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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, First Session (53-1)
2014-09-25 Daily Xml
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Bills

Budget Measures Bill 2014

Final Stages

The Legislative Council agreed to the bill with the suggested amendments indicated by the following schedule, to which suggested amendments the Legislative Council desires the concurrence of the House of Assembly:

No. 1. Long title—

Delete 'enact legislation in relation to the 2014 State Budget so as to impose a levy on parking spaces within the central business district of the City of Adelaide in order to raise revenue to be used to provide or support programs designed to improve transport services and transport safety within the State and to provide for related matters; and to'

No. 2. Heading, page 4, line 1—Delete the heading

No. 3. Page 4, line 7—Delete 'Schedule 3' and substitute: 'Schedule 1

No. 4. Page 4, line 8—Delete 'Schedule 3' and substitute: 'Schedule 1

No. 5. Page 4, line 10—Delete 'Schedule 3' and substitute: 'Schedule 1

No. 6. Page 4, line 11—Delete subclause (5)

No. 7. Clauses 4 to 23 (inclusive)—Delete these clauses

No. 8. Schedule 1—Delete Schedule 1

No. 9. Schedule 2—Delete Schedule 2

No. 10. Heading, page 16, line 28—Delete the heading and substitute:

Schedule 1—Budget Measures

No. 11. Schedule 4—Delete Schedule 4

Consideration in committee.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I move:

That the Legislative Council's suggested amendments be agreed to.

I ask that they be dealt with en bloc, and I wish to say a few words, if I may. What an act of political short-sightedness! The government of the day, regardless of what the Leader of the Opposition says publicly, is duly elected. The results are in, the election is over, we have formed a majority in the House of Assembly and we are the government.

The precedent that the Leader of the Opposition is making by not allowing the executive to form its own budget is one that the Liberal Party will rue. They will rue it because, while the members may be celebrating today, what they do not realise is what this will do to them when they sit on the treasury bench and wish to form their own budgets. Small states like South Australia cannot have that kind of partisanship.

It has been a long tradition. Indeed, measures that were moved by the previous Brown-Olsen government were, by and large, revenue measures that were supported by the then Labor opposition. Why? Because Labor always strives to be in government. We believe we are a natural party of government and we believe that government should be allowed to institute their budgets unfettered.

Mr Marshall: Except federal.

The CHAIR: Order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: The Leader of the Opposition makes an interjection, and I take his point that the Senate is highly politicised, highly partisan, and over the last 20 or 30 years by and large there has been partisanship at play, other than one brief moment between 1983 and 1996 when the then Liberal opposition made a point through their elder statesman former prime minister John Howard that we should always support government reforms because one day we hope to be in government. Read his biography.

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Then you would know what I am talking about and you would not have voted against the transport development levy. The reality is that, by and large, governments in this country of both political persuasions have governed well, and that is why Australia is the prosperous country that it is. By and large we govern at the centre and, by and large, we let governments govern. There are snapshots between policy, between individual politicians, when partisanship sneaks in and we have this gridlock, but by and large that is the exception rather than the rule.

What is sneaking into the South Australian parliament is partisanship in the upper house. For instant gratification in the upper house and a celebratory drink last night, what the opposition has consigned to the government is a further $120 million deterioration of our state's finances—the party that says we spend too much or we have created too much debt or we have cut too much. So, I have to say, the Leader of the Opposition took a policy to the election of 'scrapping the tax', to use his words. He did, but he lost.

I say to members opposite the political short-sightedness that members have is twofold. First, they have lost an issue to campaign on. Second, they have deteriorated our budget and their claims of fiscal management are out the window. Every time an article is written about congestion in the city or public transport failures or otherwise, there will be one person to blame, and that is the Leader of the Opposition. He is the one who will wear this measure like a crown of thorns.

If members opposite ever form government and the younger members are ever sitting on the treasury bench and they want to bring in a revenue measure or an asset sale that they have taken to the election, or some other measure they claim to have a mandate for, remember this day. Remember following the desperate man off the cliff. Remember following the guy who will never be premier off the cliff. Remember this, because I will make you remember it every single day.

With those brief remarks, I accept the amendments of the upper house and ask the house to ponder the precedent that the Leader of the Opposition has set. I will leave with one point: Colonel William Light gave us a wonderful gift—a beautiful city, exceptionally well planned. But we cannot make West Terrace wider. We cannot make North Terrace wider.

Mr Marshall interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: It was excellent; it tests very well, by the way. We cannot make Currie Street any wider. As people are stuck in their cars, in congestion, I hope they remember the name Steven Marshall.

Mr MARSHALL: I rise to support the government's amendments to their own Budget Measures Bill proposed by the Treasurer, which have the removal of the transport development levy contained within them. I have listened to the Treasurer, and he is clearly upset. He is clearly very upset, and so he should be. He was essentially given a hospital pass by the Premier when he was asked to become the Treasurer. We have had 12 years of financial ineptitude and it is probably not his fault we find ourselves in exactly the situation that we do, but he was the one who had to bring down the budget this year, and it will go down in history, I think, as one of the most disappointing budgets in our state's history.

First of all, it is highlighted as a budget which delivered for us a predicted result for the last financial year of a $1.2 billion deficit—the largest deficit in the state's history. It will also go down as a budget of significant broken promises. I note that the Treasurer made it very clear in his speech today that we should be supporting governments who want to sell assets. Let me tell you that before the election the government said there would be no significant privatisation or sale of assets, yet, in the budget handed down only a matter of weeks after the election was held, they were in here talking about the closure, sale, privatisation or whatever you want to call it, of the Motor Accident Commission.

Of course, the big daddy of them all was the removal of the remission on the emergency services levy in South Australia. This is a massive betrayal of ordinary South Australians who are already doing it tough. We live in a state which has the highest taxes in the nation; that is evidenced on page 54 of Budget Paper 3, where the Commonwealth Grants Commission basically gives a table each year of the tax effort in each state, and we are the highest.

We have been the highest for every year recorded in the budget presented by the Treasurer earlier this year. It is an unenviable position, yet in this budget the government sought to increase state-based taxation revenue by a further 10 per cent in one year. I do not think he should be surprised at all that the Legislative Council has rejected this push because, quite frankly, enough is enough.

The Treasurer has gone to lengths today in his contribution to suggest to this house that we should unequivocally support the government's agenda because they were elected as the government. It is a difficult situation, this one. Sure, the Labor Party has again formed a majority of the members of the House of Assembly, and they quite rightly formed government here in South Australia, but I think it is a long shot to suggest that they have a mandate to introduce a car park tax or a transport development levy. The truth of the matter is that they received less than 36 per cent of the primary vote in South Australia. So, one in three people in this state supported them; two out of three people did not, and that is the simple fact of the matter.

When you are in minority government, there is an extra special duty of respect owed to the Legislative Council in passing your legislation. That is why this current budget the government is presiding over will go down in history as the largest deficit, the broken promise on privatisation, the complete betrayal of people regarding the emergency services levy, and the first substantial budget measure ever defeated in this parliament. It must be humiliating for the Treasurer to have to preside over this.

He comes into this house and he makes all sorts of threats, and they are recorded permanently on the record. Coming in here, trying to bully the parliament, pointing the finger, raising his voice, raising his blood pressure, he says that we will rue the day that we set this precedent. He then went on to say that those of us on this side of the parliament are somehow celebrating the removal of a tax.

We wish we were not in this situation. We wish we were not in a situation where we had to act in this way to protect the people of South Australia, but we do it because, as I have already pointed out, we are the highest taxed state in Australia, and the Treasurer knows this. The Treasurer knows that our state-based economy has ground to a halt, absolutely and unequivocally ground to a halt. The problem with that, and the reason for that, is the economic settings this government has had in place for an extended period of time: high taxing, high regulating, a hopeless WorkCover system, the highest electricity prices, the highest water prices. They have created this very unattractive environment for business to operate in.

By contrast, we on this side of the chamber believe that we need to do everything we can in this place to create the most attractive conditions to allow businesses to start up, grow, thrive, prosper and employ South Australians. Every day we are in here that is what we are trying to do. When the government introduces sensible legislation, like its WorkCover reforms, the Return to Work Bill, they have been supported. They have been supported by the opposition in almost record time for a bill of that level of complexity. Last year, the government introduced legislation to set the umbrella for the South Australian civil and administrative tribunal. Both these reformist pieces of legislation have been supported with alacrity by this side of the house. We do that because we want to do everything we can—every single, solitary thing that we can—to advance our state.

I would just add, of course, that those two reforms could have come a decade ago; there was no need to wait until now to push through the WorkCover reforms. In fact, we have been critical of the Deputy Premier for the tardiness with which he has brought these WorkCover reforms to the house. Nevertheless, they are here. We have been castigating the government for the tardiness of bringing the SACAT reforms to the parliament. Nevertheless, they are not only here, they have been passed, and now we need to put them into place.

We do not celebrate having to block anything that the government does, but we have to perform our obligation on this side of the house. We are Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. We are not rebellious, but we have a constitutional responsibility to hold the government to account and to vote according to what is in the best interests of all South Australians.

The Treasurer, of course, talks in emotive terms about this $120 million black hole which has been blown into the budget. I wish he had paid this much attention to the more than $300 million black hole that was blown in his own performance last year in unbudgeted expenditure. This is the real issue in South Australia. It puts every other issue in terms of the budget into almost insignificance. We have had billions and billions of dollars' worth of unbudgeted expenditure by this profligate government over an extended period of time. These are the things that need to be addressed by the Treasurer.

My father always used an expression, 'majoring in the minors'. A lot of people like to 'major in the minors'. This is a government that likes to 'major in the minors'. Rather than look at the substantive things that the government should be doing to improve the lot of business here in South Australia and improve the lot of jobseekers in South Australia, they want to focus on having a political argument about this or that.

We are in a perilous state in South Australia. The Premier and I agree on this one thing. We might not agree on the best way to get us out of this situation, but even the Premier now, when he is talking to the business community, says there are significant challenges facing our state. I think what the Treasurer needs to do more than ever is to take a look at the Liberal reformist governments around Australia and what they have been able to deliver for the people in their state. They are focused on a sensible reformist agenda, and that agenda starts with lowering taxes, removing regulation, making sure that you have a reasonable workers compensation scheme.

It is interesting: I have taken a very good look in recent times at what Campbell Newman has been able to do in Queensland. He inherited state finances much like our Treasurer inherited from the previous treasurer. They were massively in deficit; a very difficult situation, granted. He has done everything he can to trim his government expenditure and, simultaneous with that, grow the state. That is where the increase in revenue in Queensland is coming from, by growing the state overall. There has been 4 per cent economic growth predicted this year, 6 per cent economic growth next year. I just make this point—

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: It's from coal seam gas.

The CHAIR: Order!

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: You know, the gas you hate so much.

The CHAIR: Order!

The Hon. T.R. Kenyon: The stuff they're going to frack.

The CHAIR: Order!

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: It's called fracking.

The CHAIR: Order!

Mr MARSHALL: Well, as per usual, you try to make a contribution that, if those opposite would listen to, they might learn something from.

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis interjecting:

The CHAIR: Order! In order for me not to stand in this position, I will not have interjections across the room, and I will not have you responding to them. You have, unfortunately, a limited amount of time left, so let's wrap it up.

Mr MARSHALL: How much time have I got?

The CHAIR: 15 minutes, according to rule 364.

Mr MARSHALL: Well, that's plenty of time. I will tell you what Campbell Newman has been able to achieve, and that is 65,000 new jobs in that economy last financial year. That is an inordinate number of new jobs, and that really has got to be the focus for us in South Australia. We need to put party politics, partisan politics, behind us and do everything we can to advance the state. That is why we will not support the increases in taxation and we have not supported the transport development levy.

For some reason, the Treasurer raises a number of spurious arguments in the media and in the house regarding city congestion, and saying that somehow—and this has been in Hansard again this afternoon—every time somebody gets caught in traffic they can think of Steven Marshall. What a load of rubbish! Let me tell you, successive governments over the past 100 years—

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: On radio and TV.

The CHAIR: Order!

Mr MARSHALL: —have spent money on roads, public transport in this state; they have done all of that. They have made all of that expenditure without resorting to increasing or imposing a transport development levy on the people of South Australia. It is completely unacceptable to just continuously put an increasing burden on businesses and households in South Australia because the government cannot get their own act together regarding the budget. I remind the house that there was $311 million worth of unbudgeted expenditure by this government last financial year. There is the problem—that is the problem: unbudgeted expenditure by this government. They set the budget each year; it is not imposed upon them. They get the opportunity to set the budget, yet each and every year they blow it.

It will be interesting to see what happens when we get the Mid Year Budget Review. That will be a further deterioration in the situation that we were given. Every time we get an update from the government, 'Oh, things have got a little bit worse,' but do not worry because in two years' time they are going to magically return to surplus. That magical return to surplus has been a long time coming, and every time we get an update from this government, certainly in recent years, it just gets further and further away. I will not delay the house any further. I am going to support the Treasurer's amendments to in part remove his own proposed transport development levy.

The CHAIR: You are supporting the Treasurer's motion.

Mr MARSHALL: Correct; thank you very much.

Motion carried.

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