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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, First Session (53-1)
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Bills

Supply Bill 2014

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 3 June 2014.)

Mr SPEIRS (Bright) (12:01): Much has been said about the state of South Australia's economy in this series of addresses about the Supply Bill, and there are many statistics which can be run out to underline this. We have heard lots of them over the last couple of days, so I will not go through all of them; but, suffice to say that South Australia is in deep trouble. Debt is soaring towards $14 billion, a deficit of $1 billion, and by 2017 we will be covering $1 billion every year in interest charges. That is more than $3 million every day. It is oft quoted that this is greater than the budget for the South Australia Police.

Imagine what could be achieved every day with that money: school upgrades, environmental projects, improvements to disability services and support for our regions. But, no, this is dead money lost to interest payments. Yet, the government tells us that much of this expenditure in recent years has been to keep South Australians in work. Has this been effective? Arguably not, because as well as a financial crisis we have a jobs crisis in South Australia today. In Adelaide's south, the area which I am privileged to represent in this place, 21,300 jobs have been lost in the last 12 months alone, with the jobless rate skyrocketing from 4.2 per cent to 7.9 per cent.

We could argue that things would be worse if it were not for the government stimulus, but there is no way of quantifying this, and it is often used as an excuse for 'fiscal indiscipline'. Debt is not necessarily a bad thing. Surpluses should be dipped into in hard economic times to help create jobs and keep industries working, but a general rule of thumb is that the projects funded should leave a productive legacy; that is, funding that helps to stimulate the economy today and helps us to grow and recover tomorrow.

Sadly, over the duration of this government increased GST payments and dividends from our property boom did not go into building roads, ports and other productive infrastructure. Instead, this funding was channelled towards a bloating of the public service and a multitude of big government initiatives which saw government creep further into the lives of ordinary South Australians. We are now competing with Tasmania—yes, Tasmania—for the most economically dysfunctional state in the nation.

I often feel sorry for Tasmania, which was actually a destination for my honeymoon and of which I obviously have fond memories. There is Tasmania, always down there at the bottom of the pack, every other state comparing their performance and using it as a benchmark for dysfunction. It makes you wonder what Tasmania did to deserve all this unwanted attention. Well, I will tell you, Deputy Speaker, what Tasmania did. It ushered in 16 years of dysfunctional Labor government. The latter term being a wacky alliance with the Greens which further trashed that state's historically weak economic foundations and drove the economy off a cliff.

However, all is not lost for Tasmania, because now it has a solid centre-right government which, if history is anything to go by, will turn the state around, and soon South Australia will be the state about which we will scare our children with stories, telling little Johnny, 'If you don't save your pocket money you're going to end up like South Australia.' We are rapidly becoming the state which is held up as an example of ill-disciplined fiscal management, sadly symbolised by our AAA credit rating, the loss of which, of course, the Premier saw as a badge of honour, describing it as 'expendable' in January 2012.

Our current situation follows 12 years of Labor government. As mentioned in my maiden speech a few weeks ago, there has never been a Liberal government during my lifetime in Australia. The Labor government commenced in March 2002 and my family moved here in December 2002.

Ms Redmond: Bad timing.

Mr SPEIRS: Very bad timing. We are talking about a generation of Labor rule. We cannot hark back to a time before this government to blame someone else for our economic situation today. Yet what have the contributions in this place done to assist? I sit in my new seat, trying to stay fresh and positive and hoping that we can all work together to make a positive contribution to our state, but I do find myself feeling rather disillusioned by it all.

Cast your mind back to the Governor's speech on the occasion of the opening of parliament. I actually felt sorry for His Excellency. This was his final speech in the role; all those years of loyally serving South Australia, rolling up to the other place to read boring speeches prepared by the government. And you would have thought he might be given something special to regale us with one final time. But no, the Governor's speech was beyond boring; it was mind numbingly dull. No disrespect to the Governor—and this has nothing to do with his delivery style—but I would have had more fun eating that speech than listening to it. Where was the vision, the plan for economic recovery, the tax reform, the planning reform, the local government reform, the Public Service reform, the plan to grow our jobs and exports? It was just empty, boring words.

When 2014 ticked over I decided to be a bit healthier leading into the election campaign. I am pretty healthy anyway, but you can always do better, so I started to eat quinoa. Now you can jazz up quinoa by adding all sorts of stuff to it but sometimes, because I am a bit of a glutton for punishment, I have quinoa porridge for breakfast—and I do not add anything to it. Well, when I eat my unsweetened, unsalted, empty quinoa it reminds me of this government; just a grey gruel of nothing, dull, uninspiring nothingness.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: But good for you.

Mr SPEIRS: Well, it is not good for you, Madam Deputy Speaker, because it discourages you from eating healthily in the future. South Australia deserves better. We are a great state. In speech after speech in this place people talk about what a brilliant place this is to live, work and play. So where are the ideas to make things a bit better? I want to throw some ideas into the debate today for our lifestyle, our business environment and our governance.

First, lifestyle. When I talk about lifestyle opportunities I mean for both our residents who live here as well as people from interstate and overseas. South Australia should be a playground for our whole region and we should be drawing people here from every corner of the globe, both to visit and to live. The Liberals went to the last election committed to growing our population to kickstart our economy, and I remain absolutely committed to that policy—a policy which, I note, the Hon. Patrick Conlon, a former Labor minister, vocally endorsed at a public function last week.

We should not have trouble attracting people to live, work and play in our state, but we do. Our population growth is sluggish, under 1 per cent, and we are losing our best and brightest to interstate and overseas. Some come back but many do not, evidenced by our net loss of 35,000 people over the past 12 years.

Yesterday the member for Finniss talked about things not going very well in his electorate. Electorates like his and electorates like the member for Schubert's should be alive all year round. Kangaroo Island, which the member for Finniss said was really struggling, has the brand and attractions to pull people from every corner of the globe. We should be leveraging this to have an incredibly successful tourism market. We should be overflowing with tourists, but the industry appears neglected and run down.

Businesses cannot even afford to open on public holidays and this disproportionately impacts our lifestyle and tourism businesses. I was down at McLaren Vale on Good Friday—and it is great to see the member for Mawson here—and I could barely find a restaurant open on Good Friday, in one of our premier tourist towns on a public holiday. Why? Because it was not worth these businesses opening their doors. That is a tragedy.

The Hon. L.W.K. Bignell: People may have religious beliefs and they don't want to open.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: It is out of order to interject and it is even worse to respond to it so I will ask you to go on with your speech, and ask for no interjections.

Mr SPEIRS: I also want to put forth some ideas about South Australia as a place to do business. South Australia today is a bad place to do business with high taxes and dysfunctional WorkCover schemes. However, I want to particularly talk today about exports. We need to do much better in this area. An economy cannot be founded on servicing ourselves. We must export our goods and services elsewhere and get other organisations and societies hooked on what South Australia has to offer.

Yesterday, the member for Hartley rightly identified China as a place we must be directing effort to grow that nation's understanding of what South Australia can give them—and he is spot on—but there is also Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand—modern and populous nations in our region with rapidly growing middle classes. I applaud the government for following the Liberal Party's lead in developing a South-East Asia trade strategy, and I hope this does not just become another list of dot points on a website but becomes an active strategy that opens doors for South Australian businesses to get what they have to offer into these growing markets.

The third point that I want to discuss today is good government leadership. I am delighted that the member for Port Adelaide is the minister on duty at the moment. Yesterday, our leader, the member for Dunstan, talked about the need for renewal in the state's Public Service. You will note that I will not use the term 'public sector', a sterile, terrible term which takes the concept of service out of the institution. What is wrong with serving, I ask?

As members would know from my maiden speech, I have a great interest in Public Service reform having spent a number of years working at the heart of the Public Service in the cabinet office, a centre of politically neutral goodness. Some people believe that the Public Service is only there to implement the vision and initiatives of the government of the day and, to an extent, that is true. Therefore, a dysfunctional Public Service is likely to be a logical conclusion from a dysfunctional government. However, I like to think that an institution as large as our Public Service should be able to drive some reform and vision from within.

I am encouraged by the Minister for the Public Sector's statement yesterday that the government is setting up the office for the public sector which brings together a disparate bunch of officers who often do not know what each other is doing. Hopefully, this will give them some strategic rigour under the leadership of Erma Ranieri, someone who I personally have huge respect for.

One area I hope that this office will be able to drive is leadership reform in the Public Service. I believe that many of the problems facing the Public Service come back to leadership or lack thereof. Leadership in the service is so deeply politicised, so lacking in merit selection and so compromised by 'jobs for the boys and girls' that it cannot lead. You cannot be a leader when you cannot give truth to power. You cannot be a leader when you cannot cast your own independent vision. You cannot be a leader when you cannot ruffle feathers. If you are reliant on your job for the wrong reasons and you risk losing that job if you rub the minister up the wrong way, you cannot be a leader.

When you are talking about an institution as large as the South Australian Public Service, you cannot expect culture change to be driven from the bottom up. The bureaucracy is just too big, too unwieldy and too impenetrable for grassroots action to alter the Titanic's course. Granted, individuals and groups may be able to have some impact along the way but this will be isolated and ad hoc. A seismic shift in culture will not occur without the commitment of the leaders.

Let me tell you about those leaders. During my time in the Premier's department I had the opportunity to address the state's Senior Management Council on a number of occasions, and this is why I am so glad that the member for Port Adelaide is here because she is probably one of the few people in the building who would also have had the great pleasure of being in this room with the Senior Management Council at times.

Ms Redmond: Do I detect a note of sarcasm?

Mr SPEIRS: No sarcasm, member for Heysen. The Senior Management Council, always abbreviated to SMC by public servants (presumably to give it authority in the same way that ASIO has moved into the mainstream lexicon) is a quasi-public sector board made up of chief executives of each state government agency. They come together once a fortnight to discuss stuff, to monitor things and to remind each other that they are holding South Australia together, because our state is in such good nick, and all of that.

Invariably these meetings are held on Level 15 of the State Administration Centre, the austere, unmodernised office block which houses the Premier's and Treasurer's departments in Victoria Square. Level 15 is the Premier's floor, so you would tiptoe around in silence, looking at the weird artworks while you waited to be called into the conference room and enter the presence of greatness. Except once you got inside, you realised that, sadly, it is sans greatness.

These are the 'leaders' of the Public Service—the men and woman (singular) who drive forward change and implement the government's vision for South Australia. I would go there from time to time to update them on the projects I was working on. SMC is an old boys club. Once ushered inside you sit at the head of the table and look around—greyness everywhere. The silence is broken by a clinking teaspoon aimlessly stirring cold tea.

The sound awakens a fossilised executive who coughs and pretends to have been listening to the proceedings. He must ask a question. The topic is community engagement. He must sound trendy. He should mention social media. He waves his hand to the Chair and gets the nod. 'The FaceTube—my department is using the FaceTube. In fact just last week I appeared on the FaceTube. It can be used to get young people involved.' He goes back to sleep. It has all the makings of a sitcom, except it would be cancelled after the pilot episode.

I remember a man who had a beard heckling me once. I cannot remember what about and I did not take it personally. It was not about me: it was about him spraying around some testosterone and reminding his brethren that he was a tough leader. One of the more stressful moments of my Public Service career was taking a photograph of the Premier and the Senior Management Council together. It was for use in the front pages of Better Together—a community engagement strategy that I was involved in writing—and it was meant to symbolise the Premier giving chief executives the mandate to go forth and engage with the great unwashed.

We gathered all the chief executives in the Premier's press conference room and asked them to take off their ties for the relaxed and comfortable look. God forbid! It was as if we had asked Mother Teresa to cavort nude in the streets of Calcutta. 'I haven't taken this tie off for 28 years,' I am sure I heard someone wheeze. I was made the chief tie holder and stood awkwardly out of camera shot carrying a stack of Target ties, while the great ones stood awkwardly with the Premier, their shirt collars standing to attention in shock at their rude defrocking. The ones who still knew how to smile smiled, others grimaced, one curled up at the back of the room and went back to sleep, dreaming of his next appearance on FaceTube.

I digress. The point of my ruminations about SMC is that the place is devoid of leadership or inspiration. No-one wants to do anything; they do not want to push the boundaries, be creative, be different. They like the status quo. They like being homogenous, male, white, mindlessly dull, and they like knowing best. The good people—and there are plenty coming and going in the lower ranks—find it all too hard as their briefings are sent back and forth to have commas replaced with semicolons and superlatives removed from their text.

I once had a briefing that came back seven times for changes that really were not critical to the overall outcome. Eventually I put it up on the shelf and no-one ever asked me for it again. That was four years ago. In January 2014, when I packed up my desk, I slipped that briefing into the shredder. Goodbye, small innovative local government idea from 2009. I hope that that little insight into the Senior Management Council illustrates the magnitude of the shake-up required in Public Service leadership and I hope that the new Office for the Public Sector has the appetite to take it on. I know that the member for Port Adelaide is the person to lead that reform wearing her bright jacket because that will just blow the Senior Management Council away.

Those are just some ideas around lifestyle, our business environment and our governance that I would like to seed into this place and I will hopefully get a chance to build on them in future speeches. There is no point just criticising. We need to be part of the constructive policy debate and use the privilege of being here and the access and resources which that brings to contribute ideas, and work across this chamber to make them happen. We have challenges in South Australia—that is for sure—but I believe that we have a tremendous number of things going for us. What I believe we lack though is the political will and leadership to drive serious reform.

Mr GARDNER (Morialta) (12:20): I wish we had asked the member for Bright to speak at about 11.30 last night, I think we would have kept people much more involved—not that there was anything wrong (I should hasten to say) with the contributions being made at 11.30 last night. They were superlative, and examples of members standing up for their communities in the best possible way. However, I think the member for Bright's contribution was more amusing and I do not think that other members will be offended by that. I congratulate him on that excellent speech using humour to demonstrate some of the problems in government and its use of money it has appropriated on behalf of the South Australian people.

We are debating the Supply Bill and we are nearly finished. The Supply Bill seeks to appropriate $3,941,000,000 from the Consolidated Account for the Public Service of the state for the coming financial year. Other members have pointed out that this, of course, is because the budget is coming down on 19 June and, as the last sitting day of the financial year, there will not be time to pass the budget and the Appropriation Bill of the budget before the end of the financial year.

A number of other members have pointed out the unusual nature of this, and I think this is my ninth speech on the Supply Bill and the Appropriation Bill since being elected. I probably pointed out before that it is an unusual way of running a rail yard. Nevertheless, this is what we do here in South Australia. To put it in context, what I say is that the government is asking us for $4 billion to put on the government credit card and asking us to take on trust that they are going to use that money in a wise and useful way. After 12 years—although we are going to pass this bill and support the continued payment of Public Service salaries because it is so important to do so—it is hard, it is testing for those of us on this side to take this government on trust when they have demonstrated over 12 years their complete incapacity to deliver for the people of South Australia in a way such that the people of South Australia deserve.

All governments take money and pay their Public Service salaries, so it is not necessarily the quantum that I am particularly going to be concerned about raising today. However, I am concerned about priorities. A budget is being handed down next sitting week and perhaps a salient warning to the Treasurer about some of the directions that he is taking—and some suggestions too—which I propose to bring forward in this speech particularly related to my electorate of Morialta, but also on a more general front.

It is probably always worth starting with a concept of where we are. How has the government been going over 12 years at spending our money—in fact, spending the bank's money borrowed on behalf of the people of South Australia? 'Not well' is the answer. As I have said previously once or twice, one of the main reasons I ran for parliament was that I have children and I want for them to grow up in South Australia, for them to want to stay in South Australia, for them to have career opportunities and to progress in South Australia.

The member for Bright (who came here in 2002) is an example of the successful migration to South Australia. He is actually in a minority because far more people leave South Australia than come here from interstate. We have a reasonable international migration program, and we can be grateful to the federal government for assisting in that way. Previous federal governments which made South Australia a special migration zone did better, and I think the member for Bright came here at that time. But those who leave South Australia are greater by a net of about 3,000 a year than those who are coming here from other states.

This is a sincere concern, and it is one that has affected me in my life. So many people of my generation have been leaving South Australia, and when they leave they tend to leave (the statistics say 60 per cent) between the ages of 15 and 35, and very few come back. Certainly, if they have not come back by the time they have children, they are unlikely to come back because once the children are in school it is very hard to uproot them and bring them back to South Australia, these young people who are going to grow our economy, who are going to spend their money, who are going to put their entrepreneurship on the line and contribute to South Australia's future.

The indicator above perhaps any other of how South Australia is going is necessarily going to be employment, and it concerns me that there are 18,000 fewer full-time jobs just since this time last year, since the 2013 state budget. South Australia's jobless rate has increased from 4.8 per cent to 6.3 per cent since Labor's 2010 jobs promise of 100,000 new jobs, and it is worth pointing out that the national rate at the moment is 5.8 per cent.

As the rest of the nation, with Liberal reformist governments, has been improving over that time, South Australia has been deteriorating. As the rest of the nation has been going ahead in terms of exports—the sorts of business opportunities that are going to drive jobs growth—South Australia's exports have been contracting. It is a stark exposition when South Australia is clearly doing so much worse than the rest of the nation.

It is clear that although the government talks about this issue, although it claims to have a focus on jobs, what in reality is happening is that the sustainable employment opportunities that are going to drive South Australia's future, those that are created by business, those that are not paid for necessarily by the taxpayers but created in an environment designed by the state government, are not growing. The private sector is not leaping ahead as it should.

In terms of Labor's jobs promise, when I was elected it was the 2010 state election and the major keynote of Mike Rann's re-election strategy was this promise of 100,000 new jobs—100,000 new jobs by 2016. We are two-thirds of the way through and we are going backwards. In fact, between now and 2016, according to the ABS stats from last month, Labor must now create 4,400 jobs a month to meet its promise. Since that promise was made, across the four years there have been only 2,900 new jobs. They must increase their performance by a rate of 200 times better than they have been going up until now. I do not have a lot of optimism for how they are going to do.

In particular, young people are affected. Out of 79 regions measured across Australia, northern Adelaide has the second highest youth unemployment rate in the nation, with 45 per cent of youths unemployed (those who are not in training obviously), that is, 45 per cent of youths are unemployed. The Premier, when we have asked him about this from time to time, always responds saying, 'This is a false statistic.' For a while it was as if he was suggesting we were making it up. I think he has accepted that it is in fact an ABS statistic, so his rhetoric more recently has been to say, 'This isn't a useful statistic. This isn't a statistic that is meaningful of a broad representation of the South Australian young people.'

But it is in fact thousands of young people in the northern suburbs of Adelaide unemployed. If you do not believe me, or you do not believe the Liberal Party, go and talk to the NGOs in northern Adelaide, those groups that are trying to get young people into training, that are trying to get young people into employment. They will tell you that Adelaide's northern suburbs are crying out for assistance. For all its crocodile tears, for all its soft words, for all its talk, talk and endless talk about standing up for the disadvantaged, this government's policy settings have terrible outcomes for the disadvantaged.

The fact that out of the 79 regions across Australia that are measured by the ABS, the northern suburbs of Adelaide have the second highest rate of youth unemployment is a sad indictment on the way that the Labor Party has failed those most vulnerable people in our community, and I am particularly concerned about the way this is going to go. Where are the jobs going to come from? Where is the future going to come from? Where are the future career opportunities going to come from for South Australia's young people unless appropriate government settings are put in place?

That is going to need tax reform. That is going to need regulatory reform. That is going to need a will, a desire and a capacity to make hard decisions and strong decisions for South Australia's future. Unless the environment is created for businesses to prosper in South Australia, unless the government is willing to give up some of its sacred cows, give up some of its previous focuses and admit that its direction has been wrong, then I do not see the situation improving, and I have serious concerns about how it will ever fix this situation. So much for jobs.

There is, of course, another side to the equation: the things that the government spends money on. I was appalled to read in the press this week that, as I understand, the government is yet to provide funding certainty for Operation Flinders. The group of people who are served by Operation Flinders are those who are described as 'at risk'.

Many of the young people who are helped by Operation Flinders are not, in fact, troubled or of concern, but they have been identified by either their school or by Families SA as somebody who is going to benefit from this program. Then, of course, there are many young people who are troubled, who have experienced the juvenile justice system or are identified as being at risk of being involved with the juvenile justice system. Thousands of these young people over the last couple of decades have been assisted by Operation Flinders, yet its funding is at risk.

I call on the Treasurer to actually give some certainty to this group. Their funding from the Attorney-General's Department runs out at the end of June. They receive $440,000 a year from the state government, and the government refuses to provide them security. I urge the government to come out and, if they plan on continuing the funding, let them know so this sincerely important organisation can have its future secured. Operation Flinders is very important. I know a number of members of the house have been out to Operation Flinders and seen the work that they do.

I attended Operation Flinders with the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Chaffey and the member for Unley about three years ago. It was a remarkable experience because the turnaround in the young people going to Operation Flinders and experiencing the wilderness therapy program over that week was magnificent. Many of them lacked confidence, and certainly lacked an appreciation of the nation's wilderness in that way, but they gained in terms of other things, like teamwork, their response to authority figures in the program and their belief in themselves that they could achieve things in the future. From when we spoke to young people commencing the program to when we spoke to them concluding the program, there was a remarkable transition.

John Shepherd made us do some of the things that they were making young people do. I have to say that the abseiling came easier to some than others. It came easier to the member for Chaffey than it did to me, I suggest, but when they told me that the previous member for Schubert had gone through with it, then I certainly was not going to squib from it myself. I imagine just going through that experience of trying something so terrifying for me because, I swear, it is not natural to propel yourself backwards off a 50-metre rock cliff attached only by some rope that they swear never breaks but you can never be sure—that is not natural.

But when those young people are able to try these new things and challenge themselves to do these new things, you can see how it helps them develop. Operation Flinders, which has been in existence since 1991 and which has been evaluated in many different ways since, does a magnificent job of turning these young people's lives around, but it also does important work in following them up after they have finished at Operation Flinders.

The Supply Bill in question here, which we are passing today, is to appropriate $3.9 billion. Operation Flinders is reliant on funding. They raise a lot of money themselves, but the money from the government assists them very sincerely in doing some of the important follow-up work as well as taking some of the groups. That money would amount to 0.01 per cent of the appropriation we are making today, so I would submit that it is not a bad place to start, with the money being provided in the Supply Bill to give Operation Flinders that security and give the thousands of young people who have benefited from it that security.

There are 6,000 young people who have gone through it. When they take the young people out in groups of eight to 10, I believe there is always a mentor who is a previous graduate of the program, somebody whose very own life has been turned around. So, many of these young people are contributing in an ongoing basis to the 40 or so teams they send out every year and, indeed, there are professional staff as well.

The member for Dunstan and the member for Adelaide have previously done a great deal of fundraising in their local areas to assist students from their areas in going along, and I have assisted them in that, as has the member for Chaffey. I am pleased to say the member for Hartley and I are looking to set up a Campbelltown chapter this year. We have been speaking to the local principals of our two major public schools, and with their support and one of their staff members hopefully going along, we look forward to hopefully being able to send out a team either later this year or early next year.

This is in fact a program which assists young people from across South Australia. There will be young people who could be helped by this program in the electorate of every member in this parliament, so I urge those opposite to lobby those who sit in front of them to ensure that this program can be continued at the same level of support that it gets at the moment.

It is one of the things that the leader was talking about yesterday: it may come up as an expense on this year's balance sheet, but it is investing in something that is not only going to significantly impact the individuals involved, it does save the government money down the track. For every individual young person who ends up involved in the juvenile justice system or in an adult correctional facility because their life has not been turned around, it is tens of thousands of dollars, while the investment of $1,500 and getting them involved in an Operation Flinders-type expedition in the short term is tiny by comparison. I commend the continued support for Operation Flinders to the house, and to the Treasurer in particular.

Locally, in Morialta, there are a number of issues that require some attention. I do not know if I am going to have time to deal with them all in this contribution on the Supply Bill, so I will continue potentially on some of them at a future opportunity. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I hope that some of the $3.9 billion, and no doubt the $13 billion that is to follow in the Appropriation Bill in a couple of weeks, might go towards sorting out some of the issues we have locally, some of the things that halt the productive capacity of our local area to contribute to business growth.

I will start with local roads. The studies that the Centre for Road Safety often comes out with point out the economic loss whenever there are road accidents. One hotspot in the Morialta electorate that I have been talking about for several years now—and I hope that the transport department will listen at some point—is on the corner of Gorge Road and Silkes Road. It is a high-level intersection where there are significant delays to people commuting to work or going around, but it is also a significant safety risk, because it is an unsignalled intersection and on the top of the T, a Wacky Warehouse child play café was built several years ago.

It is an area near a bus stop, so there are people crossing Gorge Road (which for those of you who have been there, you will know it is a very busy road) and there are particularly young people, children, very vulnerable children, crossing that road with their parents when they cannot get a park inside the play café. Meanwhile, because of the increased use of Gorge Road due to urban infill, thanks to the government's Strategic Plan, the sheer quantity of traffic on that road is far greater than it was in the old days when Athelstone proudly did not have a single set of traffic lights.

There is significant public interest in this. The member for Heysen and I held a public forum on this several years ago, at which there were around 200 local residents from Athelstone, Paradise and Newton in attendance. Unanimously—we took a show of hands and every single hand at the meeting went up, calling for the government to put in traffic lights there.

I have lobbied successive transport ministers on this matter, and I look forward to the new transport minister coming to Morialta in July, I think, sometime—we have a tentative date planned—and I will talk to him further about this then. I hope that he will be able to assist, because the issue that the transport department always raises when we say this needs some funding to get some signals there so that we can have a safer and more sensible traffic flow, they always use this test based on the number of casualty crashes: X number of people have died in a crash on this intersection; X number of people have been injured; therefore, on their index, I think they classified this intersection based on an average of the last five years as equal 401st in the list of priorities.

That methodology, I would submit, is significantly flawed. Just because we have been lucky so far that there has not been a child die at that intersection because of the high level of young children going past and just because there has not yet been enough casualty crashes, Blind Freddy could see that there is significant risk going forward.

The changing nature of the traffic flow could be demonstrated by anyone who wants to go and have a look. The increased risk could be demonstrated by anyone who is going to accept that there is a play café there, yet it seems that this never comes into the department's considerations. I urge the new minister to have a look at the way that they make these decisions. There are other intersections in Morialta: there is significant call for it outside the Dernancourt shopping centre on Lower North East Road. Again, the increased traffic to that shopping centre and the increased traffic along Lower North East Road, yet the significant, obvious risks do not come into the department's considerations.

On the corner of Graves Street and Newton Road, outside the St Francis of Assisi church, we have a group of vulnerable elderly people going to church and a large number of young people going to the growing school, there are crashes at the traffic lights on the corner every month, it seems, sometimes. Thankfully, no-one has passed away. What I am concerned about is that that is what it seems to take to get any funding to fix it. I urge the government to take all of these local issues into consideration as the budget process goes forward. I commend the bill to the house.

The Hon. P. CAICA (Colton) (12:40): I will be very brief and I certainly will not need to extend any time. I rise in support of this Supply Bill. It is an important bill because it allows for the continuation of government service delivery in a variety of areas critically important to South Australians, but these services are under threat. They are under threat from a federal budget that has been roundly condemned by a significant number of Australians, all state governments, NGOs and others. However, there is one group here in South Australia that seems to think—no, in fact, believes—it is a good, necessary and sound budget. Who might that group be? That is, as they like to refer—

Mr GARDNER: Deputy Speaker, I draw your attention to the state of the house.

A quorum having been formed:

The Hon. P. CAICA: I do note, whilst it is well within the rules, the churlish approach to this matter by the Opposition Whip, who I listened to in silence during his contribution, notwithstanding the status of the house at that time, but if that is the way you want to play the game.

Mr Gardner: I think there was a quorum here, from my memory; everyone was here.

The Hon. P. CAICA: I can tell you there wasn't, but if that's the way you want to do things—

Mr Gardner: Everyone was here.

The Hon. P. Caica: Be churlish and keep interrupting, because that's your style. That's fine. Not you, Deputy Speaker.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I remind all members of the standing orders which preclude interjections and responding to them, and ask us to return to the debate.

The Hon. P. CAICA: I apologise, Deputy Speaker. However, as I was saying, there is one group here in South Australia that seems to think—and I will repeat that: no, it believes—it is a good, necessary and sound budget. Rhetorically, who might that group be? It is, as they like to refer to themselves, Her Majesty's loyal opposition in South Australia. Not only do they like to refer to themselves as Her Majesty's loyal opposition but, the way I see it, they should start referring to themselves as Tony Abbott's blindly loyal acolytes—a federal government that can do, in their eyes, no wrong. The opposition is out of kilter with every state government, I might add, which are, except for the ACT, Liberal governments.

I have had numerous calls from many of my constituents in my electorate—the young, the not so young, the employed, the unemployed, pensioners, self-funded retirees, those with disabilities—and, to a person, all are concerned, and those who are not concerned, their concern goes beyond that: they are scared—scared about what the implications are and are going to be for them if the federal budget is implemented as proposed. They know that it is going to seriously impact them, their families, their community, their state and their nation.

I do not think that you could look at this Supply Bill or our forthcoming state budget outside of looking closely at the most cruel, ideologically-driven federal budget Australians have ever witnessed. As I have said previously, it is a budget based on a lie, based on dishonesty, that dishonesty, which I have mentioned before, as have others, that the economy is wrecked, it is a mess, that it needs to be fixed and that its remedy requires addressing what is a budget emergency. As I have said, and I and others spoke about this earlier, this federal budget is based on a false premise. Beyond that, it is based on what is, quite simply, a dishonest assertion.

It is true, and I acknowledge that certainly some remedial work needed to be done to address the income side or the receipt side of the economy and should not be addressed as proposed in the federal government's divisive, unfair and cruel budget.

So, what is their response to addressing the income side? It is to implement measures that will hurt the most vulnerable and affect those least able to afford the cuts that are going to be imposed on them—our young people, through the Newstart benefits, and particularly the most vulnerable, through the GP co-payments, the dismantling and the cutting of Aboriginal programs, the cut to education. In relation to Gonski, leading into the federal election, I might be wrong, but I remember the then opposition leader saying, 'This is a unity ticket—

Mr Picton: Match them dollar for dollar.

The Hon. P. CAICA: Match them dollar for dollar. Well, what we have seen is a backpedalling on that. I have looked at education and some of the more bizarre proposals. Speaking of those who are acolytes, and there are those in this room, there is Christopher Pyne, the education minister. I think that one of the best ways to judge members of parliament is not so much how they perform in opposition, and I say that Christopher Pyne was a very good opposition member of parliament, but it is their ability to transition through to being good ministers and, on any fair assessment, he has failed, and I think that he is starting to lose favour with his leader and certainly those people here in South Australia who think that he is just not going to cut the mustard.

Anyway, there are the cuts to education, as I said, to Gonski, that was once a unity ticket, the concessions that are going to be cut to seniors, the cuts in funding to health, which so many in this house, including the member for Kaurna, have highlighted previously the impact they will to have on our hospitals here, the breaking of the national partnerships agreement, the withdrawal of funding for roads, amongst many other things that are going to be dismantled, cut or decimated if the federal budget is delivered in full.

What have we seen as a response from the state Liberals, bearing in mind that I am saying that what we are seeing federally is a glimpse of what we would have seen should the opposition now be in government, despite their assertion that 53 per cent of people should have delivered them to government?

What we are seeing is their support. We are seeing their acquiescence. We are seeing their blind, but certainly misguided, loyalty to their bosses—the Abbotts, the Hockeys, the Pynes, the Liberal federal government. But where is their loyalty to the 53 per cent of South Australians who they say should have delivered them to government? There appears to be none whatsoever.

I think that, like the Prime Minister, the state opposition here will regret their position and the silence that they have adopted with respect to the federal government. The people of South Australia most certainly will not let you forget that you are not here to support them—that you support the decimation of health services and education services, the co-payment levy and the inequitable taxation that is going to favour those better off in the community. As far as I remember we are called the Commonwealth of Australia, and this budget is not about distributing and making the wealth of Australia common: it is about isolating those people who already have got and taking away from those people who haven't got. Outside of this budget—

Mr Whetstone: No wonder they're ringing you.

The Hon. P. CAICA: Why are they ringing me?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Again, I need to remind members that interjections and responses to interjections are not acceptable.

The Hon. P. CAICA: I am assuming—and this is not necessarily a response to an interjection—that, whilst my constituents are ringing me about the federal budget, that no-one in the seat of Chaffey, for example, and I pick that because I can see him over there—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: He is out of his seat as well, so—

The Hon. P. CAICA: —or even the member for Finniss or the member for Flinders. Of course, with 79 per cent two-party preferred I guess everyone over there is happy with not only you but the federal government and what is going to be imposed upon them. So, I am assuming that the 53 per cent two-party preferred vote that they got at the last election includes some people in my electorate who actually want it, because I know that a 46.7 per cent primary vote was cast in that electorate for the Liberal candidate, but they are the people who are ringing me. So I assume there are no problems—nothing to see here in the electorates held by the opposition over there.

What I am saying is that the budget in South Australia will be greatly affected by this cruel, dishonest federal budget and, certainly, the people of South Australia will not forget where the blame for this lies, even if those opposite continue to deny it. I commend the bill to the house.

Bill read a second time.

Supply Grievances

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Manufacturing and Innovation, Minister for Automotive Transformation, Minister for the Public Sector) (12:53): I move:

That the house note grievances.

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (12:53): Ma'am, I had a few other things to say but, after the diatribe from the member for Colton, I think it wants a bit of a response.

The Hon. P. Caica interjecting:

Mr PENGILLY: Can I have the floor?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Mr PENGILLY: It is interesting that the member for Colton seemingly has forgotten what the Australian people did in September last year when it threw out, comprehensively, the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government. He seems to have forgotten that. They threw them out, consigned them to history. As I mentioned last night, I hear no mention of that from the member for Colton.

The Hon. P. Caica interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Mr PENGILLY: This is the same member for Colton who just said he never interjects when other members are speaking, I might add.

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I don't want anyone provoking anybody at five minutes to one.

Mr PENGILLY: I live in fear of the comments coming from the member for Colton. It is interesting, because about half an hour ago I happened to be up in my office listening to ABC News 24, and they suddenly had a press conference with the federal Treasurer, Mr Hockey, who had excellent announcements on GDP, that things are lifting, that it goes right along with the policy of the federal government and that they are delighted with where things have gone and they hope to improve as the year goes on.

The Hon. P. Caica: Well, again, because their budget was based on a lie.

Mr PENGILLY: You have had your go. The reality is that, yes, I have had people comment to me in my office regarding the federal budget and you know what I tell them? I tell them to ring up Bill Shorten. He picked up the reigns of disaster from Rudd/Gillard/Rudd and he has to answer it, not me. The people of Australia elected a government to sort out the mess the Labor Party had left behind federally. So, you can come in here. Now we have a rally out the front at 1.30.

Interestingly enough, one of my HAC (Health Advisory Council) reps, who sits on one of my HACs, rang me this morning. He went to a meeting last night, and there was a letter from the state Minister for Health, tabled at the HAC meeting, calling on staff in the health services, the Department for Health and HAC members to appear on this day of protest today and, if possible, to appear out the front of Parliament House in Adelaide, or wherever you happen to be. Here is a minister of the crown, the Minister for Health, who has absolutely no direction whatsoever over staff employed by the Department for Health, insisting that people take action against the federal budget.

Let me tell you, apart from a few old wavering lefties around the traps, this campaign of fear that has been brought on in direct opposition to the federal budget will die with a whimper—I will bet you that. I will watch with interest what happens in Canberra over the next few months, and I am sure we all will when the new Senate takes place, and a few will learn a few harsh realities about life when they get into that place and work out what it is all about. There are some new senators going in there who I do not believe have much idea at all about democracy and the parliamentary Westminster system, and they are in for a pretty rude shock very quickly. A few are making all sorts of claims at the moment.

In the few minutes I have left I want to turn back to some issues in my electorate. I want to raise the matter of crime. Very sadly, we have had a couple of dual fatalities down in the Victor Harbor area recently, which are tragic. The first would appear to be the result of some mental health issues—that is a tragedy. A couple of weeks ago we had another murder/suicide, which is a tragedy as well. I do not want to dwell on those particular things, but I know one of the children of the lady who was murdered. I want to pick up on their attitude towards domestic violence, which was in the paper on Monday. This has to stop, or at least strong attempts have to be made to make it stop. It is a tragedy that cannot go on. One women is killed every week in Australia, as I understand it, murdered through domestic violence. We should hang our heads in shame about it.

For my part, I want to pay absolute tribute to the emergency services people—the police, the ambos, etc.—who had to deal with these issues. It has traumatised the community in Victor Harbor—it has certainly stirred them up. You do not expect this sort of thing to happen in small country towns or regional places like Victor Harbor. Where it will happen next, who knows. I place on the record my appreciation to those emergency services personnel who dealt with those issues and have to go out the next day, back to work, and get on with the job.

I would also like to briefly mention the town of Port Elliot. A couple of years ago we had the tragic death of a young child there who was hit by a car and died and it caused a great deal of angst in that area. The family is still suffering immensely, but the issue for me is one of attempting to get some sort of stop lights or crossing signals put in there to enable people to cross that road. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

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

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