HANSARD
SITTING CALENDAR
SEARCH
LIVE BROADCAST
Hansard Dynamic Subject Index
House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, First Session (53-1)
2014-08-05 Daily Xml
Contents
Pdf Xml

Bills

Appropriation Bill 2014

Estimates Committees

Adjourned debate on motion:

That the proposed expenditures referred to Estimates Committees A and B be agreed to.

(Continued from 24 July 2014.)

Mr WINGARD (Mitchell) (11:01): When we last met, I was partway through my response and to continue would be greatly appreciated. I thank you very much for that. We were talking about estimates and the experience that was estimates. I mentioned those opposite and those we questioned and spoke with, and what an experience it was to get responses, some more in depth than others, and we will follow up with some more of those questions as we go through.

We talked about the Motor Accident Commission with the Minister for Road Safety. He was a bit loath to talk about the Motor Accident Commission, which was somewhat disappointing, because we had some questions. We wanted to know about future funding, given the sale, closure or shut down of the Motor Accident Commission. There were a number of key issues that we would have liked addressed as far as funding for the long-term future of some projects. We talked about Schoolies and about a number of other community grants that are made through the Motor Accident Commission, so hopefully we will be able to find out a bit more about that in time.

Another program we discussed was the greenways cycle paths, this time with the Minister for Transport, and we did not quite get it nailed down. Whilst the suggestion was that the Greenway cycling program was complete and no more money would be spent on that, speaking with a lot of people in and around that program, the suggestion is that there are still a number of sections, corridors and intersections that need to be fixed up as far as the Greenway cycleways are concerned. Hopefully again in time we will get a bit more information about that.

Other factors that come to the fore out of estimates are things like fines, penalties and fees that come from travelling on public transport. I know fare evasion is being looked at very much in depth as far as the budget is concerned. We talked about that and we were wanted to know more about how these fines, fees and penalties are implemented and, as far as fare evasion goes, how much money has actually come from any fines and fees that have been imposed on fare evaders. That is one of the big things.

We also talked about road maintenance, and we know that in South Australia—and this ties in transport and road safety—road maintenance has been massively underfunded and there is a huge backlog. We did not get an exact figure on what the backlog was; suggestions are $400 million is the figure for backlog on road maintenance. We know what a big part this plays in road safety, as well. A lot of country and regional people are not overly happy with the push to lower the speed limits. I can understand why: because there is a feeling that lowering the speed limit is a bit of an excuse for not maintaining the roads as they should be.

When speaking with some people in the department, I was given an interesting diagram with four pictures on it outlining different roads across the state and which ones were better than others. All of them had the same speed limit. It is quite incongruous that you can have a double-lane freeway with a big barrier down the middle—which would be arguably the safest road—which has the same speed limit as a road that only fits pretty much a car and a half which has no shoulders on the road and is in quite a state of disrepair.

I think a push to eventually assess all those roads and work out where they sit and which ones are safe enough to have the maximum speed limit and which ones need to be looked at is really important. Road maintenance across the state, both in the metropolitan and country areas, is very important and it is something that we are really keen to explore further. We did not get the full opportunity during estimates to do that, and that was somewhat disappointing.

Upon speaking with the Minister for Road Safety there were a number of issues that we brought to a head and a couple of things that perhaps were not dealt with as well as they could have been. He was questioned at times and got a little bit upset with me, but I think that is the point of estimates: to ask questions and find out exactly what is going on.

We talked about cost recovery for special events and are still waiting to find out which events will be hit with the fun tax. There was a fair conversation with the minister about whether it was a tax or a levy or whether, in fact, public transport was free. He did go on to say that event organisers would be charged $2.5 million for these events across the way—so the charge is going on and someone is going to have pay that charge. On the one hand he was saying it was free and on the other hand he was saying that there is a substantial cost that is going with that, which I found to be quite interesting.

I read in The Advertiser yesterday that it appears the Stadium Management Authority is being made a scapegoat or the bad guy in this scene, and it will have to impose that fee on the people who hold events. Clearly we can see that it is being passed down the line, and I think people just want to know and to be told up-front, 'This is what we are doing; this is how we are going to get the money back; and this is will be the process: a tax/levy.' It does not matter if you have to recoup the money. I know that public transport certainly will not be free for those events anymore and it will be passed on to the people.

We had a look at a couple of other things as well and we did not quite get a full answer on the cost of the bus strikes in the lead-up to the last election in February 2014 when the SouthLink company and bus drivers walked off the job. We are trying to establish how much that cost and who foot the bill for that too. So we will inquire about that a little more and try and get some information.

Still on the public transport side of things, we were keen to look at the rail revitalisation, and I know a number of electric trains have been ordered. There is a bit of a backlog and a delay in the delivery of those, so hopefully we can find out a little more information about when they are coming through. Of course, with the Gawler line not being electrified, it is still one that intrigues me and the people of Gawler.

The minister recently put out some figures on increased patronage on the trains and was spruiking quite a high number. An interesting fact was that on the electrified Seaford line—the main electrified line, if you like—in the last six years there has been a 35,000 person increase on that line. There was an increase in patronage on the Gawler line to the tune of 100,000 and that was the one that was ignored. It got the gantries and the poles for electrification, but no more.

It has been shelved at the back end of forward estimates and I know the people of Gawler are very keen to find out why that was on-again off-again, on-again off-again. There has been a lot of rhetoric about that one, but we still have not found out why. With the proposed electrification of the whole network the trains were ordered accordingly but, of course, we probably do not need quite as many electric trains now so we are just trying to find out what the expenditure of that money is going forward.

We have also talked about the Millswood station, and we are trying to find out a bit more information on the cost of the upgrade. It has since come to my attention that the cost of that upgrade is going to be upwards of $400,000. That is what I am led to believe. Again, I am just seeking clarification on that from the minister himself. It is a fair bit of money to spend on a trial operation for the Millswood station when it may not go ahead full-time into the future, which will be interesting to see.

Equal to that, we had quite a bit of money spent on the Wayville station. I think it was upwards of $16 million. We are just waiting to see how effective that will be, having the Millswood station. With the Millswood station, I have read that only certain trains are going to stop there. It is perhaps not overly clear to the local residents, who are going to get this trial, which trains are going to be stopping there and how that is going to work. So let’s hope we get an effective trial for the cost of that project.

The other matter is the bus fleet. A number of people have come to talk to me about buses in recent times. Again, hopefully I will be able to put a couple of questions to the minister in time as we find out about the bus fleet and just how it is working for disabled people. A lot of people who are looking for disability access are coming to me with a few questions wanting to know how we can get some regularity in the disabled buses that are coming, when they are coming.

I know a lot of it now goes through the metro website, but I am hearing from a lot of people that it is not 100 per cent clear as to which buses are rocking up when and whether buses with disability access are coming at the time they are supposed to come and, equally, when they are not scheduled to come, one will rock up. It makes it very hard for people with disabilities to access the public transport system, so hopefully we can do a bit more work on that. That would be fantastic.

There are a couple of other things that I had briefings on. I am still waiting for some clarification on this but, on the trains again, the new train horns are quite distressing to a lot of people along the Seaford line. There has been a change in the pitch and tone of the horns on the new trains coming through. That was something that was going to be addressed, but we just did not get a chance during the estimates to ask a few more questions about that and to find out exactly when they will be changed. I note that the trains actually get shipped back to Melbourne for their first service, I think, and there was a suggestion that the changing of the pitch and tone of the horns would be implemented at the same time.

I talked before about the Adelaide Metro website. When it is up and operational it is absolutely ideal. Some people have said to me that at times it is not fully functioning and at times it does go down. That is always unfortunate, so trying to streamline that would be fantastic for users of public transport.

The other thing that came to my attention—and I put the question to the minister and we will see whether we can get a response on this one—is that, in the budget, there was a line talking about metropolitan public passenger services and the response times for the Adelaide Metro Infoline. Interestingly, there was a change in the call-answering rate. It was set at 30 seconds—that was the target set for people taking calls for public transport services on the Adelaide Metro Infoline—but it has now been moved back to a 30-second ring before the call is answered. Now it is a 120-second ring. I am just not sure why people are expected to wait on the line for two minutes before their call is dealt with. We will try to find out the reason for the change in that standard and why it has dropped from 30 seconds to two minutes. That seems quite interesting as well.

There are a couple of things as I finish up. As we have talked about, the estimates process is an interesting one. It was great to be able to speak with the ministers and ask them questions. I did mention when I began this speech the other week that some of the ministers notably were fantastic and only took questions from our side, and I commend them for that. The Minister for Road Safety did take a number of questions from his side for which, it appeared, he had prepared answers. I know it is part of the process but it could perhaps be deemed to be a bit of a waste of time when we could have got to a few other questions.

The Minister for Transport did a very good job of answering questions. He was very forthright—perhaps not forthright, more so in lengthy in his answers; that is probably a better way of putting it. He had a fair bit to say about his answers and perhaps did not drill down on the specifics of the questions. I will follow those up with him, and I am sure he will get me more detail in time—well, at least I hope he will. Again, some of the key points, as far as the 'fun tax' is concerned, are: which events will be hit with that tax or that levy, which events will have to pay the extra funding? As we know, it will be events over 5,000 people in the city, and a couple of other stipulations go with that, but getting the detail would be absolutely outstanding.

With a bit of time wasted, we did not get to ask about pedestrian rail crossing access, and we would be happy and very keen to follow that up. We know there has been a little bit in the press recently about pedestrian crossings and also car and bus crossings. A bus was just recently caught at the intersection of a railway crossing, and in fact the bus driver got out and tried to wave down the train while people were still on the bus. We are keen to find out a bit more information about that, how that situation can arise and how we can prevent it in the future.

It is the same issue for people crossing intersections. I know there was an incident at the Woodlands Railway Station recently, where someone was hit because they mistakenly thought the path was clear; we would like to find out a bit more about that. The double-decker bus experiment is another matter I was keen to ask about because there is still talk about the double-decker bus running through, potentially, the Adelaide Hills. We just want to make sure that that is the best location for the bus, and we also want to know how much it will cost to run it through there and make sure all the preps have been done. Whilst estimates was a great experience from my perspective, and it was a good chance to ask questions, it would have been good to ask a few more, but we will use the house to do that in time.

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (11:16): This government has a major credibility problem on its hands. In recent times, it has handed down its budget, and I would assert that this is the worst budget in this state's history. It is the worst budget on a number of fronts. First of all, it is, of course, the largest deficit in the state's history: $1.2 billion was the final estimated result for the last financial year. That is the worst result in the history of our state. Interestingly, three years ago the government was promising that they would return the budget to surplus in the last financial year. That was the promise they made to the people of South Australia, that was the promise they made here in this parliament. Of course, it did not come true. Far from returning to surplus, they gave us the largest deficit in this state's history.

Again, this year's budget is a very damning indictment on the economic mismanagement presided over by the Labor Party in South Australia for the past 12 years. It seems to me that this government has learnt absolutely nothing from the debacle they have presided over economically in the state for the last 12 years because here we go again. The new budget they have presented to us is filled with these heroic assumptions in terms of growth, these fantastic assumptions in terms of improvement in productivity, these completely incredible assumptions in how much they are going to reduce their expenses, and we are meant to just lap it up and say, 'Guess what? I think everything's going to be rosy in two years' time.' Well, it is not going to happen.

So we go through this annual exercise, which we refer to as budget estimates. I think it is more like a game of hide-and-seek, or maybe 'seek and hide': we seek to find out some answers to what is going on in the state and the government does everything it can to hide the answers from the people of South Australia. Quite frankly, I think the people of South Australia deserve a lot more. We were able to get some answers from the government, and they were pretty unsatisfactory, it has to be said—they were pretty unsatisfactory.

It is fair to say that this budget is possibly the most politically charged budget that has been handed down, and I think that is what we are in store for in South Australia. We are in store for a lot more political rhetoric from a government which is constantly on the back foot because of its own economic incompetence. In this case, the Treasurer went out attacking the federal government. He went to great lengths to say that all the problems that are associated with his horrible budget were to do with the federal government. It is just completely and utterly untrue, and if you delve into the pages of the budget you can prove this for yourself.

The government went to a huge effort, on page 6 of Budget Paper 3, to outline $885 million of what they refer to as federal government cuts. What the Treasurer failed to do is provide a corresponding table of the federal government increases in revenue to the state. Just going through and adding up all the things that might have been cut only gives part of the picture, because the government failed to go through and add up all the increases in revenue being paid to this state, and net them off against each other, so that the people of South Australia have a clear picture of what our budget is all about, and who is actually to blame for the circumstances in which we find ourselves in South Australia, with the largest deficit in this state's history.

We already know that the federal government has written up GST revenue to the state by a significantly large amount. I refer members to page 55 of Budget Paper 3, where it clearly shows that in each and every year of the forward estimates GST revenue to this state from the commonwealth is significantly increasing. Anybody would think, with the rhetoric that has been put forward by this government, by this Treasurer—this L-plate Treasurer—that somehow the federal government is ripping this money out of South Australia. Let me tell you what is happening.

Last year the estimated result of revenue from GST was $7.85 billion from the commonwealth. This year it will go up by $415 million in a single year. Next year it will go up by a staggering $794 million, and the year later by $557 million. Each and every year our GST revenue from the commonwealth is increasing. Some might say, 'Well, it's always going to go up.’ I point members to the statistics also provided within the government's budget document, which look at the percentage increase in GST that we are receiving.

This next year we plan to have an increase of 7.3 per cent. Give me a break! You have the government out there saying that the federal government is ripping GST money from the state; it is actually increasing it by 7.3 per cent. Correct me if I am wrong: 7.3 per cent is actually above the inflation figure in Australia at the moment.

Mr Williams: More than double.

Mr MARSHALL: More than double, as the member for MacKillop points out—probably more than triple the inflation rate in Australia—is the increase in GST revenue that we as a state will receive here in South Australia. But those opposite often accuse me of choosing just one isolated piece of information.

Let us look at what it goes up by the next year: the next year 7.2 per cent and the year after 9.4 per cent. So this is the sequence: 7.3 per cent, 7.2 per cent, 9.4 per cent increase in GST revenue. The Treasurer has been wildly running around South Australia saying to people that the federal government is ripping out all this money out: well, it is just not the case. They are increasing the GST distribution to this state many times over the inflation rate each and every year of the forward estimates. That is the true picture we have here in South Australia. The responsibility for the complete and utter financial ineptitude of this government rests firmly with Labor, which has had its hands in the treasury for an extended period of time, and they have done absolutely nothing with it.

The government, as I said, did go to some lengths to identify federal government cuts over the forward estimates to specific programs. I then said to the government, 'Well, can you tell me what your cuts are going to be over the forward estimates?' That is, state government cuts independent of the federal government cuts, and I have to say that they were not very forthcoming with the answer. So, I did my own reconciliation. Budget Paper 3, page 28. Table 2.6 is an interesting table, because it refers to what the government titles 'operating savings' from 2008-09 right through to the 2017-18 year—'operating savings'!

So I thought to myself 'What are operating savings? I reckon they are cuts.' Anyway, I took a look at the cuts that the government had pushed through in the 2013-14 year, and it was $282 million worth of cuts, so I said to the Treasurer, 'In this table where it says operating savings to commence in 2014-15, and it has $276 million, are these in addition to the $282 in 2013-14?' He said yes. I said, 'Alright, so in other words in the 2014-15 year we are going to have $276 million worth of cuts in that year on top of the $282 from the previous year?' He said yes.

I said, 'Alright, so if we go along with that in 2015-16, when we are going to have $313 million worth of cuts that year we will have the $313 million worth of new cuts, plus the $276 from the previous year, plus the $282 from the year before?' and he said yes. Well, I did the arithmetic and over the forward estimates the cuts to the state budget are going to add up to—are you ready for this Deputy Speaker?—$4.2 billion.

So, again, I make this point: the government goes to a great extent to say that there is—and I am just going to get the exact figure for you because I do not want to mislead you on it—$885 million worth of federal cuts, but that is $885 million worth of federal cuts out of a total cut package in this state of $4.2 billion. So, again, I am asking myself, 'Why is the Treasurer running around saying we are in this perilous situation, and we are going to have to close hospitals because of federal government cuts, when by far the larger cut is coming from the state here in South Australia?' He should turn that same rhetoric back on himself.

I must say that I think it is a complete and utter misuse of finite state government funds to spend $1.1 million on what is pure political advertising. We can ill afford to waste money like that. It is shameful, and I know that the member for Florey would be aghast if they ended up closing the Modbury Hospital as they have been threatening, and instead of operating the Modbury Hospital spent $1.1 million on political advertising. That would be a shame, and I know that she would personally be absolutely aghast at that concept.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: More than aghast.

Mr MARSHALL: More than aghast. It is a terrible budget, Deputy Speaker, and I tell you one thing that I have been trying to get a handle on, and that is the Public Service numbers here in South Australia. I would have thought that this was a pretty easy exercise, quite frankly. Every year the opposition comes along and we usually ask a pretty simple question: 'How many public servants do you have?' I would be pretty prepared for it if I was on that side of the house. I think it is fair to say that they have no idea. I find it incredible, but it is a crazy situation.

At the end of the 2013 financial year they brought down their budget in June 2013, and they said that they had 81,724 public servants. It is pretty exact, considering it is completely inaccurate. I mean, 81,724 full-time equivalents in the Public Service and then they set themselves a goal at exactly the same time to reduce the Public Service down to 79,484 FTEs so, doing the arithmetic this is a reduction of 2,240 full-time equivalents in our Public Service. That is what they predicted in June 2013.

Now, the great thing about the calendar is that it marches on and you get a chance to go back and see how people went relative to their promises. We did that, and in 2014 we checked out the number of full-time equivalents in the Public Service, remembering that they had promised to reduce it to 79,484. Actually, it was 81,516. Now, that is a small error! Some people would call it a rounding error; I think it is pretty substantial. They said that they wanted to reduce the size of the Public Service by 2,240 and they actually reduced it by 208. I mean, they fell short. I do not want to state the bleeding obvious, but they fell short.

So, I think it was reasonable for us to ask, 'Well, given the fact that you fell so short in your estimate, why did we have such an incredible number that was provided for increased payments in terms of TVSPs?' Now, TVSP stands for targeted voluntary separation packages, and I can tell you that I was aghast when I read on page 30 of Budget Paper 3 that there was a variance in terms of expenses in the budget which related to increased payments of TVSPs. The government paid $94 million over and above its original budget for TVSPs.

I could not understand that because if we had a target to reduce the Public Service by 2,240 and we reduced it by less than 9 per cent of what we targeted, I would have thought there would have been a positive variance, that we did not spend as much on our targeted voluntary separation packages; I would have thought we would have spent less. We spent $94 million more than we provided for to completely and utterly fail.

So, I thought I will ask this question of the Treasurer: 'Can you explain to me, sir, how this works?' And he said, 'It's not my area.' I said, 'That's fine. Whose area is it?' He said, 'It's the member for Port Adelaide, the Minister for the Public Sector.' So, I thought, alright, fair enough, I will ask the minister. So, I went to estimates when the minister was appearing and I went through exactly the same numbers. I said, 'Minister, I find it incredible: 2,240 was your goal, 208 was your result; a $94 million increase in the provision of TVSPs. Can you explain it to me?' She said, 'It's not my area.' I said, 'Really? Whose area is it?' She said, 'It's the Treasurer's.'

It was like an episode of Yes, Minister. I thought the cameras must have been on me and Jim Hacker was about to walk in. It was really one of those Nigel Hawthorne moments when it was proven comprehensively that this government has no idea of what it is doing—no idea of what it is doing—and the Treasurer has still not given any explanation whatsoever to the parliament of why there is such a massive increase in the provision for TVSPs, even though they have failed comprehensively to achieve what they would like to achieve in terms of the number of people in the Public Service.

Of course, we are now confronted with a new set of numbers in this budget. The government says that we are going to return to a surplus. Now, call me sceptical, but I do not believe that for one second. They say that within two years this government will return to surplus. They are promising a $406 million surplus in the 2015-16 financial year, which begins in under 11 months. I mean, it is completely implausible. Let us just say that if the government were to have a chance of that, they would need to reduce the size of the Public Service, which hitherto they have been unable to effect. This year, they say they are going to decrease the size of the Public Service from 81,516 down to 80,000, so they think they are going to reduce the size of the Public Service by 1,490. Well, this government has proven itself to be completely incapable of doing that in the past.

I was also fortunate enough to sit in on estimates for the health minister. He was the previous treasurer (two treasurers ago). We have had three treasurers in the last 18 months, none of them have been much chop, but I thought I would go and have a look at this issue of Public Service numbers with the health minister (the former treasurer). So, I asked him the question: what was going on in his area, because he has the most employees so he would probably have a pretty good idea. When we go back to the original June 2013 number in the health department, they told us that they had 30,330 full-time equivalents in the health department and they set themselves a goal for that year (the last financial year) to reduce that to 29,372. They wanted to reduce the size of the Public Service in the health department by 958 employees.

Of course, this is the evidence that everybody needs to know. It is not the federal government cuts that are driving the problems in the health department, or the cuts in the health department. They are there for all to see. They are in the budget from the previous year, Budget Paper 4, Volume 3, page 49. This is the 2013-14 budget which came out before there was even a Coalition government in Canberra, and they said they wanted to reduce the size of the health department by 958. Let us see how they went.

They said they would have the number of health sector employees down to 29,372. How many did they have a year later? They had increased the size of the Public Service in that area. At the end of last financial year, a few weeks ago, they had 30,690. Let us not beat around the bush. They started that financial year with 300 people fewer, so they increased the size of the health department by 300 whilst trying to reduce it by 958. They got it monumentally wrong.

When I asked the health minister about this, he said there were, as he refers to it, 'statistical anomalies'. I said, 'What are you talking about?' He said, 'Well, there were some statistical anomalies in that area.' I said, 'What sort of statistical anomalies? Minister, did you find people in your department that you didn't know were there?' That is exactly what happened. The health department at the end of the 2012-13 year, just over a year ago in June 2013, had no idea how many employees they had in their department. This just goes to the complete ineptitude of a government that has been in place after 12 years.

I am not going to talk for too long today but I think it is important that I do canvass a couple of other points and, in particular, I would like to spend a couple of minutes talking about the Motor Accident Commission, because credibility is extraordinarily important in politics and the government went to extraordinary lengths before the election to say that there would be no significant privatisation of state government assets if Labor were returned. Imagine my astonishment when we heard in the budget that the Motor Accident Commission is essentially going to be privatised. The Treasurer himself used the word 'privatised'. He confirmed this was essentially privatisation. It is a broken promise. This is typical of this government. After 12 years they have become arrogant and they think they can get away with saying one thing before an election and a completely different thing after the election.

The Treasurer wanted to try and nuance the entire debate and he said, 'What I really meant was we wouldn't privatise any essential services.' That is not what they said. Before the election they said, 'We won't privatise any significant assets.' They put a caveat on it and we were happy with that. If a building is sold it is fair enough because buildings and assets are bought and sold: that is what happens. But no significant asset would be privatised by this government.

I cannot think of a more significant asset on the state government's balance sheet than the Motor Accident Commission. You are hard pressed to find much of value on that balance sheet, to be quite honest, and the fact that they have chosen to privatise MAC, and announced this within months of being returned, is absolutely shameful. What worries me the most about this is whether or not taxpayers in South Australia are getting a good deal and the changing narrative which has ensued.

First, we are told that as of 30 June 2016 the government will no longer be writing any CTP insurance, so they will basically close the doors to new business as of 1 July 2016.Well, okay, what is going to be left for South Australia out of this? If you look at the forward estimates, they have provided for $500 million coming into the state government's coffers. The way they have come up with this number is that they say that there is a provision for payouts to people, which is on the balance sheet and, in fact, at the moment, it is 29 per cent over-provided for. That money, once it is wound up, will essentially be about $500 million worth of assets over the ongoing continuing liabilities, and that money will be returned to Treasury.

We thought, 'That $500 million doesn't really seem to be enough compared to this 29 per cent over-provision. What does this 29 per cent over-provision actually represent?' It turns out that the over-provision is well in excess of $1.2 billion. People on this side of the house are saying, 'If you have an entity and it is over-provided for, the government, from our point of view, has two alternatives: one is to reduce down CTP charges to motorists in South Australia, which is not a bad option at all for a state that is really struggling with the cost of living; or the other one is to return some money to the government, which has essentially underwritten the Motor Accident Commission for an extended period of time.

The government said, 'No, we're not going to do either of those things, we're just going to close it down.' This is one of the few things in this government which actually works and they want to close it down! We said, 'Did you give any consideration perhaps to having it as a continuing operation, like they have with the TAC in Victoria?' 'Oh, no, we don't want to do that, it increases our liability.' Well, the TAC has operated very successfully for an extended period of time and has returned, with very competitive rates to motorists, significant sums to the government. No, they do not want to do that. 'Well, have you considered selling it?'

Do not forget that, when the budget was brought down, there was no mention of selling it. I presume that the Premier was so worried about this massive backflip, saying that he would never privatise it, so it was going to be closed. But then the Treasurer let the cat out of the bag. He said, 'Yes, we may consider it.' I said, 'Why? We've never heard you say that before.' 'Well, I might have said it in the lockup.' It had never been reported by anybody before. So, the government is now considering selling the MAC.

What we on this side of the house would like to see is: what are the implications of moving to a commercial arrangement, open-market for CTP insurance premiums for motorists here in South Australia? I am not satisfied that they are not going to jump through the roof. In fact, when I look at other states that have gone down this track, most notably New South Wales, they have the most unaffordable, I think the term is, highest-cost CTP insurance in the nation.

It is not true to say that opening this up to the market will drive down costs. It will not, and I will tell you the reason why: the government provides a government guarantee to this scheme which is significantly lower cost than the prudential financial regulations which would be wrapped around it if it was a private-sector organisation. For that reason, when we look at states which have moved down this track, CTP charges have gone through the roof. I am not convinced that this is good for motorists but, on the other hand, I am not convinced that this is good for the taxpayers of South Australia. If it is making a return, why don't we keep it operating, or why don 't we look at selling it as a going concern? Why would we want to close the doors?

I asked the Treasurer this question during estimates: does this decision of government require legislation? He said that he was not sure. Well, let me tell you: if it requires one skerrick of legislation, the opposition will require a complete, fully-costed cost-benefit analysis on the various options for this very significant asset. This government has made a mess, quite frankly, of selling assets in the past. Look at what they have done with the forests, look at what they have done with SA Lotteries—and it just goes on and on. The incompetence of this government is legendary; it is a case study for students at university now. We do not want to be any part of the continuing financial ineptitude that this government is delivering here in South Australia.

I will conclude my remarks now, because we would like to progress to other matters today. Suffice it to say that South Australia is not in a good shape, it is not in a good place. Our budget is in crisis, and various government departments here in South Australia are simultaneously in crisis. The environment department is in crisis, and there is a crisis of confidence in the other place in the minister's handling of events. Families SA is in crisis; the last two weeks have been, as the Premier himself described it, 'catastrophic'. The people of South Australia have completely lost confidence in the minister and in this government in terms of handling child protection.

Our prisons are overfull, and the union itself is raising grave concerns about the government's handling of matters in that area. We are now hearing reports that the Royal Adelaide Hospital is heading towards being more than a year over time. That will end up costing us plenty; the government may say 'Well, we have a fixed price,' but, let me tell the house, if we fail to move out of the existing Royal Adelaide Hospital site as promised this will cost us money. Not only that, it will be another broken promise in terms of education in the CBD.

Estimates is a process which, as I said, is like a game, a game of hide and seek. We have been out there seeking as much information as we can get. Hopefully, down the track we would like to work as a parliament to reform this process and have a more reliable methodology for providing scrutiny of the government of the day. With those final sentences I conclude my remarks.

Ms REDMOND (Heysen) (11:47): I have a sense of déjà vu whenever I get up to give this address, at the point where we have been through the estimates process yet again. Having spent my entire parliamentary career, except for the first couple of hours, on the benches on this side, I think what is possibly not understood by those who sit on the benches on the other side—including yourself, Madam Deputy Speaker, although you have been here long enough to have been in opposition; there are a number of people on the government benches who have never experienced it—is the frustration of estimates, as seen from the opposition side.

It is not just frustration as a member of the opposition, it is frustration with the whole process. Every year I have raised my same concerns about the process, every year I have made it clear that I do not in any way challenge the government's right to set its budget, but the role of the opposition is to question and to challenge. In fact, that enhances our likelihood of having good government in this state. So the government can bring down its budget and, in theory, the estimates process—which is the committee stage of the budget bill, in essence—is our chance to go into the detail of it.

We are all familiar with the process on most bills, where we give a second reading and we then go into the committee stage where each member has the right to ask up to three questions on each clause to try to get clarification and perhaps suggest some changes that might make things better. That is really the process we are going through with estimates, except that in estimates it is such a big document—I still remember getting my first budget papers and thinking 'Where do I begin?'—that it is entirely appropriate to divide it into the various ministries and then look into detail on a minister by minister basis.

I suggest that it would be smarter simply to have the minister and maybe the chief executive, and if there is something to which they do not know the answer, they could simply say what they say anyway; and that is, 'I will have to take that on notice and bring back an answer.' That would be far more efficient in terms of the money and time that is spent in the process that we currently have.

I know from work that I did prior to coming into this place that not only is all that time spent during the two weeks that we have the estimates going, but in the weeks leading up to estimates from, indeed, before the budget comes down, some senior executives have to focus their entire attention on preparing for estimates.

Mr Speirs interjecting:

Ms REDMOND: Someone who might know, the member for Bright, is acknowledging the correctness of this. I know from previous experiences that I have had with various boards, committees, departments and so on, that an inordinate amount of time is spent by all those people preparing for estimates, lest we ask a question to which the answer cannot be given.

I suggest that, given the parlous financial state of the economy in this state, it would be far more productive to simply have the minister and the chief executive, maybe on a less formal basis, rather than taking up time in here and all the recording and so on that goes on with Hansard, to simply have an informal briefing and a promise to get answers. It can work, I am sure. I have had informal briefings with ministers over the years where they have promised to give me answers to things and we have, indeed, received answers to things.

We have the documents in front of us, we are entitled to ask questions and to expect answers to the questions that we ask about the budget—given, as I said, that I acknowledge the government's right to set its budget. My suggestion, for what it is worth, is that we would be far better off as a state if we abolished the current process and looked at what this process is meant to achieve and how best to achieve it.

The same applies, Madam Deputy Speaker, to omnibus questions: you must have heard those omnibus questions in the course of estimates dozens of times. Since they are the same for every minister why do they have to be read at every separate ministerial hearing? Why not simply say, 'Here are the omnibus questions.' That would save time. I just do not understand how we have come to this point.

One of the other bugbears that I have about the whole estimates process is that it does not matter whether a minister is actually a minister appointed from the House of Assembly or from the Legislative Council, the minister can come into the chamber to answer questions as the minister. However, if we have a shadow minister who is appointed in the Legislative Council, that shadow minister cannot come in here to ask questions.

Historically, there is no reason why that should be the case. In the federal parliament, it is the Senate that does the estimates. Senate estimates go on for weeks and weeks and can be very expensive and time consuming, as well, but there is absolutely no reason, from any historical or practical perspective, why we should not allow the shadow minister responsible for a portfolio to be the person charged with and allowed to ask questions about the budget itself. I think of all those things whenever I come to the estimates process.

I heard the story that the leader told about the Treasurer, that the Treasurer, in answer to a question, said, 'That's not my area.' So the leader then asked the relevant minister for the Public Service the question—because that is who he was told was responsible—and that minister said, 'That's not my area, it's actually the Treasurer,' by which time, of course, the opportunity to ask the Treasurer the question had gone because that particular line of the budget had been closed. It just makes a nonsense of the process. We are so tied up in the processes involved here that we have forgotten what the point of it is, and if we are not able to achieve the point of it, why are we continuing to go through this process year upon year?

I have a number of comments that I fear I will not have time to make about the state of our economy, but I do want to talk briefly about the last issue raised by the leader in his speech, that is, the closure of the Motor Accident Commission. That is something of concern to me. I have had a lot of dealings with the commission over a number of years in a number of different capacities. I was a member of the Road Safety Advisory Council for many years before coming into this place, and I had contact with it through that. I practised as a lawyer and, although I was a general practitioner in the law, if I specialised in anything it was actually major injuries, and many of those, of course, arose out of motor accidents, so I have, I think, probably a reasonably strong comprehension of the role of the Motor Accident Commission in this state.

Indeed, very early on when I became a member of the Road Safety Advisory Council, I remember its then chairman (a chap by the name of Vin Keane, who would be well known; I think he was chair of SGIC at the time as well) talking about the need for some change to our SGIC system, as it was then called, because the situation in Victoria was that they were about to go bankrupt because of the payouts. There was a need to adjust our system and put some limits on the amounts that could be paid to victims of road accidents.

Those changes were introduced, and my recollection is that that would have been in the early 1980s; I think I was put onto the Road Safety Advisory Council at that stage. We looked at changing our system here to save us from the fate that was awaiting the Victorian system. Indeed, the Victorians changed as well and, as the leader mentioned, their system is now going strong—and so is our system. It is going very well. It was going so well that last year the government decided to back up its own coffers by taking $100 million from the Motor Accident Commission's funds and sticking it into the budget to try to prop up the budget which was failing so badly. But then, last year, the other thing we did—and I expressed concern about it at the time—was the government changed the entitlements of people injured in road accidents.

There was no basis for saying it this time. We changed those proceedings previously and put some limits on what could be applied in calculating the entitlements of people who were injured in motor accidents in this state, and we put those limits on to save the system. Here, the system was actually working well and had so much in surplus funds that the government took $100 million out, yet the government said, 'No, no, we need to make special provision. We've got to make provision for the catastrophically injured.' I have no problem with that. I absolutely agree that we need to make provision for the catastrophically injured, but the catastrophically injured are a very small percentage of the people who bring claims.

The evidence is not in yet. I talk to lawyers quite regularly and, of course, having practised in the area, I know that most of the flow-on from the changes that were made to the legislation last year will not come into being until two or three or more years from now because mostly, if people have a relatively serious injury that impedes them—they have to be injured enough to be significantly impaired for a week or two to be able to make a claim—that injury is going to take a while to heal, and often the medical report will say that the broken leg or whatever it is has now healed but that we need to wait for a year or so to see whether the healing is complete and what the outcome is ultimately.

It is going to be three or four years at least until the flowthrough effects of the changes that were made last year, but the fear is that whilst, as I said, I am happy about making absolutely appropriate provision for people who were catastrophically injured, there is a vast bulk of people who would in no sense classify as catastrophically injured but who, nevertheless, have a very significant injury.

I am thinking, for instance, of a young man I represented who lost his leg in a motorcycle accident (five amputations, starting at the ankle, that failed to succeed) and who ended up with just a stump of a leg. In his view and in his family's view, that is a catastrophic injury—but not under the definition of what we now have in place. So, someone with a very significant injury who loses the ability to live their life as they previously had is going to be, in my view, catastrophically affected by the changes that were put through in this legislation.

My belief now, given the government's intention, is that the effect of those changes was contemplated by the government when those changes were put through because, now that they are going to close it down, the lower the amount they are going to have to pay out in the future the larger the benefit left for the government—and that is what this is all about. It is not about the system not being viable. It is not about needing to make provisions lower so that we can afford to keep the system going.

This is all about the government having mismanaged the economy of this state and being in the most dreadful state—$14.3 billion of debt that will cost the people of this state $2.6 million each and every day. That is what this Motor Accident Commission change is really all about: it is about lowering what the people's entitlements are so that the amount that has to be paid out when they close it down for what is called the 'long tail' of the payments is minimised, and that will therefore maximise the amount the government can take.

This is money paid by the people of this state to set up this system; it is the biggest part of what you pay when you register your car every year. It is money out of the hands of the people of this state, and this government is stealing it to prop up their inadequate financial management which they have done over the past 12 years and which they will continue to do.

Mr GOLDSWORTHY (Kavel) (12:07): I want to take some time to make comments about the estimates committees process we have just been through. I want to support the comments the member for Heysen made in terms of the process and so forth. It was the 13th estimates committees I have been part of, and it continued what is an underwhelming experience, given the government's performance.

The member for Heysen highlighted the fact that we see not only the minister sitting with their chief executives of the departments at the front table but also a bank of senior departmental advisers three or four deep behind the minister, and the gallery—the Speaker's gallery and the President's gallery in the other place—is full of ministerial staff and advisers as well.

The point is that questions the opposition put to the government, put to the respective ministers, are unable to be answered. With all those resources here in the parliament—as I said a bank of advisers three or four deep and the gallery full of other departmental and ministerial people—the inability of ministers to answer questions is quite astounding.

We know that months are spent within the respective departments preparing for estimates, and you see the senior advisers with enormously thick folders with briefing papers and briefing notes in them, all tagged on different aspects of the different budget lines, but we still see year after year—and I have just been through my 13th year of this process—that the ministers continually are unable or unwilling to answer questions put to them by the opposition.

I sat in on and attended three specific committees, those dealing with local government, consumer and business services and veterans' affairs, all of which I continue to have a keen interest in. In giving an appraisal of each one of those committees, I will start off with local government. Clearly, the Minister for Local Government is not across the detail of that portfolio and relied heavily on advice from his chief executive on pretty much every question that was asked of him. That was not really anything out of the ordinary, because I have sat in on and led questions in the local government estimates committee, having been the shadow minister for that area in previous years, and a succession of local government ministers have been unable to answer questions and have relied extremely heavily on answers provided to them from the chief executive.

That says only one thing: that the minister is not across the detail of that portfolio. It is pretty obvious that the shadow ministers—the opposition—are well and truly across the detail of their areas of responsibility compared to the ministers. Ministers have enormous resources. They have their ministerial staff, their advisers, and their departments, and supposedly they should be working at least 80 hours a week on their respective responsibilities. You would think they would be full of knowledge and information and hardly have the need to seek advice, but unfortunately we see that the capacity of the ministers—of the government—is extremely lacking in their areas of responsibility.

I think anybody who came in and viewed the performance in an objective manner from the gallery would have had an experience that would show that the shadow ministers are far better across those portfolio areas than the ministers are, and we certainly know the very scant resources we have available to us. When I was shadow minister, there was some basic support from the leader's office, but it operates on a skeleton staff, and it was my two electorate staff who helped me and supported me in my role as shadow minister. Not only did they have to deal with all the electorate work, but they also had to deal with the shadow ministry work. That is a stark contrast in terms of the resources that the opposition has compared to the government.

What do we see? We see questions being taken on notice, them really evading questions and not getting to the core issues of the questions. The leader and the member for Heysen highlighted what happened when the leader asked the Treasurer about Public Service numbers. The Treasurer referred it to the other minister, and then the other minister referred it back to the Treasurer. That situation is just farcical, but that is not really unexpected. As I said, for some members on this side of the house—the member for Heysen, the member for MacKillop (who has been here even longer), the member for Morphett and the deputy leader—it has been our 13th estimates committees and we expected it to be quite an underwhelming experience.

The next committee that I attended was the one on consumer and business services. That is an interesting area and again, I was the shadow minister for that for a period of time. I think that is an interesting area, because it covers a lot of different aspects of activity within government. The minister talked in her opening statement about issues concerning liquor licensing laws and regulations and about how, supposedly with the introduction of lockouts and things of that nature, the incidence of unacceptable and lawless behaviour has decreased.

One question that always comes to my mind is: okay, statistics provide certain information, but I would like to know if there has been an increase in police resources, particularly in the nightclub area along the Hindley Street strip. It was probably two or three years ago that the then leader (the member for Heysen) myself, the shadow attorney-general and the shadow minister for police visited Hindley Street at about 2 o'clock in the morning, from memory. We walked up and down, and spoke to the police, some venue operators and the like. It was quite an interesting exercise, but what struck me were the few police that I could see who were actually out on the beat—I counted four, to be precise, in the period.

There might have been some more in the station or they might have been out on some other callouts (I do not know), but there were four officers on the nightclub strip of Hindley Street when we were there. We have had lockouts and other measures put in place to supposedly curb antisocial binge drinking and all the activity that goes with that, but I would like to know if there has been an increase in police resources, because part of me thinks there has been. We all know it is human nature that when you see a police officer—even if you are driving along the road, if you see a police car it is an automatic reaction that you check how fast you are driving.

Ms Redmond: Speak for yourself!

Mr GOLDSWORTHY: Well, I do, because I am conscious of not wanting to incur a fine and demerit points, even though I have a completely clean slate. I have incurred only a handful—

Ms Redmond: A handful?

Mr GOLDSWORTHY: Not even. You can count on one hand the number of traffic infringements I have received over—

Ms Redmond: How many years?

Mr GOLDSWORTHY: —41 years of driving. How is that?

Ms Redmond: Forty-one years of licensed driving.

Mr GOLDSWORTHY: Of licensed driving, yes.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: So we can work out how old you are now.

Mr GOLDSWORTHY: That is pretty easy; just look at a website. It is not very hard to work out how old I am. I was a fairly young-looking bloke when I came into this place, but 12-and-a-bit years have made my hair go grey and taken their toll. Anyway, be that as it may, that is digressing. I think it is an interesting point whether there has been an increase in police presence and police resources put in around the nightclub scene.

Another interesting aspect is that a couple of years ago something came to my attention where there was a significant deficiency in the way the Office of Consumer and Business Services was managing its workload. A particular case came to my attention of a young apprentice plumber. That person had completed their training and lodged an application for a trade licence to become a qualified plumber. That application took more than three months to process because of the inefficiencies within that office. We highlighted that case and it received coverage within The Advertiser newspaper and for quite some time on radio programs, where it came to the fore.

I was pleased that I was the shadow minister to highlight this case, because it actually brought some action from the government. A ministerial staff member of the then minister (now the Deputy Premier) was seconded into that Office of Consumer and Business Services to really pinpoint where the problems were and to remedy them. I am not sure whether it is operating completely satisfactorily, but I think there has been an improvement brought about by the opposition shining some light on that issue. There were also some issues in relation to the Residential Tenancies Tribunal and the inefficiencies that they were operating under, the returning of bonds and all sorts of problems within that office. The then minister did address it and I understand there has been some improvement, which is pleasing.

The next committee that I attended was that of veterans' affairs, and this is I think another really interesting area. It is an area of responsibility that I really did enjoy as a shadow minister. It is clearly an important area and really coming into sharp focus in relation to the centenary of World War I. The welfare of our veterans is a very important area of responsibility for both the state and federal government, because even though some of us do not have family members who are veterans, we all know a veteran.

My family actually bought our farm in the Hills from a World War I veteran, Mr Chapman, whom I still remember from when I was a boy. Even though none of my close relatives served in the forces—their ages did not match up with the conflicts at the time so they were not conscripted or of an age to be accepted into the forces—as I said, everybody knows a veteran. We are all clearly aware of the contribution they have made to our society and I think that even though the Office of Veterans' Affairs is not enormous, it still plays a very important role.

The shadow minister asked the minister concerning the future of the Repatriation Hospital, and we know how crucially important that is to the veterans' community. The minister sort of sidestepped around the question and again handballed it to the Minister for Health. But I clearly remember this incident: before the Minister for Veterans' Affairs changed his colours and went over to the government cabinet benches, he was out I think, from memory, on Goodwood Road protesting with the then people campaigning for the future of the Repatriation Hospital. He was out in the public when he was still on this side of the house, still a member with us, before he went over to the cabinet benches, so it is pretty clear where the minister sits in relation to that. Even though he made some positive general comments about it, it is a pretty poor situation and I am happy to say that.

I did not attend the agriculture estimates committee, but there were questions raised in relation to the future of the Lenswood Research Centre. The minister was asked questions in relation to that, and from memory, again, he said, 'There has been no sale figure factored into the budget', but then he went on and said that things in 10 or 20 years will be different. Well, we all know that.

However, I noted in an article in the local newspaper in the Hills, The Courier, that there has been a group of people looking to progress a proposition in relation to the future of Lenswood Research Centre. They are quoted in the paper as saying that the minister told them—and this is something I am going to do a lot more work on obviously—that the place will be sold, and that may well be as soon as in the next year. We need some pretty significant clarification on where we are going with that, because the indication in the estimates committee is quite different from my way of thinking and my view and from what was stated in the local paper last week.

In my final couple of minutes I want to talk about the transport infrastructure part of the budget, and specifically the second freeway interchange that is to be built at Mount Barker. I want to clearly state that, if it had not been for the support of the state Liberal opposition in formulating a policy to part fund that infrastructure work, the vast balance of that infrastructure funding also committed by the federal Liberal government and some money committed by local council, that project would not be proceeding.

I wrote to the then minister for transport and infrastructure, Anthony Albanese—I cannot remember his specific title—when the Labor Party was in federal government and I got a nice letter saying, 'We think it's a good project but we're not going to fund it.' To his credit the member for Mayo, before he became the federal minister for infrastructure, got the federal Coalition to commit funds to that project and I have been pleased—and I want to acknowledge the support I received from the leader in relation to this—that, over two successive elections, the state Liberals committed funding. We were supportive and committed to the project in the 2006 election. We had not committed funding at that time but we were supportive of the project to be progressed.

In 2010 and 2014 this side of the house committed some funding and it was really at the very end of the process that we saw the government come to the party and belatedly commit some funding. We had the then minister for transport try to come up at the start of the election campaign and muddy the water saying that he got some more money out of the federal government in relation to this. A couple of weeks ago, there was an interesting InDaily article where the journalist said that the then minister for transport had egg on his face because that money had not come to fruition and had actually been redirected to some of the transport infrastructure projects in metropolitan Adelaide.

Time expired.

Mr SPEIRS (Bright) (12:27): This is the first time I have come into the chamber to reflect on the estimates process. I think that doing these speeches drags this process out by another couple of weeks and adds to the pain—but never mind. The person who probably suffered more pain than me during the estimates process was you, Deputy Speaker, because you had to sit through more of it than I did!

I have been able to think both long and hard, both during the process and since it occurred, about the purpose and point of estimates. I had the privilege of spending many hours of my life in multiple portfolio hearings including with the Premier, the Minister for Small Business, the Minister for Defence Industries, the Minister for Innovation and Manufacturing, the Minister for the Public Sector, amongst others; but the portfolio I had the most misfortune of being part of was, no doubt, the environment portfolio.

The environment department and in fact the whole environmental agenda in South Australia, I believe, has really lost its way with this government. With the drought gone and forgotten and climate change relegated from being the greatest moral challenge of our time, and with Greens' preferences seemingly guaranteed no matter the environmental credentials of the worthy Liberal candidates (not that I am bitter about that), the green agenda has taken a back seat for our state's policymakers.

We found out during the estimates hearing for the department that the government is refusing to rule out further cutting the number of park rangers this financial year. We now have 88 park rangers in the state down from 300 in 2002. Of those 88, I am told firsthand that they spend many hours each week writing ministerial briefings and completing onerous reporting requirements keeping them away from front-line duties.

Today in South Australia we have 343 parks spanning over 21 million hectares and making up 21.5 per cent of our state’s land mass. These areas require adequate care, protection and management, yet the people who provide that practical care, the people who can build relationships with communities and the people who can build knowledge and understanding of the way the land works, are subject to continual cutbacks. Similarly, the cuts to the Natural Resource Management Community Grants program flies in the face of good governance. These grants are used to empower community groups and landowners to take responsibility for their local environment by tackling invasive weeds, feral animals and undertaking revegetation programs.

Seed funding programs such as the NRM grants are best practice in governance because they transfer responsibility from a big, out-of-touch government to people at a community level. They empower people, build community capability and stretch the dollar much further than government might be able to do. They are also much more likely to attract additional in-kind support and build goodwill between government and communities, yet these are slashed and burned in the recent cuts.

I have said before in this place that I am an environmentalist, but in a very practical way—not in an esoteric latte-sipping way, but in a real life, tree planting, weed removing, public transport catching way. This brand of environmentalism is focused on community action, encouraging people to undertake practical works at the local level and actually getting things happening.

Consequently, the loss of the NRM grants, the loss of front-line rangers, the loss of goodwill between the environment department and communities, serves to break down the effectiveness of the department and undermine its ongoing existence, an existence which has already been called into question by the Treasurer, who canvassed its abolition as a way to plug the massive holes in the government’s budget.

Today the environment department lies broken and humbled like a wheezing mega fauna crawling through the dust to extinction. Once energetic and influential, able to drive across government and community-centric agendas, it now struggles for relevance, pondering its raison d’être and giving up the ghost, one front-line service at a time.

The estimates process for the environment portfolio was revealing for me in a whole range of ways. Not only did it draw out the crisis of existence facing the environment department, it also demonstrated all that is wrong with the estimates process. Ministers were sitting there being questioned on budget papers that were so different in format and structure from last year’s that they were barely recognisable. This is part of a game, it seems: how much can we hide through structuring the budget documents differently?

My first recommendation to make this process better, more accessible, would be to legislate the format of budget papers, set them in stone, so that only departmental restructures could change their format, and even at that, the budget papers should clearly show which areas have been combined and altered between one year and the next.

In the environment portfolio it was clear from the beginning that the minister did not want to answer our questions. Some ministers were open during this process and had a frank dialogue with their questioners, but in the environment portfolio avoidance and arrogance was the strategy of the day. On one occasion the minister refused to answer a question because it was close to impossible for us to identify where the item lay within the budget papers. There was much back and forward with the minister silently guffawing at us for not being able to translate the interminable gibberish of his budget papers to point to the exact position of the item we were questioning. The arrogance dripped from the minister with syrupy viscous, and each of his words were used to mock and chuckle at us.

Except my next question asked the minister to identify where the item was, and it took him and three of his executive advisers three minutes to find it themselves—and these were the people who actually came up with the budget. What a joke. Each question asked of him was avoided, rebutted, ignored or arrogantly answered with a Dorothy Dixer. I looked at the minister’s advisers, some of whom I know well, and they looked uncomfortable, awkward, embarrassed. It got worse.

Next up was the EPA hearing, which was only afforded half an hour, despite the fact that the Clovelly Park and Mitchell Park contamination was the most pressing issue of the month. The minister’s now infamous toilet break chewed up most of the time, followed by a lengthy and unnecessary introductory statement. I would ban these introductory statements. They are just self-important and completely unnecessary.

Another problem with estimates is the huge amount of time eaten up behind the scenes, and the members for Heysen and Kavel have already alluded to that this morning. When I worked in the Public Service I was often part of the 'cottage industry' that is the estimates process. Departments spend literally thousands of hours predicting what questions could be asked, writing briefings on these questions, and getting those briefings back to put commas and semicolons in places where you did not put commas and semicolons in the first place.

In fact, I was speaking to a contact in one department a couple of weeks ago, and was told that for two months her team had been completely engrossed in the estimates process and distracted from normal business by the estimates preparation process. And this comes around every year, year in and year out—a couple of months wasted on the estimates process. It is a bit like constructing the Clipsal stadium in the Parklands: no sooner is it disassembled at the end of one race than it is being built again for the next race.

It is one thing to stand here pontificating about the failings of the estimates process, but I would be doing the parliament and the community a disservice if I did not put on record some suggestions for change. Of course, I must put in a disclaimer here that these are my own views expressed as the member for Bright alone and not necessarily the views of the Liberal Party. To date, I have made no effort to persuade my colleagues of the merit of these ideas, though down the track I will try to do so.

I would significantly reform the way estimates is done, mostly because of the amount of time they waste and the lack of accountability that they actually draw out. Estimates are a waste of time. They are a waste of time for the members of the committees, a waste of time for ministerial and senior public servants being briefed and, of course, a waste of time for ministerial advisers and, let's face it, ministerial advisers need all the time they can get to come up with rubbish to tweet on their fake Twitter accounts. More importantly, they are a waste of time for the hundreds of public servants who spend those two months leading up to the estimates in a constant kerfuffle ensuring that those semicolons and commas and hyphens are correctly placed in the many, many briefings that we have to put together.

So, my vision for a modernised estimates process: I would continue to have a hearing for each ministerial portfolio and could use the annual budget as the catalyst for this occurring, but it would not be fixated on budget lines as the current process is. As I have described from minister Hunter's shambolic avoidance strategy, this is just embarrassing, and not just for the questioner; it is also embarrassing for the avoider, and it is not overly necessary. Why does a questioner need to refer to a specific point in a budget paper? Because it is convention. Well, these old conventions need to be reviewed from time to time.

Since I was elected to this place I have seen so many things that need a question mark hooked around their roots and tugged on until these dusty old vestiges are pulled down and rebuilt. Estimates are one of them. I would only allow ministers and their chief executive onto the floor, no other advisers. They can go and tweet stuff. I would allow as many non-government MPs into the process as possible, both from the lower and upper house, and if anyone has a question they can ask it through the chair—none of this subbing in and subbing out.

I would not bother with government MPs. It is just unnecessary and a waste of their time. The good folks of Morphett Vale would be far better served if the member for Reynell was down in the electorate for estimates week rather than sitting here wasting her time on the government benches. Likewise, the members for Ashford, Elder, Torrens, Napier and Giles—a complete waste of their valuable time. Goodness, Deputy Speaker, the member for Elder could have been down in Clovelly Park digging out the contamination, but, sadly, she was stuck here.

I would have 1.5 hours of questioning for every portfolio. That is plenty of time for the bigger portfolios and it increases time for the smaller ones as well. And here is my biggest reform: I would welcome outsiders into the process. Now that really would be co-designing a new engagement paradigm.

I have heard lots of people say that estimates should be abolished, but I do not think that is the case. I think we could actually really increase their value by bringing outsiders in, by bringing representatives from peak bodies, from community groups, from business leaders, community leaders and not-for-profits. I think there could be a great deal of value in bringing these groups into the estimates process and asking them to sit alongside shadow ministers.

I think sometimes in this house, as a collective on both sides, we do get distracted with a bit of self importance, but we are not experts in everything, and bringing people from the outside into the estimates process would be a valuable reform, I believe. I have heard lots of people from my side of politics really cry out for significant reform in the estimates process, but I do believe that reform is needed; but in the interests of accountability we do need to keep estimates.

The good thing about estimates is that they get ministers to front up and go through an extended period of questioning, sort of like question time on valium. We need to have as many instruments of ministerial accountability at every turn, because we know the government's adverse reaction to freedom of information requests. Openness is not this government's forte. There needs to be mechanisms like estimates so we can get access to ministers without being forced to write to the bureaucracy, because, as I recently discovered, there seems to be a haphazard policy in place that prevents public servants from providing any advice to an MP or an MP's office without writing to the minister's office first.

Here are a couple of anecdotes for the house. A couple of weeks ago I was at Hallett Cove shopping centre, holding one of my regular listening posts, and a young mother came up for a chat. She asked if I knew whether the government had set down its kindergarten operating hours for the next year, 2015. I said that I did not know but that on Monday I would contact the education department and find out. So on Monday that is what my office did. A simple question for the education department. As soon as they heard it was from an MP's office they closed down: 'No, we can't tell you the kindergarten operating hours. We can't give MPs any information—you have to write to the minister.' Yes, write to the minister! As if the education department is not bureaucratic enough, they want me to punt another piece of rubbish into the system.

What if a member of the public called to ask the same question? What if one of my staff members rang the agency and asked the question, but instead of being from the Bright electorate office, imagine they were a young mum! Imagine they were called 'Lisa', and for good measure imagine if they were called 'Lisa Rankine'. So that is what we did: 'Lisa Rankine' picked up the phone and called the crazy bureaucracy that is DECD. You could almost see the DECD operative look at their checklist: No. 1—is it a bomb threat? No! Okay, do not transfer it to SAPOL. No. 2—is it a school principal? Okay, do not hang up! No. 3—is it the member for Unley? Okay, it is not, do not hang up. No. 4—is it another MP? It is not—okay, do not hang up. No. 5, is it Lisa Rankine, young mum from Brighton—okay, continue the call. So, quick as a flash, Lisa (who really was one of my staffers) was provided with information about kindy hours for 2015. That is really frustrating in the extreme. Could it be an isolated incident? I think not!

A couple of weeks back I received an email from a Hallett Cove resident concerned about the safety of an intersection. The fluorescent paint that covers the edges of a traffic island was worn away and needed to be repainted. Could I do anything about it, my constituents asked. Sure, I said, 'It's pretty easy, I'll call the transport department, I'll report it, something will get done.' Or not! I made a mistake: when I emailed the Traffic Management Centre at Norwood I revealed my identity. Heaven forbid, it was an MP's office emailing, so I was ignored.

Remember, this was a pressing safety issue, so the following week, having had no response to my email, one of my staff called again, and again we made the mistake of saying that we were from the office of David Speirs. It was like an earthquake warning had been sounded in the office: everyone got under their desks and hid. 'Is it over—has the MP gone away?' Actually, this phone call was quite open: the public servant we spoke to said there was a policy in place that no DPTI staff member is allowed to interact with MPs or their offices, and we have to write to the minister.

If there is one thing I have learnt in my four months in this place it is that DPTI is a black hole when it comes to ministerial correspondence. Remember, this was a safety issue. This traffic island had visibility issues, and we were told to write to the minister. Good luck to my constituent who impales their car on the traffic island while this correspondence works through the layers of bureaucracy in DPTI.

But, I am a tenacious sort. I want to achieve for my electorate, so we decided to call back, and third time lucky! We had learnt our lesson. We are learning that, if we identify that we are from an MP's office, we will not get any luck, so we had to call back as a member of the public. How about Lisa again, but not Lisa Rankine? She has already done her duty for the state. How about Lisa Mullighan? No, my staff member said, Mullighan is too rare a surname. 'Milligan', I suggest—M-I-L-L-I-G-A-N—so 'Lisa Milligan' picked up the phone, called the department and, hey presto, this morning, within 40 minutes, they are sending out a maintenance team to take a look at the dangerous intersection.

Spare me the pain. This is what we are dealing with. A government so averse to interacting with the democracy that they will not have anything to do with MPs but if you are 'Lisa Rankine' or 'Lisa Mullighan', well that is a good thing. So I look forward to 'Lisa Bignell' coming to the fore in the coming months, and 'Lisa Close 'and 'Lisa Weatherill' and 'Lisa Rau' and even 'Lisa Koutsantonis'. They all live in the electorate of Bright and they can be looked up on the electoral roll.

I will leave it at that. I believe that the estimates process should be reformed. There are significant changes that need to be made but it should not be abolished. Because the government is so averse to interacting with members opposite and doing the right thing by democracy in our state, we need as many accountability mechanisms in place as possible and, though estimates does have its failings, there is still a bit of accountability present within the system.

Mr GARDNER (Morialta) (12:45): When bills are dealt with by the house which see a large number of opposition speakers making contributions, we tend to randomise the order with the exception that the deputy whip goes second last and the whip goes last because we tend to be in the chamber quite a lot and, therefore, if a member might be running late for some reason then that means we can step in. I fear after following the deputy whip now on about five or six occasions, we are going to have to change this process because there is nothing worse when giving a speech than doing so right after the person who has given the best speech of the session, which the deputy whip is making a habit of doing.

Member for Bright, I share your pain, and I think that all members who have served in opposition under this government would feel the same, and possibly even some MPs who are out of favour on the government benches might from time to time feel the same. If the Deputy Speaker were still in the chair she would be able to advise us on whether or not she has had that problem herself in the past when she was not in such high favour as she is in her illustrious new position.

I enjoy the estimates process more than some. As the member for Goyder occasionally tells us, he is a sponge for knowledge, and I feel the same way in some sense and it is a good opportunity to learn about some of the portfolio areas. However, I certainly concur with the frustrations that have been presented and some ministers do a better job than others at even attempting to present accountability to the public. I was the shadow minister responsible for a number of areas. I was able to assist firstly in relation to the Electoral Commission budget line, and I thank the Deputy Premier for not taking Dorothy Dix questions and for making the staff and the Electoral Commissioner available to answer questions.

However, I am concerned that 10 minutes of his answer time was taken up with a long Dorothy Dix-style response that bore no relation to one of the questions asked but, for the most part, I think he allowed information to be gathered. I thank the Minister for Police and Correctional Services, who I had extensive discussions with, for taking only two Dorothy Dix questions, I think, throughout those two portfolios, and for the most part information was made available. However, I do have strong concerns about one aspect of the questioning which I will get to shortly.

The minister responsible for higher education and science took Dorothy Dixers, and I had an hour of sitting through that with the shadow minister responsible, the member for Adelaide. I note that the Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion was surrounded, and I counted 22 advisers on the ground floor at one stage, but rumours said that a number of those in the gallery, which was at the time quite full, were public servants here to help her with the estimates as well. Given that for the 45-minute session of communities and social inclusion I think six government Dixers were taken, and possibly less than half the time allocated to opposition questioning, this was possibly overkill and somewhat unnecessary.

At any rate I want to focus my limited time today on the portfolio responsibilities for which I have carriage for the opposition. Beginning with police, I think the first thing that I want to say in relation to this matter is that the first hour of the two hours allocated for estimates was spent discussing issues related to the Coroner's finding into the case of Zara Abrahimzadeh.

I thank the minister and the deputy commissioner, who was acting as commissioner due to the illness of the commissioner on that day, for the information provided to those questions. It is clearly a case where the police have admitted they got a number of things wrong and in which improvements to processes have been identified by the police themselves. The police deputy commissioner has advised the public previously, and in more detail in the estimates process, of the 47 recommendations that are being undertaken, led by himself as the deputy commissioner with the domestic violence portfolio newly created inside his role. Those 47 recommendations are being implemented by the police as we speak, under the leadership of the deputy commissioner.

The Coroner, in investigating the case in some detail, made 10 recommendations and he made them to the Premier. In doing so, he identified that the Premier has said on a number of occasions that this is an area for which he wishes to take personal leadership. So, the Coroner has made his recommendations to the Premier and not the police commissioner, on the understanding that the police are responsible, of course, to the government of the day, who are accountable to the public. The Coroner identified that this was an area of such significance that it needed leadership from the Premier and the Premier acknowledged on the day the findings were handed down that this was a function of leadership that he was happy to take responsibility for.

With that in mind, we look forward to the Premier's response. We understand that the police commissioner, and this was confirmed in estimates, is preparing a response to the Coroner's findings himself. That will be provided to the Premier and will inform the Premier's response. We understand that will be provided to the Premier in the coming weeks and we will see from there how the Premier's response goes. The opposition is eager to work with the government in a bipartisan way as much as possible to ensure that a situation such as has occurred to the Abrahimzadeh family and the children who have suffered so much need not happen to anyone else and that processes and policies can be improved.

Unfortunately, after we had spent a good hour discussing ways that this matter could be addressed, the next topic that was gone into on the police was pursued by the shadow minister for road safety, and I say unfortunately in the manner of the minister's response because there was an issue that came to light several weeks ago to do with a number of fines that were imposed erroneously by police on the public. The member for Mitchell asked the minister why this information was not given to the public in January when the mistake was discovered; why it was in fact only in July, after cheques had been sent out on 30 June to affected parties, that this information was received? The Minister for Police's response was:

My understanding is that the minister of the day was acting on advice given by SAPOL and that is good advice.

He went on to say:

…what the police said is that they were still working through the process, the advice provided at that point in time was limited and they could not actually give dates of refunds, etc.

To be clear, what the shadow minister for road safety was asking about was the detail: what was the nature of the advice provided? Was the advice in fact to not tell the public, to actively not tell the public, or was the advice silent on the matter of whether the public should be informed or not, in which case it was the minister of the day's own prerogative not to tell the public? This went on for a while and in one passage, for example, the minister said:

I am advised that the minister acted according to the advice given by SAPOL.

The member for Mitchell said:

Again, I just want clarification. Did SAPOL advise the minister not to tell the public?

Minister:

I am saying the minister acted in accordance with the advice provided by SAPOL.

Member for Mitchell:

I understand that, but I just need the clarification.

Minister:

If you ask the question again, you will have the same answer.

This went on for three pages of Hansard, back and forth. The minister characterised it, as he has done on a number of occasions—his refusal to explain the reasons why the public was not told—as this constant response that they were acting on the advice of police.

What he characterises as the advice of police, without being open to any further question, opens up the question: was the advice actively not to tell the public, or was the advice passive on the matter, in which case the minister has made the decision to tell the public? The minister refused to provide any detail and he refused to provide any detail of the advice. This is the concern I have with the way the minister is operating. He went on to say, in relation to me and an interjection I had made, 'This is not the first time you have made an attack on the police. You did it with the refugee matter as well.'

The problem is that the opposition must be able to ask questions of the government on matters that are in the public interest. There is a Police Act, which identifies specific criteria around the relationship between the Minister for Police and SAPOL, which rightly stops political interference taking place in operational matters. However, that does not mean that the Minister for Police has no accountability to the public for matters that are in the public interest, for matters that are not operational.

This is a prime example where the minister, through refusing to identify the nature of the advice and just putting up this blanket response, 'That's SAPOL's business and nothing to do with us. Nothing to see here,' has not acted in the best interests of the police. In fact, his idea is that he can set up this argument whenever he does not want to answer a question, just saying that it is a matter for police and then going further and attacking members of the opposition, saying that members of the opposition have no faith in the police and do not respect the independence of the police. When the minister makes the accusation that the opposition in asking simple questions is attacking the police, the minister is being offensive. He is better than that. We all know the Minister for Police—we know that he is better than that—but that cannot be his standard go-to political response, otherwise he opens himself up to further criticism.

To be clear, my grandfather was a police officer in England before he came to Australia and we have family and friends who are police officers. As the Acting Deputy Speaker knows well, we have been in the situation where police officers have been in danger and we have sat with family and lived through those moments. It is beyond offensive for the minister to have this constant refrain that members of the opposition may not have faith in the police. I urge him not to make the accusation a third time because I know that he is better than that—I hope that he is better than that. I hope I have not mis-characterised him, and I hope we do not see that accusation made again and we can have a positive discourse for the people of South Australia about how to best serve the needs of our community through the important police portfolio.

On Corrections, a number of issues were raised; I will start touching on them now and we may need to conclude after the adjournment. In relation to prisoner capacity, I identified that the budget papers state that in the 2012-13 year the average prisoner population daily in South Australia was 2,177 and that the approved capacity beds available was 2,262, so that left a gap of about 90 beds. We know there is a surge capacity as well of 90 beds, so we need 180 prisoners more than the average daily number before we get into serious trouble.

In 2013-14, the year just ended, that gap went from about 90 to about 30. There was a daily prisoner population of about 2,418 and 2,448 beds. With that gap of 30, we learnt during estimates that that surge capacity at the City Watchhouse, for example, was used on over 300 days. That is the sort of level: when there is a capacity of about 30 above the average population, almost all of the year we are using our surge capacity beds.

The numbers will tighten in the future. The minister identified that this year we are going to have a daily prisoner population of 2,494 and 2,500 beds; six is the gap. Next year, it improves slightly—that is, 2,572 prisoners for 2,610 beds—but then in 2016-17, that is, from 1 July 2016, we will have average prisoner numbers of 2,654, with total beds of 2,610, and we start to enter real problems. I seek leave now so that after lunch I can explain what the minister has not been able to achieve in identifying a plan for that.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. L.W.K. Bignell.

Sitting suspended from 12:59 to 14:00.

PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS
MEMBERS
GET INVOLVED
ABOUT PARLIAMENT
VISIT
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
CONTACT