure and privilege for me to be working with him in this chamber.

We have been asking the government consistently whether it absolutely and unequivocally stands by its commitment to create 100,000 jobs by February 2016, and for many, many months now the government has been saying yes. Well, 'see you later' to that promise because the budget came down and there is now no hope whatsoever that those 100,000 jobs can be created, and that is a real problem for us here in South Australia.

This is really why, when the Sensis Small Business Index was published the week before last, small business had plummeted further in South Australia. One of the interesting things about the Sensis Small Business Index is that it allows the respondents to this survey to rate their state or territory government, how helpful they are to the small business sector. Well, we were rated lowest in Australia: the small business sector in South Australia rated our government lowest in Australia. What did they say in that survey? They said in South Australia we had too much bureaucracy, lacked incentives for small business and taxation was too high—especially payroll tax, this is absolutely too high. It is a sad state of affairs.

I also read with interest the week before last in the Tasmanian Mercury about their government, the new Liberal reformist government led by that wonderful premier, Will Hodgman. He has only been in place for the same time that Jay Weatherill has been back since our election, and guess where Tasmania was in that confidence survey? It was No. 1 because Will Hodgman is implementing a Liberal reformist agenda to reduce taxes, reduce red tape and invest in productive infrastructure that is going to support exports from Tasmania, and the small business sector. The small business sector in that state, the SME sector, has responded. They have more confidence in that state government than any other state government in Australia, and I think that is a wonderful fillip for the Tasmanian economy, and I am sure we are going to see Tasmania do extraordinarily well going forward.

One of the biggest problems for us, of course, in this budget is wrong priorities. I have talked in this house already about the wrong priorities the government has in regard to agricultural expenditure. We have seen that cut down to just below $60 million per year. It is a third of where it was five years ago. I must commend the member for Hammond, whose contribution in this house was outstanding. He is a passionate man for the agricultural sector. We are passionate on this side about the importance of this sector going forward.

We have also spoken at length about the need to grow the size of our exports in South Australia. When this government initiated its State's Strategic Plan, the government said it had a goal to create $25 billion worth of exports from our states—$25 billion. Guess what we said on this side of the chamber? We said, 'Hear, hear! We strongly support that.' The government said it would facilitate $25 billion worth of exports by 2013.

Well, 2013 has come and gone. Did we achieve $25 billion? Did we get to half? We were already at 10, but did we get to 12½? No, we did not. We did not get anywhere near it, so what did the government do? I will tell you what the government did. The government said, 'What we are going to do is push out the time frame slightly to 2014.' Here we are, in 2014. This financial year is also completed, and did we achieve the $25 billion by this year? No. Did we get to half? No. What did the government do? It pushed out the time frame. Call me cynical, but it pushed out the time frame to 2020. It was originally going to be delivered by 2013 and it is now promised for 2020. I have absolutely no confidence that this government has any chance whatsoever of achieving that promise to the people of South Australia.

Another very wonky priority of this government is its expenditure in the Environment Protection Authority of South Australia. This is an agency that has received quite a lot of scrutiny in recent days when it was revealed that the government has known for an extended period of time about soil and groundwater contamination in the Clovelly Park and Mitchell Park areas. In fact, we are getting more and more information dripped out from the government. We have had to grab this information. It is like getting blood out of a stone. We are getting bits and pieces of information.

We now know that the government has been aware of significant contamination concerns in this area for years. We know for a fact that it has certainly been going back to 2008. I think the most important thing which came out today was the fact that the government has made it clear that, in fact, there is a trigger point. In fact, the minister in this house representing the Minister for the Environment made it clear that there is a trigger point at which people should be evacuated from their homes. This trigger point is two—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Somethings.

Mr MARSHALL: I think, milligrams per cubic metre.

Honourable members: Micrograms.

Mr MARSHALL: Micrograms—two micrograms per—

Ms Digance: Very minuscule—small.

Mr MARSHALL: Well, the member for Elder, whose electorate we are talking about—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Mr MARSHALL: —wants to laugh.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Mr MARSHALL: She will not even answer the question when she knew about it.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I am on my feet. It is not in order to interject. It is not in order to respond to interjections. I am calling the member for Elder to order, and I am asking the leader to continue with his debate.

Mr MARSHALL: The new trigger point was established today in this house. It begs the question: why is it that prior to the election, three houses were identified by the Minister for the Environment in the other place as being above that trigger point threshold as far back as February and March 2013, before the election? After the election, I will tell you what happens. After the election, they say that that is the trigger point at which people need to be evacuated. Before the election: 'Fine, stay there.' After the election: 'You need to be evacuated.'

What has changed? I will tell you what has changed. There was an election. It begs the question: why do we have a situation where the minister has not taken action when that World Health Organisation threshold was breached before the election? I think this minister has a lot of questions to answer. I think this government has a lot of questions to answer but, again I make the point that we get very few answers here. We have been stonewalled by this government for the last two days.

We know for a fact that they have known that three properties in Clovelly Park have had air contamination levels above the World Health Organisation safety threshold since February/March 2012. We know that there was a further consideration of this and the department was informed in October last year. We know for a fact that an independent report was received by the government in May this year. We know that the Minister for Social Housing has known since 11 June this year. She at least answered a question. We could not get anything out of the Premier. She at least answered a question: she has known since 11 June.

We know that the State Emergency Management Committee—yes, that is what it is called, Premier. It is incredible: he sits on it and he did not know what it was called. He thought it was a subcommittee of cabinet earlier today. That is the level of incompetence we have, but we know that an Emergency Management Committee meeting was hastily convened last week. Why was it hastily convened last week? To consider the evacuation of people living in these houses where the threshold is above this World Health Organisation trigger point in South Australia.

We know that cabinet considered this issue on Monday of this week and we also know that there was no action in accordance with the EPA protocols until the Liberal opposition raised this issue in the parliament yesterday. Let me tell you that we are not going to let this issue go. We have not been able to get any decent, sensible answers from this government. You ask a question of the Premier: 'When was the member for Elder informed?' He was unaware. She sits two seats behind him; he did not know.

We asked the same question a day later. You might have thought the government would have got around to speaking to each other. No way! Today we asked the question. 'I don't know.' Well, I think it is about time that the member for Elder stood up and gave a personal explanation and made it clear to the people of her electorate exactly and precisely when she did find out that there were dangerous situations in her electorate, and I would be very interested to find out when she knew. I would also be very interested to know why the Minister for Local Government was not aware of why the government stopped the Local Government Association from informing local government about these houses. There are plenty of questions on this, but I digress slightly.

I make the point that we have wrong priorities with this government and, in particular, the EPA. I was flicking through the EPA agency statement in this year's budget, handed down by the Treasurer only a few weeks ago. The thing that jumps out at you when you look at the EPA budget—because when anybody thinks of an environment protection agency, you think that their primary responsibility is to protect the environment. I do not think any of us would think that there is another reason for it.

Let me tell you that I was flabbergasted when I took a look at the situation with the Environment Protection Authority. This is now a profit centre for this government. This was always an agency which cost money; this is now projecting, in the most recent budget, to actually make almost an $8 million surplus this year. Who has actually heard of an environmental protection agency with a responsibility to return money to other agencies—significant money going out to other agencies—and a massive return of money to the Treasury? That just shows the degree of wrong priorities which sit within this government.

I think it is about time that we had an environmental protection agency which existed for one reason and one reason only, that is, to protect the environment. They have not done it in this case. There are serious questions which now need to be answered, not only by the minister but by the chairperson, Mia Handshin, the person who was appointed. She was hand-picked by this government. She was selected as a worthy person to head up the Environment Protection Authority.

We asked questions at the time about her suitability to chair the state's peak environmental protection agency in South Australia because she did not come to the role with academic credentials in this area. She did not come with a CV which made it abundantly clear to any of us what her particular credibility in the environmental area was. She was not a scientist; she is not a scientist. She made some flippant comments that she understood the importance of the environment.

Let me tell you that there are very serious questions which need to go to Mia Handshin, the chairperson. I see that the chief executive of the Environment Protection Authority has resigned since the election. I do not know the status of this appointment. In recent times, the government has not seen fit to advertise senior appointments. In fact, we will probably just get a memo fairly soon that people have been wandering the corridors of the Environment Protection Authority telling people, 'I have been promised the job.'

This seems to be the way that it operates here. We get no answers to any questions we ask in this area about very senior appointments by this government. They are a tired government and they have started to absolutely flout many of the protocols and conventions that have served South Australia well in terms of prudential appointments to senior roles in South Australia. We have plenty of questions regarding this.

I think that the minister has proved to be completely and utterly incompetent. On this side of the house, we have asked for him to resign. If he refuses to resign, we have asked for the Premier to sack him. We do not think that he is worthy to be the Minister for Environment. Yesterday, when he was asked a series of questions, no answers. He did not want to give any answers whatsoever. He has known about this contamination issue. He has known about the government's plan to evacuate people from their residence for an extended period of time and he has not taken action. That is in complete contravention from the EPA's own policy in this area.

I make the point that the previous minister for environment (the member for Colton) acted with far greater alacrity than the current minister has. He would come into the parliament and announce to the parliament the situation before the need to tell the residents. Here we just have the government sitting on their hands. We have the Minister for Social Housing telling us today that she knew since June 2011. Let me tell you that the residents affected by this contamination were not told until last night at 6 o'clock, and they were not told until the Liberal opposition raised this in question time.

I am reaching the conclusion of my contribution on the Budget Measures Bill before the house. We are in a perilous situation here in South Australia. The great state of South Australia has now become completely and utterly welfare dependent on other states through the unequal GST distribution we receive. We do not stand on our own two feet anymore. It is a sad state of affairs for South Australia. Even with this unequal distribution of GST to our state, we seem to be getting further and further behind the Liberal reformist governments that exist right around the rest of the nation. They are underpromising and overdelivering; we are doing exactly the opposite here in South Australia: we are overpromising and underdelivering.

The bulk of the budget measures contained in this bill will hurt South Australian households. This is a budget of broken promises and cost of living increases to households in South Australia. We see a whole pile of broken promises in regard to health projects right across the state and, as you would be more than aware, Deputy Speaker, a massive broken promise to the people of Florey and Newland who rely on the excellent Modbury Hospital. The postponement or cancellation of the upgrade to Modbury Hospital, in the vicinity of $27.5 million, is absolutely shameful.

The people of South Australia relied on promises made by the Australian Labor Party before the election which were broken in the budget afterwards. The people of Noarlunga feel very let down, the people at the Flinders Medical Centre feel very let down and the people at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital feel very let down. But it is not just the broken promises; it is the massive increase in costs that will be felt right across the state. Whether you be a small business, whether you be a household or whether you be an individual in this state, you are going to be doing it even tougher going forward.

We have the unenviable situation of being the highest taxed state in Australia, and we have the highest electricity prices in Australia, we have the highest water prices of any capital city in Australia, we have just had a massive increase in the emergency services levy here in South Australia, we have a WorkCover rate that is approximately double the national average—all these things create an environment in which our economy in South Australia is going backwards. It is going backwards because of the failed policy settings this government has put in place, and this budget has made it even that much harder.

Sitting extended beyond 17:00 on motion of Hon. S.C. Mullighan.

Mr WINGARD (Mitchell) (16:47): It is with great pleasure that I get to stand today to speak on the Budget Measures Bill. I must agree with what the member for Hammond and also our leader have said before me. As I look at the bill, I will start with the car park tax because for me that is something that really needs to be drilled down into.

There are a number of points with the car park tax: for a start, there is the fact that we want to call it a transport development levy. Please, give me a break. Let's call a spade a spade, and a spade a shovel. Call it what you like, but call it what it is; that is, it is a car park tax. That is what we have seen over time, that is what it is known as, that is what it is, but we want to give it these fancy names as we roll up to the election.

One of the things I thought was very interesting in the lead-up to the election was that there were a number of times when those opposite could have put this through the parliament, but they chose not to. They chose to hold off and wait and wait because they did not want to be the party that had put forward a car park tax. Now they are, and they are taking money again from the hip pockets of South Australians.

I think of the member for Hammond and his constituents. I have a lot to do with a lot of people in the country regions around South Australia, and my father lives in the South-East. I am thinking of the Saturday when he will drive to the city to go to the footy. He will try to make an appointment while he is here in the city. He might go to see his accountant or his doctor or something like that, and he will drive into the city because he cannot get public transport from Kingston in the South-East, as you would understand.

He will drive into the city and pay his car park tax when he goes to see the doctor on one side of the city, then he will drive over to the footy and pay the car park tax again. He will go to the footy with his ticket and there he will be hit by the fun tax, or the public transport tax, or an events levy, as I am sure it is going to be called, but it is a tax. Again, let's be honest, it is another tax.

You can get the gist of the story here: clearly, it is a government that has lost control of their spending and they have to reap it back anyway they can. Those opposite might laugh about the name they call these things, but the spin is phenomenal. I have worked in the media environment for a long time, and it is very obvious and very evident when you see this spin rolling out. Here are two classic cases in point: try to give it a different name, try and paint it with a different brush but, let's be honest, it is all a tax.

As I stressed, it is do with the fact that the overspending has gone on for so long. The budget is out of control and the debt is getting out of control. No-one on the other side seems to be able to take control of the spending, reign it in and get a handle on what is actually going on with the finances. When you cannot get control of expenditure and the money that is going out, and it is just overspend after overspend, deficit after deficit, blowout after blowout, what do you need to do? Get your hands on some revenue and increase taxes. As was pointed out, taxes are up 10 per cent in South Australia from this year to the next, and it is quite phenomenal.

In regard to payroll tax, again we go into an election and those opposite try to put a bit of a turn on things and say, 'We are going to reduce payroll tax for 12 months. That's all we're going to do to help businesses out and help them grow.' There is no surety or solidity for businesses to be able to grow and bring in more people. They will reduce payroll tax for 12 months. Again, it is just a little carrot but nothing that will incentivise business to grow. Then after 12 months, bang, payroll tax is back on and we going to keep hitting businesses and keep reaping in money from everywhere we can.

On land tax, South Australia is the worst of all the states in this country. It is quite phenomenal when people find out the amount of land tax paid here. Again, this is a state that needs to be bringing people in, getting investment going and getting people to spend their money in South Australia. When you look at the fees on land tax, why would you invest in a property here in South Australia when you could potentially do so interstate at a far cheaper rate? The list goes on.

Another matter that concerns me is that with the sale of MAC no longer will the government collect CTP; that will go to a private entity. We are still trying to find out where the money will come from to fund the Motor Accident Commission's programs and its education programs it does so successfully. Where is the money going to come from? I would lay London to a brick a levy is going to be put on those new CTP operators who provide private insurance. Again, be ready for another levy on your rego.

I did note that just before the election the registration fees went down a little bit in lieu of bringing in another scheme after the election. So, after the election, again regos go up. Just before they go down, just after they go up—a bit of a shuffling of the books they claim, but again it is notably a good bit of spin for the people out there in voter land during the election. It is quite phenomenal how this goes on.

We talk about the car park tax and the way that people are going to get hit with it. The member for Hammond talked about bike riders; he was hoping that people from Murray Bridge might ride their bike down and he talked about how they would get taxed. If they did ride their bike down and went to the city, they would still be taxed because they would get hit with the public transport tax as well, the events tax, or the fun tax, call it what you will. There is no way of avoiding any of these taxes that are being brought in by this government. It is quite phenomenal.

We then roll into the emergency services levy—again, another tax. You can call it a levy, call it a tax, but that is what it is: $150 to $190 for each household every year. It is as good as land tax on the family home. That is what it is, another $150 to $190 being hit on every household each year. It is quite phenomenal. People ask, 'Why are all these taxes going on?' Everyone starts blaming the federal government, and that is all we ever hear from the other side. What I have noticed is this is the state budget, the Budget Measures Bill for the state budget. At no stage has anyone taken responsibility for the poor shape and form of this state budget. It fascinates me.

I was amazed to hear the Treasurer speaking on the radio the other day about the debt and deficit and the $1.2 billion deficit that turned out in last year's budget. When he was quizzed on this topic, he had to come through with the truth. He had to come clean and explain to the people of South Australia that that $1.2 billion deficit he returned in the last budget this state Labor government brought down had absolutely nothing to do with the federal government. As much as they try to push the blame, as much as they try to pass the buck, they have to take responsibility for their budget. I stress again: it is the Budget Measures Bill for this state government. Those on the other side should take some responsibility. They have had 12 years of mismanagement, and that is the reason we are in this position.

We look forward to the state health figures too, and again it makes me laugh when we hear those on the other side keep talking about the federal cuts. If we look at the state health cuts, $1 billion going out of state health thanks to the state Labor government. The Treasurer is cutting $1 billion out of state health and there is also a significant amount of money coming out of state education as well—$223 million.

I find it really funny that we are in here talking about state politics and the state budget measures, but never do those on the other side point out the fact that they have cut $1 billion out of state health and $223 million out of the state education system. It is a little bit hypocritical that they sit there passing the buck and take no responsibility for what they are doing or how they are doing it. It is quite phenomenal.

I also refer to the credit rating. We had a AAA credit rating a number of years ago, and the Premier at his own behest said, 'We will downgrade that to grow jobs.' Well, there has been next to no jobs growth in that time. We have heard about the 100,000 jobs that were coming, but we have not even got close. I think it is going to be nearly 5,000 jobs a month for the remaining months to try to reach that target—something astronomical.

We dropped down to a AA+ credit rating, again to grow jobs which never happened, but the drop in that credit rating (and now we are down to a AA credit rating) means we pay more on our borrowings. I am not sure how much the people out there understand that, and perhaps it is my job to explain it a little bit simpler and easier to them, but the drop in this credit rating means that the interest we pay on our loans is far greater as a state, and that is hitting everyone. So, mismanagement of the economy brings down the credit rating, or some might do it on purpose for whatever reason, I do not know. We are bringing down the credit rating and then we are paying more on our borrowings—and we are happy to see it keep going down—all to create jobs which are not there. It is quite phenomenal.

As we said, South Australia is now the highest taxed jurisdiction in the country. It is absolutely unbelievable how we think we are going to get ahead when we keep taxing. I do not know any place which has taxed its way to prosperity; it just does not happen. We keep putting imposts and restrictions on business, they do not grow and they do not want to be here. People do not want to be here when they have those imposts on them. Why would you set up a business in a state that has such high taxes and is holding you back? Why not go somewhere else? Plenty of other states are calling for people to come over there and set up business in their jurisdictions and in their area.

This government is making it hard for South Australians to get ahead and it is making it hard for businesses to grow. I have not met a business yet that says, 'You know what, I want to go to work today and lay people off.' Businesses do not say that. Businesses do not say, 'You know what, I don't want to go well. I want to go backwards so that I have to lay people off and I have to close my business.' Businesses want to grow. They want to employ more people, be more prosperous and increase the economy. That is what business wants to do, so why you would sit there and restrict them and stop them and hinder them from employing people has absolutely got me whacked. I really cannot understand why that would be the case.

From where I sit, I think this government should be doing everything it can to help grow business, to help small business get moving and employ more people, to pick up more apprentices and give more people opportunity. That is what young people say to me when I speak to them when I am out at supermarkets or doorknocking or whatever in my electorate. They say they want more opportunity, and that is what we have to try to create for these people: we need to create more opportunity. I think the restrictions that we put on business and people in South Australia—I will talk about the cost of living in a moment—just drag people down and make it harder and harder for people to get ahead and for this state to grow, and it is seen in the statistics.

I point out that the budget tax revenue will increase by 10 per cent in South Australia from 2013-14 to 2014-15—10 per cent; it is quite phenomenal. I cannot see, again, when you look at those numbers and those restrictions that we are putting on people, how you think things are going to grow, how people are going to get ahead, how people are going to go out there and say, 'You know what, it's getting tougher, it's getting harder. I'm going to put my hard-earned money into a business and try to employ someone.' Again, it just does not make any sense.

We look through the cost of living, and I want to talk about that, because this is something that I think hurts businesses and families. We run through some of the things: CPI has increased at 40 per cent over the duration of this government, housing rental prices have gone up 54 per cent, property charges 87 per cent and state taxes 92 per cent. These are the ones that really hurt, though: gas bills up 136 per cent, electricity bills up 160 per cent and water bills up 227 per cent. Those numbers are absolutely phenomenal and they hurt local communities, local sporting clubs, local businesses and, more importantly, they hurt families.

I heard with interest, as a couple of members in the house were talking about the automanufacturing industry. It was pointed out by the member for Hammond, and rightly so, that when Holden closed, which was very sad for all the workers and people involved, it was pointed out by General Motors International in Detroit that it did not matter how much money was going to get thrown at them, they had made the decision that they were going to close that down.

I revert back to my past life when I worked in the media when I heard the Minister for Tourism talk about the Clipsal 500. I was heavily involved in that event over the journey, and a few of my mates were drivers with different teams; one of them was with Holden, and had great support from Holden and that was fantastic, but what was noted in the supercar industry over the past few years—and I suggest it goes back as far as four years and I think there were even negotiations five years back, and I found this really intriguing—they could see what they called 'the writing on the wall'.

There was a move within the industry. There was always a rivalry between Ford and Holden on the track and it had great success, but when they saw the writing on the wall—and this was a few years ago now—they started to bring in Volvo, Mercedes and they chased down other marks and other names to bring in. They brought in Nissan as well. They brought in these other marks and other names. Why did they do that? I can tell you why they did that. They saw what was going to happen in the manufacturing industry with cars here in Australia, and that was five years ago. They were very clever and they got things in place.

They realised if you sit still and sit stagnant, you are not going to grow. You will not grow if you are going to sit and do what you have always done. So, they had a look at it and they thought, 'Let's bring these other marks, these other makes in. We want to stay alive.' They stayed with Ford and Holden, they knew that because of what was going on in the economy that things were going to wind down, so they brought in these extra makes and extra marks, and they maintained their vibrancy and their business.

It was fascinating to me that in this state the writing was on the wall for the car industry and people in the know, through the car industry and whatnot, were looking at what was going on there, and they could see what was taking shape. But what did we do here as a state government? How did we look to address this situation? What were the contingencies we had in place? Well, it seems to me there was nothing.

There were no contingencies, nothing in place and when the shutdown came. As the member for Hammond pointed out, General Motors Holden overseas said, 'We are sorry but no matter how much money you throw at us, there is nothing we can do,' and this government said, 'What happened? It is not our fault.' They started pointing the finger again and everyone was to blame but themselves. They took no responsibility for it and that is the sort of thing that happens.

When you have a budget you take responsibility. You set your benchmarks, you set what you are trying to achieve and it is your job and your fiscal responsibility to uphold that. That is where Liberal reformist governments around the states and in New Zealand have done a marvellous job. They set their benchmarks and their levels and they attain their levels, and they stick to a budget. They do not just say, 'Well, that is a budget.' I have heard the leader say this, and it is very apt: budgets are not a target to try to shoot past, budgets are a target to try to attain.

That is how businesses operate, that is how a business has to operate if it is going to be successful. You cannot run a business or a household by blowing your budget: earning only so much and spending X amount more. If you keep spending more than you earn, you are going to get yourself in very big trouble. Not to make mention of that, if you start paying your mortgage on your Visa card—again, people at home will work out very quickly that if you pay your mortgage on your Visa card, eventually things are going to catch up with you.

I refer back to the car park tax, which is one that this government is adamant about. They are driving a message to try to get people onto public transport, or so they tell us, yet they are building new roads. They have people coming from my electorate down south. They have the nice Southern Expressway duplication that they are starting to open—the fact that half of my electorate cannot get on it and it goes through their backyard is another story—funnelling people into the city, but they are saying not to use it, to go on public transport 'and we'll tax you for that, come in your car and we will tax you for that'. So, stay at home, but we do not want to be a stay-at-home state. We want people to get moving. We want the place to be vibrant. We want to get things going.

When people come to South Australia and they see the taxes being piled upon them and building upon them because of the 12 years of financial mismanagement by this government, they realise that this government is just trying to claw back money. They have spent recklessly, they have kept no control over what they have been doing and they are needing to claw back money any way they can. I stress with the emergency services levy, and the Treasurer explained that so well, that the government used to fund part of the emergency services levy.

Now they realise they need to take that money back, again, to cover all of their mismanagement and all of their out-of-control spending for so long, so they need to take the money out of that. So they will just up the emergency services levy and, again, take more money from everyday South Australians, just take it out of their pocket; 'We need it, we're taking it from you.' There is no incentive for people to get ahead here and start a business or start something that would get this state moving. Where is it?

Every time people go to do something, more money gets taken out of their back pocket, and it really does deflate people. It is why so many leave this state, why so many people leave South Australia and head interstate or overseas. It has happened in my family just in recent times. My cousin has been here for a number of years—he came back from Queensland to be close to his family—but he could not last here because there were no jobs. Industries are closing down and there is no opportunity here in South Australia, so what do families do? They pack up and they move; they go back to Queensland, they head to Melbourne, they head to Sydney.

Just recently my neighbour sold up her house. I thought it might have been because I moved into the street, but she assured me it was not. I was actually great friends with her son when I was growing up, and I said 'You are getting to retirement age; why are you leaving South Australia and getting out of here?' She said that Johnny, her son, lived in Sydney and their daughter lived in Melbourne, so they are moving to Ballarat; there is no point being here in Adelaide because the kids can never come back. There are no opportunities for their kids to come back here to South Australia so they have had to get up and move out.

It is happening across the board; young people looking for opportunity or older people wanting to be closer to their kids and grandkids. They are just packing up and moving out of South Australia. South Australia is much better than that. I have four children and I want to see them have opportunities. By all means they can go and travel the world and do what they want, but you want them to be able to come back to South Australia, have a job and have opportunities, across all generations. Those are a couple of things we really need to take into consideration, and the way that the economy is travelling and the way the budget that has been handed down by this Labor government is shaping up, it looks to me to be of great concern. It is about tax, tax and more tax.

Equally, there is the way that all the attention is being diverted to the feds and no responsibility, none whatsoever, is being taken by this state Labor government for the situation they have put us in. I stress again that the Treasurer on radio the other day admitted that the budget for the last financial year we have just been through, a $1.2 billion deficit, was nothing to do with the feds. So, no smoke and mirrors; do not try to do the spin any more. Take responsibility for the financial situation this state is in; 12 years of mismanagement has put us in this situation. We are coming from a long way back.

A few moments ago the leader talked about business confidence. Business confidence is higher in Tasmania than it is in South Australia, and that has to be an alarming fact, first and foremost. When we are falling down, and we are playing in that ball game and we are getting beaten by Tasmania, we really do have to take stock of what is going on. This has happened over 12 years and it has to stop, the mismanagement has to stop. We have to make sure that we to stick to budget.

I welcome the government saying that they are going to be back in surplus in two years' time. I really would like to see it; I do not believe it is going to happen, but I would like to see it. So that is what I look for. I would really like to see the budget back under control and this government take some responsibility for its actions over the past 12 years.

Time expired.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I notice there is no mention today of my visit to Mitchell.

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Since he has been elevated he is a different man.

Mr Wingard interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Too late, too late.

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (17:08): I would like to make a contribution and talk about this car park tax, this transport development levy. Call it what you like, it is another tax. It is one of many taxes that have been handed down in this recent budget.

It is a sad indictment on South Australia that we have got ourselves into such a position, such a financial dilemma that we have nowhere to go and no way out. South Australians are the lesser for it, they are the lesser for a government that is in for its fourth term. It was elected because won more seats, the government continues to tell us that; it did not win the popular vote.

South Australians will now need to make an assessment of just why this current government continues to get back in. This is another one of the reasons they should not be put back in. This development levy is going to impact every car park space in the CBD, around $750 a space. As the leader has explained, that is just a token of where we are headed, a $750 tax on top of an events levy. That is something that grinds my gears.

Sport is meant to be apolitical, yet we have a minister over there who laughs about introducing another tax. It is just outrageous that while the state government is introducing taxes we have ministers laughing about it. I am sure the minister responsible for the tax is a Port Power supporter, but he will have to answer to every South Australian who is going to grace events where they will have to pay another tax, a fun tax. I think it is a sad indictment. So it may be that any one of those 5,000 people attending those events needs to reassess how they will vote next time. Maybe those people who are coming into the CBD will have to reassess where their vote will go.

I have a petition here to stop the introduction of the Adelaide car park tax. It has reached 5,000 signatures. We have 5,000 signatures saying no, which coincides with 5,000 attendees going to events who are going to get a double whammy of taxes. It stands out that this government is just intent on managing their mis-spending by introducing another tax.

Some of the people who have been part of this petition have said, 'The CBD should be accessible yet also affordable. I won't be coming to the CBD. I'll shop elsewhere.' Another person said, ‘Through circumstances, these significant implications to the Adelaide CBD will favour me shopping outside the CBD. I'll go elsewhere.' There are many comments. Another comment is, 'I'm already finding the car park in the city so expensive that I cannot afford to go. This then means I will do more shopping online.' So no-one is the winner.

While people are deterred from coming to the shopping precinct, they will shop online, so no-one in the CBD will win; we will not get anyone in the metropolitan areas winning, the local shops, the local businesses. They will be the losers from this car park tax because people will be deterred from coming into the city. I would like to remind you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I do not live in the city. For me, parking in the city will be a deterrent with the introduction of this car park tax, I will go elsewhere. I think that is a pretty clear message of exactly what is going on. This car park tax, car park levy—call it what you want—is a deterrent for people to come in to keep the city centre vibrant.

As the Minister for Tourism (the minister for dining) continues to say, 'Shops aren't open. Why aren’t they open?’ Because people are not going to go there if they have to pay extra tax in the CBD. They cannot afford the penalty rates. They deter people from coming into the city. It all just multiplies. Soon we are going to have more taxes—the fun tax, the car park tax, the levies, the wage implications for people working after hours, working weekends. It is a recipe for sending the tumbleweed down the streets.

South Australians will have to endure many extra taxes and levies thanks to this budget. Does anyone across the chamber remember pre-election that the Liberals promised no new taxes and no new levies? Labor's decision to add new taxes and levies really does fly in the face of every voter in South Australia. I call on the voters in South Australia, in voter land, to remember that. It might be a long way off—three years, two hundred and something days—but I just want voters to remember that they were given an opportunity to vote for the Liberal Party, with no new taxes and no new levies, yet they went with the same old same old party that continues to up the taxes, up the levies, hit the pocket and make the cost of living more and more expensive and unaffordable.

I have had many seniors come to my electorate office saying that they are doing everything in their power to drive the cost of living down. As I said in my contribution to the budget reply, these people are not turning their heaters on, they are not turning their lights on and, in some cases, they are turning their TVs off and turning their radio on because it costs less to run. That is sad. That is a sad indictment of life in South Australia. To those people: I share your pain but, sadly, the current government has imposed these taxes, this cost of living, on you.

Again, I have a scenario. When volunteers come to Adelaide for their screening check, and in that screening check visit they want to go to the football at the Adelaide Oval, how much is it going to cost them? Not only are they paying extra to park in the city and extra to go to the football, they are also paying extra to have their screening check. It beggars belief; it really does beggar belief.

I want to touch on the NRM community grants funding program. It comes around—well, the NRM cuts. They have axed $1.5 million from the program. Those volunteer groups give their time; they are the environmental warriors that go out there and are custodians for keeping our environment in a better condition, making it a better place. This is what volunteers are about. It is $5 billion industry to South Australia and yet we see a government that puts another tax on them; increases the screening by 33 per cent. I think it is just outrageous.

I look across. We have a Premier who is touted to be from the left, the green finger. He is an environment lover and yet he does this sort of thing. He allows this sort of thing to come across the cabinet table and be passed. Again, he claims to be a champion of the environment, a champion of the river; he got more water for the river. We called for 4,000 gigalitres and a basin plan. It did not happen. He said 4,000, gigalitres and no water would come from the irrigators. Sadly, it did not happen. He promised something that he could not give.

What I would say on this side is that the South Australian Liberal Party—and I am quite proud to say that I was part of that consultation in delivering a sustainable basin plan—came up with 2,750 gigalitres. We came up with that number a long time before it was announced, and the reason that we came up with that number was we consulted. We did not go out and tell people what we thought they needed to hear. We consulted with people. We went out to communities. We went out to environmental groups. We went out to the food producers and we asked them to come up with sensible ideas, to come up with sensible outcomes for the sustainability of the river.

Over the last 40 or 50 years, those operators have gained efficiencies. They have been great managers of the river. They have been great managers of their land. They have been great managers. They do the bird counts; they do the fish counts. They undertake all the environmental management responsibilities that they have to undertake so that they have a pristine environment, they have a sustainable river, they have a sustainable piece of land that they manage, and yet we have a Premier who has broken a promise over and over.

As I said, he said 4,000 gigalitres; the basin plan was 2,750. No water from the irrigators; well, the water has come from the irrigators to date. When the cabinet was up in the Riverland Monday week ago, I asked the Premier to outline a plan of just where they were going to take some responsibility for their contribution to the basin plan. South Australia—183 gigalitres. In amongst that 183, so far to date the irrigators and their communities have given up about 100 gigalitres. There are about 83 gigalitres still to be recovered.

The federal government has put money on the table. They are looking for 40 gigalitres; that leaves 43 to go. There are some environmental works and measures that I see will contribute to that; there are still another 20 gigalitres of water unanswered for. I think that the Premier needs to stand up and make an announcement. I would applaud him if he was to put his hand in his pocket and pull out that 20-gigalitre parcel of water and make a contribution to the plan. If he is such a champion of the river, put his water where his mouth is.

What underpins the sustainable river, again, are those community groups. In particular, the Loxton Bookpurnong Local Action Group have been in the game for 18 years. They have managed about $10 million worth of projects in planning. They have been outstanding citizens, outstanding environmental warriors for that Loxton Bookpurnong region that they look after. They have great watering programs, they have great environmental rebuilding programs. They look after the wildlife, they do the bird counts and the fish counts, they keep an eye on the pests and the weeds. They do all the responsible actions, yet accessible grant funding for many of these projects has now been cut.

Who is going to perform those duties? Let's face it, people cannot be expected to dip their hand in their pocket and pay for the car park tax levy and the fun tax, to pay for all of these other new taxes, new levies and broken promises. All of a sudden, we have no-one out there looking after the environment. With these broken promises, it seems to be a theme that we have this continual blame game. Everyone on the government's side of the chamber has stood up and had a little blah, blah about federal government cuts to the budget and what it means to South Australia. The reason we have had to make cuts is that we had a federal Labor government that did not know when to stop spending, they did not know where to spend.

When we look at some of those programs, they were absolutely outrageous. We have seen debt and mismanaged funds. We have seen the country go from surplus into deficit, we have seen money put into areas that should never have been there, and we say that it was to stimulate the GFC. Well, please! Every other state had it, every other country had it, yet here we are in South Australia paying the price. It is beyond belief. With the $1.2 billion deficit, the Treasurer did say on radio that it was not the fault of the federal government, so I think that really does highlight that the truth is slowly going to eke out. We cannot have ministers and Labor backbenchers standing up and playing the blame game.

I want to touch on vehicle manufacturing. I know that the previous speaker, the member for Mitchell, talked about the Clipsal and friends within the car racing fraternity. I watched the Premier yesterday politicising and having a political stage play, as I call it, standing up and pretending to get angry. Please! That was the lamest pretend I have ever seen.

Yes, it is sad that the vehicle manufacturing industry in this state is destined for the heap. But I can tell you that, five or six years ago, the industry and the unions knew what was going on. It was not just the race car fraternity. The industry and the unions knew about the decline of the vehicle manufacturing sector, and they predicted back then that for both Ford and Holden their days were numbered and, funnily enough, they also predicted that Toyota's days were numbered.

We get this blame game again that it was all about the South Australian Liberal Party not sticking up for the vehicle manufacturing sector. It was inevitable that it was going to happen. The federal Coalition had done the negotiations, they had been to the manufacturing sector internationally and sought advice about what their plan was going to be, and it was plain. The vehicle manufacturing sector came out and said, 'No matter how much money the government tips in, the industry is doomed.' So, it is a sad day for South Australia.

As I said, I did an apprenticeship at GMH at Woodville, and I was proud to be a GMH apprentice because they offered some of the best facilities in the state and in the country. I went on to do post-trades in toolmaking and other areas. They offered me an opportunity, they offered me something to go on with in life. When I was made redundant—out of a workforce of 20,000 people, I was part of the 3,600 redundancy packages—I got on with life. They had given me the opportunity to gain skills, and I went out and used those skills in another sector. I went out there, and I was part of a workforce in another area. Life went on.

For those who are potentially going to lose their job, I say that there is hope, there is light at the end of the tunnel. For those who are potentially reaching an age where they do not think they can go on, I say to them: look outside the square, there are other opportunities. They do not have to go into the manufacturing sector; they can go into something that is different. They can go out there and—

Ms Sanderson: Be a member of parliament.

Mr WHETSTONE: Yes, they can. They can do some volunteering, they can be good, and they can make a difference. So, again, to those people: there is life after the manufacturing sector.

One thing I would like to reiterate is that the food sector, agriculture, again seems to be underpinning our state's economy. One thing I want everyone in this chamber to remember is that the food sector is the largest employer in manufacturing. So, take heart, because the agricultural sector will pick up this state's economy once again, as it has done for 120 years, and we will move on and this state will become great again. With a change of government, and more reliance on agriculture, this state will be a great state.

Just on the back of that, the trade opportunities, I will quickly touch on opportunities for South Australia. We continue to look at export opportunities. We continue to say that the shining light is in China or that the light that is about to start shining is in India. We have many shining lights. We have export opportunities all over the globe, in particular in South-East Asia. They are creating opportunities every day, and when we have a presence in those markets that is when we have the opportunity to grasp those negotiations with exporters, marketers and producers, but they need to be looking at one another face to face.

My recommendation to the new ideas minister—oh, that is right, the trade minister, the minister with all the ideas that no-one else has—is that he needs to have the face to face. We cannot just have politicians and bureaucrats going over there negotiating trade deals—that does not work. The Asians, the Chinese, the Japanese, all sectors, want to look a producer in the eye. They want to meet the person—the man or woman—who is growing the product, who is manufacturing a product, who is an innovator. They want to look at and engage them so they can form a relationship and can say, 'I've met this person, I have a relationship with them, I'm going to do business with them,' because they do not do business with a politician, they do not do business with a bureaucrat and they do not do business with dignitaries. So, that is some advice I have for our minister for ideas.

Export opportunities: it does not just have to be international export opportunities for South Australia. We need to cast ourselves to our brothers and cousins across the borders, we need to put products into other states. Mark my words, every other state in this nation is coming to South Australia to sell their wares. We need to get out there and sell our wares. It is about opportunities in another country, in a faraway place. We need to look close to home as well as at bringing in new money. It is not about South Australia making the same money go round and round. It is about bringing international money, about bringing interstate money to South Australia, and making South Australia a greater place. That is why I entered politics: to make South Australia a better place.

Time expired.

Ms SANDERSON (Adelaide) (17:28): I rise to also make a contribution regarding the Budget Measures Bill and to indicate my strong opposition to the car park tax, which I think will have a devastating effect on the City of Adelaide. For some background, the transport development levy was issued in a RevenueSA circular on 18 December 2012, so it is 18 months since that was first indicated by the Labor Party, yet this is the first time they have decided to put it with the budget rather than testing out this policy with the public, presenting it before the election, bringing it to parliament and letting us have a proper debate. They have waited and put it in with the budget bill, which brings us to an extraordinary situation where, for the good of our state, the Liberal Party will be voting against this and trying to amend the budget bill.

The car park tax will apply to all public car park spaces, long or short-term leased car parks, privately owned car parks that are subject to the fringe benefit tax, and on-street ticketed car park spaces. It will not apply to residential car parking spaces or privately owned car parks that are not subject to fringe benefit tax, disabled car parks, parks for emergency vehicles, the short-term visitor car parks at the Royal Adelaide Hospital or special event car park spaces. However, they have brought in a fun tax for that, and that is unusual.

From 2014-15, owners of car parking spaces will be subject to the transport development levy which, announced at $750, if you include the GST is actually $825. The state government estimates that revenue generated in the first two years following this car parking tax will be $25.7 million in 2014-15 and $26.4 million in 2015-16. The state government has already announced that the levy will be used to fund new park-and-ride facilities that are quite far out of the Adelaide City Council area and will not actually improve any of the public transport in the city area.

The car parking tax is actually a solution to a problem that the government created. The problem, the government states, is its own poor record in providing efficient public transport, and it has meant that there are 5.5 million fewer boardings on public transport. Part of that is caused by the botched bus contract that was based on price and, as we know, it cost several million dollars to reprint all the bus timetables to allow more time.

Many users of buses lost faith in the bus system. There was news article after news article and news reports of people complaining that their bosses were upset and going to fire them if they were late to work again, and students were getting into trouble at school for being late to school. It was the highest number of complaints ever recorded to the complaints line. It was just chaotic, and many people lost their faith in the public transport system, particularly buses, at that time.

The government spent millions to reprint the bus timetables allowing more time, so a trip that normally should take 15 minutes now takes 20 minutes—so it is not more efficient, it is less efficient. Then the government spent more money putting bus lanes throughout the city which, if there is congestion, would be one of the main factors why we have congestion in the city. The government wants more people to catch public transport and fewer people to drive into the city.

However, I do not think that this car parking tax will achieve that goal at all. In fact, I think that a lot of the measures the government itself has instigated have caused the problem. If we start on a time line, the tram was extended through King William Street and onto North Terrace. Everyone loves trams and everyone loves Melbourne. It is a great city, and I think we are trying to copy their vibrancy.

However, the tram the government put in is a tram that took away every right-hand turn through the city. It has a raised platform so you cannot cross over the tramline. You cannot drive on the tramline through King William Street or North Terrace. On North Terrace, it has a raised median strip so, as a business owner on North Terrace, when the tram came in, it meant that there was absolutely no way of accessing my office in the city due to the tram. Not only has the tram made accessing the city very difficult but also it has contributed to congestion by the removal of all the extra lanes. In Melbourne, and also in the southern part of King William Street, cars can use the lane that the tram has. That is one reason we have more congestion.

Then, of course, we have the bus lanes (which were also to try to cover a mistake the Labor government had made with their cheaper bus contracts), and now we have the bike lane that has just gone into Frome Street. There are many reasons why there are problems with congestion throughout the city, and I really do not believe that the car parking tax will help alleviate that at all.

I have some examples of businesses that have contacted me. One business in the city has several car parks they lease out for their customers to park for free, so now an extra $825 a year will be added to the cost of already leasing those car parks for them to provide parking for people to go to their store and buy food, drinks and whatever they buy there. Another example is the Target car park, which has 980 bays. If you multiply that by $750, that is $735,000 a year extra that business owner will have to pay.

As you know when you value an asset, it is usually valued on the income that it makes, so now the income-producing ability of that asset has been reduced by $735,000 which will then potentially devalue the property. If that property is mortgaged against other properties, it has a knock-on effect and it will have a devastating effect on many businesses far beyond what the government is perhaps considering.

Several accounting firms have contacted me that provide parking for both their staff and customers, who are also very annoyed. We have St Luke's Church on Whitmore Square which leases out its parks on its premises in order to help with the running costs of the church. They do some wonderful work with people throughout the city and that is the way in which they fund it. There are many other charity organisations. The National Council of Women also leases out parks and the Salvation Army leases out parks.

Many not-for-profit organisations and non-government organisations actually make money by leasing out parks on their land in the city, and so they will all be hit and they are people that we really need to be supporting rather than penalising. This does not only have an impact on businesses but it also has an impact on residences, which is even worse from my point of view. They are the people that I represent in the city area, although I am very aware of all the businesses and the concerns that they have raised.

After the introduction of the Capital City DPA, minimum car parking requirements have been removed from the Capital City Zone and catalyst sites. This has led to numerous housing developments that have been built throughout the city without adequate and sometimes without any car parking and, at the same time, the government has introduced stamp duty concessions and first homebuyer concessions for young people and low-income earners. So, on the one hand, we are trying to get people to move into the city, yet we have taken away the compulsion to provide adequate car parking.

Resident one, we will call them, who contacted my office, lives in the Uno Apartments and does not have a car park. Uno was built with only 36 car parks for 146 apartments. As this person does not have street frontage she is not entitled to a parking permit from the council. This person requires a car due to her disability which makes walking difficult, public transport is not available on her street and she needs a car to get to appointments. Due to her only income being the disability pension, she is already having difficulty paying for parking in the city and feels the extra $750 will make it impossible for her to have a car and thus will make her feel even more isolated.

Another resident who contacted me purchased an apartment in the city where there was no car park provided. She understands that private residents could be exempt; however, the permanent car park that she leases at a cost of $270 per month is a public car park adjacent to her building and will be subject to the car parking tax. So, this levy will be passed on to city residents and others who have bought new apartments in the city where car parking is not provided, which is a lot of new city developments.

As we know, the cost and convenience of car parking is the number one deterrent for people shopping, dining and visiting the city. The car park tax will provide further disincentive when travelling to the city for shopping and leisure as the $825 with GST per annum per space will inevitably be passed on to the consumer. Retail and hospitality as well as the vibrancy in the city will unavoidably suffer as an unintended consequence of this levy.

The Property Council has condemned the car parking tax, claiming the tax will make the CBD less attractive for businesses and only exacerbate the CBD office vacancy situation which is already at the worst it has been in over a decade. From memory, I was checking office vacancies just in the 5000 postcode and I am pretty sure it was up over 600,000 square metres of vacant office space in the city already.

The last thing we need to do is to make it even more expensive for people to run a business in this city. The Adelaide City Council has raised concerns several times in their meetings and it believes that the direct cost of the levy in its current form to council will be $6.4 million per annum, which would involve a 20 per cent increase on their current rates and which we know will also then be passed on to business owners and residents of the city who already pay high rates for the privilege of being in the city. The car park tax is merely an add-on land tax. We already have the highest land tax in the country and now we are adding another tax on the owners of any land in our city.

Let's look at some of the results in other cities. Melbourne has a congestion levy. That was introduced in 2006 at $400 per space and has increased several times since then. It applies to approximately 50,000 places in the city and some surrounding districts. It produced a marginal reduction in car park trips of 8 per cent. The corresponding increase in public transport use was only 2 per cent, so this means that 6 per cent fewer people are choosing to go into the city of Melbourne, which is devastating for the city of Melbourne as well. It is not a good thing and they are clearly not the workers whom this is aimed at. These are the people who have a choice to shop at Westfield or shop somewhere else or go to a local dentist.

We can see from experience interstate that this will mean fewer people going into the city and it will not be the workers: it will be the people who have a choice, the people who create the vibrancy that we all so dearly seek. Most business owners in Melbourne absorb the cost of the car parking rather than charging that on to their staff or customers which added yet another cost to running their business and, as we know, we have the highest cost of business in Australia, so the last thing we need is another cost added to our business owners.

In terms of commercial car park owners in Melbourne, the experience was that they transferred the burden of the levy from their long-term contract parking spaces—people who lease their car parks on a monthly basis. They did not put the price up for them. What they did was pass that levy on to the people with the short-term parking, so the cost of going shopping for an hour or two or three had a double levy, rather than affecting the long-term parkers which was what the government was trying to do. What we are trying to do here is get the long-term parkers to catch public transport into the city and, as we can see from what happened in Victoria, that was not what happened. It was passed on to the short-term users of the city and again, they are the people we need in the city shopping, visiting dentists, visiting lawyers, using services in the city.

In Sydney they have two different categories: $2,160 in the city and business areas and $770 in Bondi Junction, Chatswood, Parramatta and St Leonards, with extensive exemptions being given. This was brought in in 2009. When they surveyed respondents who drove to an exchange where you can drop off your car and jump onto public transport, 38 per cent of them stated that they were catching public transport because of the cost of parking, but 36 per cent—almost the same amount—drove to the bus stop because public transport was faster. We certainly do not have that in South Australia. That is what we need to get to. If we want to really encourage people into public transport, we should actually be looking for affordable, reliable and safe public transport, not the system that we have.

I have endless complaints to my office about the G10 in particular. They have slowed down slightly with the changeover of bus contractors, but certainly there are still lots of issues with the buses being full by the time they get to my electorate, not picking up and with many out of service. There are endless issues with safety as well. If you are not travelling in peak hour many people feel unsafe on the buses. It would not even cost money to make our public transport more efficient. We just should be working on getting the buses on time, making sure they are safe and clean and having inspectors visible like we used to have when I used to catch the bus regularly and making it affordable, so you encourage people.

In Perth, they also have a parking tax. However, theirs states that any levy taken from an area must be used for infrastructure and public transport in the same area. The levy that we have takes from the city and moves the money into completely another area, which is another reason why I think it will have devastating effects on the city. From what I hear, I believe the pickup points are going to be near Westfield—as if you would then go into the city and shop! So, the car parking tax is an unfair levy and it is counterproductive to creating city vibrancy.

I think it will damage business and it is simply an example of this government engaging in class warfare against those living and working in the city in an attempt to fix a problem that they created and is an opportunity to take money out of the city area. It will put up the rates for people who work or live in the city council area because they will also be forced to pay the levy as one of the major car park owners in the city area.

I think this is a very detrimental tax. It has not been well thought out. The unintended, perhaps, consequences are varied and broad and I really think the government should remove the car parking tax from its budget measures.

Mr TARZIA (Hartley) (17:45): This is an appalling bill and I will certainly be opposing the Budget Measures Bill 2014. I implore the government to retract it and to stop this atrocious levy on parking spaces within the central business district of the city of Adelaide.

This bill and its quite intelligent and enlightened writers have made this bill with several flawed assumptions. One is that people who drive cars are rich and, of course, the government hates rich people; it hates people who drive cars. The second one is that it is a crazy left-wing suggestion to think that you can tax your way to prosperity. We have seen time and time again that that does not work and it is certainly not going to work in South Australia.

Thirdly, there is also an assumption that transport in South Australia works, that it is on time and that it is clean. It does not work, it is not on time and it is not clean, and you can blame the member for Lee for that. The member for Lee, instead of taking these issues seriously wants to endorse bad comments about personal members. He wants to do everything else except address the issues at hand. It is a toxic tax and it is—

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Mr TARZIA: I only have 14 minutes left.

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I need to protect the member for Hartley.

Mr TARZIA: Thank you for your protection, Deputy Speaker. It would not be the first time.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: And he is just lucky I'm sitting here!

Mr TARZIA: Thank you, Deputy Speaker. This tax will hurt businesses, it will hurt jobs and it will damage city vibrancy without a doubt. The government does not have a mandate to pass this bill. I know they only had 47 per cent of the two-party preferred vote and many of those voters were in the city. The government does not have a mandate to take this levy to South Australia; it did not have a majority in its own right. I will reiterate that point here.

The Hon. P. Caica: Oh, Vincent, you know you have to win marginal seats.

Mr TARZIA: I know, and if only more people won marginal seats, the member for Colton.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I need to remind members that it is out of order to interject and it is also out of order to respond to interjections.

Mr TARZIA: My apologies, Deputy Speaker. I would like to take the parliament to the bill itself. First, I would like to address what a levy or parking space is under the bill, particularly paragraph (d) which states:

(d) a parking space that is set aside or used for the parking of a car used by a Minister or other member of Parliament on a regular basis—

here it comes—

(other than any such space within an area that constitutes part of the South Australian Parliament),

What we trying to do here? Are we trying to say that this tax is good but it is not good for the writers of the bill? That is absolute hypocrisy.

I would also like to take the attention of members to Schedule 1—Exempt parking spaces, Residential parking. The first part addresses exempt parking spaces for residences, the second relates to tenants but the third one states that a parking space is an exempt parking space if:

(c) no separate cost for the parking space is charged above payments of rent or other consideration under the lease, licence or other agreement or arrangement to occupy the residential premises.

This in itself is a farce because tell me who does not charge in the CBD, who does not get charged for a residential parking space? Therefore, based on that assumption, this is going to hit commercial landlords, and not only commercial landlords but residential landlords. Why is it going to hit residential landlords? Because the Labor Party and the South Australian government think that someone who owns a property in the city who leases it out is a rich person and, therefore, they are going to punish them. So, we see the real agenda here coming out.

This is a tax on middle class South Australia. It is not just going to affect people who work in the city every day. It is going to affect people who do their shopping on the weekend, it is going to hit the aspirational class, it is going to hit the middle class, and it is going to hit university students who cannot rely on the transport system that the member for Lee has oversight of at the moment. These people would use public transport. I get so many complaints in my EO about public transport day in and day out. I understand what the government might be trying to achieve, but if it was working, people might have some more faith in the system, and it is fair to say at the moment they do not.

I also want to talk to the house about the reality of this issue. I have in my hand an invoice from a parking firm, and it is dated 6 June 2014. They have already passed on the expected cost of this levy which is only in bill form; it has not been passed. This is the reality and it is because this government has not installed confidence in the business community. It has not installed confidence in consumers, so businesses feel that they need to prepare for four more years.

What is coming? I hope it is not economic Armageddon on behalf of the South Australian government, because if they are charging people already, if they are that worried that they are passing on their costs before the act is actually passed, then we are in trouble. We are in a lot of trouble with what will happen in reality.

The reality is that they are passing the cost on already, and I am covering the logo. What happens when you pass the cost on? The Minister for Health was a very good treasurer at one stage, a much better treasurer than the current one. He would know this.

The Hon. J.J. Snelling: I am an even better Minister for Health.

Mr TARZIA: He understands. He is here for the long game. He understands that this is a poisoned chalice at the moment. He is a smart guy and he understands, as I am sure some other members do, that you cannot tax your way to prosperity. Because it is a flawed system—

Mr Gardner: You are South Australia's only hope for the next three years.

Mr TARZIA: He is the white knight. There are going to be fewer people in the city; fewer people in the CBD. What is going to happen when there are less people in the CBD? It is an economic argument: supply and demand. When you stop the supply of people in the city, when you cut demand, who is going to hurt? I will tell you who is going to hurt—all those employers, those good people who hire people in South Australia, including employers who have SDA members on their database, I might add. It is going to hit retailers. It is bad for business. Retailers are going to cop this; unquestionably they are going to cop this.

What is going to happen when retailers underperform? When retailers underperform they will have no other choice but to pass on drastic measures, like a fee which they have not even been charged yet, and indirectly down the track there will be more job losses, unfortunately. We have heard our leaders speak of this today. We have seen how many jobs have been lost in South Australia in the past 12 months and the past 12 years. Former premier Mike Rann went to the South Australian electorate many years ago with a mandate that he promised to create 100,000 new jobs by 2016, and we know that that is just a lie. It is an absolute lie. It will take a miracle for that to happen.

In relation to the cost of living, I would have to say that this is the number one issue for real people in middle class South Australia. I doorknocked the entire area of Hartley during the campaign and I can tell the house this is what is hurting people, and I will tell you why.

The increase in costs in Adelaide from 2001-02 to 2013-14 are as follows: while CPI has been a 40 per cent increase, housing rents have gone up 54 per cent, property charges have gone up 87 per cent, state tax is up 92 per cent, gas bills 136 per cent, electricity bills 160 per cent, and, finally, water bills 227 per cent. That is before we consider the punitive measure that is the new emergency services levy and the associated changes with that. That is before the state credit rating deteriorates even further.

What happens when the state credit rating deteriorates even further? Again, it is an economic argument. Obviously, it becomes much more expensive for the state to borrow money. We are already seeing what happens when they cannot borrow money based on their own debt. What do they do? They start these creative mechanisms called public-private partnerships.

When debt becomes too hard, and when one credit card becomes maxed out, what do you do? You get another credit card. It is called public-private partnerships, and that is what this government is doing. That is why they are building this new Royal Adelaide Hospital. Have you seen that contract, Deputy Speaker? I tell you what, I would love to have some shares in that proposal; let me tell you, it would pay very high dividends. Unfortunately, though, it is at the detriment to the South Australian people.

Finally, I would like to talk about what industry is saying about this proposal. The member for Adelaide gave us a couple of case studies whereby, wholeheartedly, this type of bill has been rejected interstate. It has been rejected in Sydney, and it has been rejected in Melbourne. Why? Because they understand. These are states where economic reformist Liberal governments are building those states back up. They understand you cannot tax your way to prosperity; they understand that you need to increase the number of people going into the city for retailers to do better. They understand that small business is the engine room of this economy.

I draw on the comments of the Property Council of Australia (SA) executive director Nathan Paine in May 2013, when the government was looking to introduce this bill, where he said that the tax is designed to reduce the number of people driving into the city and instead boost public transport patronage. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

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