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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-05-05 Daily Xml
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Bills

Supply Bill 2015

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading (resumed on motion).

Ms REDMOND (Heysen) (16:31): I must say I sympathise greatly with the member for Colton and his comments regarding Australia Post. Happily, in Stirling I have a franchised post office with an excellent franchisee. I still have to deal, though, with Australia Post at large and they can be rather problematic.

It is my pleasure to rise to support the Supply Bill which comes to us every year to see if we will give them funding, this year $3.291 billion, to keep paying the Public Service, effectively, and keep the machinery of government going until the budget bill is approved. Every year, I think, when I get up to make this speech, I comment on the fact that this should not be necessary. In an efficiently run government you know that the financial year runs from 1 July to 30 June and you could actually be ready to put the budget in place so that it is approved by 30 June and, therefore, you would not need a supply bill to continue paying the public servants after 30 June until the budget bill is passed. Yet, every year we face this same bit of legislation and every year we have a long debate, which I think is really being used by the government just to take up some time because they have certainly run out of ideas on how to get this state going.

They do this every year, much to my chagrin, but what it does is postpone the inevitable disclosure that comes down with the budget that this state has been so poorly managed financially that we are really on our knees at this point. The twenty minutes allotted to me is by no means going to be long enough to go through all the ways in which this state is so poorly managed financially, but there are three matters that I want to address on this particular occasion.

The first of those is Transforming Health. That is a great way to cover up what this government is really about, and the reason I say that is that this is really about finding some money. The budget bottom line is so bad that they have to find some money and to do that they are going to sell off the farm. They are going to sell off the Repat Hospital, Glenside Hospital, Hampstead Rehabilitation Centre and, in due course, the Women's and Children's Hospital.

Indeed, we do not know yet what they might be doing to the Royal Adelaide Hospital site because, after all, the Minister for Education is no longer certain about the government's promise to build its new campus for the Adelaide High School (or its new high school, whatever they want to call it) on the old Royal Adelaide Hospital site. The minister was certain that it was going to be built there at the election but then has changed her mind in recent days and said, 'Well, maybe it won't be there,' and then the Premier has come out and said, 'Yes, it will,' so there is a little ruction in the ranks, no doubt.

The reality is that no-one knows what is going to happen to that piece of land yet. However, we do know that this government is absolutely intent upon ditching the Repat, Glenside, the Hampstead centre and the Women's and Children's Hospital. The only way they can do that and try to cover their tracks is to call it Transforming Health. This has nothing to do with actually doing anything to transform health to make the delivery of health services in this state any better for the people of this state. Indeed, this government has a long track record of making things worse for the people of this state in the delivery of health services.

Way back at the beginning of their tenure they got a guy called John Menadue to come into the state and he gave a very detailed report, coming to the unsurprising conclusion that what we had to focus on was providing more services out in the community—primary health care and preventative health care out in the community. That is what the focus had to be; and, 'That,' said the government, 'is what we are going to do.'

Here we are, 12 or 13 years later, and what is the government doing? Exactly the opposite. They are centralising as much as they can and getting rid of all the outlying things they have around the state so that they make it much harder for anyone who lives beyond the metropolitan area; and now, with their new moves, they will make it harder for those who live within the metropolitan area to access services because everyone will have to locate one hospital for their particular problem rather than having proper services out in our community.

That is the first issue I wanted to take up, the fact that this government has called it Transforming Health but what they are doing is really covering up the fact that they are planning to sell off the land that they hold in those four particular precincts. The member for Waite, apparently, is going to become one of my constituents in the next week: he is buying a mansion at 14 Orley Avenue, Stirling, in case anyone did not to know. He does not want to live in the seat of Waite. When he was on our side of the house as the member for Waite, he used to champion the retention of the Repat Hospital, but now we have statements that make it quite clear that not only is he no longer interested in trying to save the Repat but he is, indeed, going to be used as the stalking horse of the government to rid the government of the Repat Hospital because they want to sell the land. They need the money. That is what it is all about: they need the money.

Similarly, this government employed a wonderful chap by the name of Jonathan Phillips, with great fanfare. They hunted around Australia and employed Jonathan Phillips to head their mental health division. He came into this state and did his best but finally left again in frustration with this government. I have a letter from Jonathan Phillips talking about the need to not only maintain Glenside (we are the only city in Australia that had the equivalent of a Glenside hospital—a dedicated mental health facility just at the edge of the city) but also the importance of maintaining the land around that mental health facility, which was an important part of the mental health treatment that could be offered there. But this government is going to give that over to housing as well.

Then, of course, Hampstead. I do not have a problem with the idea that it would be a good idea to revamp Hampstead and maybe even relocate it. My view would be that we might look at it for the old Royal Adelaide Hospital site, because it is quite old. The services provided at the Hampstead Rehabilitation Centre are of profound importance to the people of this state, but I can guarantee you that this government recognises that there is a heap of land there that they can flog off and what they need is money to help their bottom line. That is the ultimate aim of this government with their so-called Transforming Health. It has nothing to do with the provision of better health services for the people of this state. It has everything to do with selling property so that they can try to improve the budget bottom line.

There is a bigger issue with the budget bottom line and that is the second thing I want to talk about, that is, the Motor Accident Commission. WorkCover has been a disastrous management exercise for many years. When we were in government we had the unfunded liability under WorkCover down to, I think, a minimum of about $59 million and this government has blown it out to about $1.5 billion again. Hopefully, it will improve with the most recent set of amendments, although I have little faith that that will happen.

But the Motor Accident Commission, or the MAC, was quite a different kettle of fish. It was very well managed. So well managed, indeed, that a couple of budgets ago this government said, 'There is some money in the MAC.' This is money that has come in from all of the people in this state who pay their registration. It is managed effectively and so they had money. The government came along and said, 'We will take $100 million out of your bottom line just to prop up our budget.'

So they took $100 million, but then obviously they started thinking, 'We might be able to get some more money out of this.' So what did they do? They decided, first of all, to change the rules under which people have an entitlement to compensation from motor accidents. They increased the threshold and they lowered the amounts that you were going to get. They said they based it on the Queensland model, but it was not actually based on the Queensland model, it was actually much worse than that.

There was obviously nothing wrong with the system that we had. Indeed, it worked so well that the MAC was able to pay adequate compensation to people who were injured in accidents, and at the same time, to manage the funds that they had in such a way that they had $100 million that the government could take. Nevertheless, the government came in and passed legislation through this parliament to dramatically increase the threshold under which people would be entitled to any compensation whatsoever and to lower the amounts that they would get.

They did this by dressing it up in what they called the Lifetime Support Scheme. No-one would argue that someone who is dramatically injured in a motor vehicle accident should be entitled to lifetime support if they need it. There is absolutely no argument about that. The argument is that the system already provided that. There is no doubt that the system already provided absolutely for people who had dramatic injuries.

I think it was Jon Blake who was the actor injured a number of years ago in an accident in South Australia which was the biggest claim there had ever been. I can tell you that I acted in a number of major claims in this state and I had to calculate, for instance, in the case of 31-year-old men who were going to be quadriplegics for their lives obviously, what it was going to cost to look after them 26 hours a day. They had to have an extra person in the morning to help get them out of bed and an extra person in the evening to get them back into bed, so you needed to calculate 26 hours a day of care for someone at the age of 31 for the rest of his life.

There was clearly already a system in place which gave lifetime support to people who were dramatically injured in catastrophic accidents under the motor accident system, but this government said, 'No, we are going to introduce lifetime support.' The reason for doing that was to raise that threshold and lower the amount that they were going to pay. Why did they want to do that? Because the next thing the government then announced was it was going to get out of the business of the Motor Accident Commission. It was going to close that down. If you close it down you cannot just leave that pool of money sitting there. You actually will have to do something with it.

The most recent figure the government is taking out of the Motor Accident Commission is $859 million, but that is not enough. What they are going to do is close down their operation as the Motor Accident Commission, leaving the punters of this state, who all drive cars, to figure out how we are going to get our insurance. They will get someone else in to run an insurance company.

The whole point of what the government has done has been to minimise the amount that is being paid out and to maximise the thresholds that have to be reached before any payment is made in order to minimise what are called the long-tail claims; that is, how much money has to be left in that fund in order to meet the claims under the operation that is still in existence so that when they get out of the business there is a fund left that can meet the liability. If you minimise that liability, what does that do? That maximises the amount that the government can then take and so the government is going to have a windfall payment to itself. No-one knows how much it will be, but at least half a billion—I suspect significantly more than half a billion dollars—and this government is going to take that.

That money is actually money that all of us with cars and caravans and so on have paid. Every single one of us in this state has paid that money to the Motor Accident Commission to provide the registration of our vehicles and that insurance that has been there for us all these years, and the government is simply going to steal that money. They are taking that money from the people of this state. We should be rising up in anger about the government's sleight of hand in taking this approach to the very serious matter of how best to protect the people of this state.

It is not as though the government needs to get out of the business of providing a motor accident commission; it was successful. It is still successful. The only reason for the government getting out of the business is that it wants the money. Why does it want the money? Because it has so badly managed the finances of this state over so many years, it has to find money from somewhere. We have debt that will cost us over $2½ million every single day just to pay the interest. We should not have a debt at all. If this government had any idea about financial management, it would have, firstly, kept to its budgets every year, which it has not done. Not only did it not keep to its budgets but it could not even keep to its budget with an extra half a billion dollars coming in every year.

Roughly every year for the first seven years, they had an extra $500 million coming into the coffers of this government because of GST payments, the property boom, and stamp duty and so on coming in. So, it had half a billion dollars extra, and even with that money they could not balance the budget, and they could not balance it to the extent that we now have a debt that, as I said, is going to cost us over $2½ million every single day to pay the interest.

The last thing I want to comment on in relation to the Supply Bill is the issue of the Adelaide Festival Centre plaza (the Hajek Plaza). I briefly want to run through the history. The government, again, is perpetrating a sleight of hand against the people of this state. Hassell architects and engineers did a report in 2011, the Adelaide Festival Centre Draft Master Plan. It talked about large volumes of people and food and beverage offerings out on this plaza at the back—a 'dynamic urban plaza unlike any other public space in Adelaide', it said. It was to include a four-level car park for 1,360 cars, and the report said the car park:

Provides a key revenue generating asset which is central to [the Adelaide Festival Centre's] current business operating model [and]

Builds a sustainable revenue stream…

The cost for developing the retail component was estimated at $6.3 million. In July 2013 (a couple of years after that report), Deputy Premier Rau and minister Koutsantonis announced that they were going to begin consultation on the Riverbank Precinct rezoning. In their statement, they said it was 'allowing entertainment venues to be built along the River Torrens and giving the go-ahead to other major developments', aiming to create a Riverbank zone and allow redevelopment of State Heritage listed Adelaide Festival Plaza and car park. Minister Rau said:

…there was currently $4 billion of Government and private sector investment planned or under construction in the greater riverbank precinct.

He did not disclose how much was government and how much was private, and what was planned and what was actually already introduced. The ABC news report of the next day (18 July 2013) revealed that 'the Government has received a proposal from developer Lang Walker for the plaza site'. The plan would allow a building of up to 30 storeys in place of the Hajek Plaza sculptures.

Another article by Liam Mannix, also on that date, says, 'Regulatory changes will finally bring private investment to Adelaide’s riverbank'—interestingly, it is public parkland—and points out that the proposed DPA:

…removes restrictions on commercial activities and development along a section of the riverbank and raises building height limits…

The only height restrictions on the site are now those imposed by the airport.

It also notes that the range of activities to be allowed includes tourist accommodation, hotels, offices, shops and cafes, as well as childcare centres and motels. The article notes that Lang Walker made his proposal to the government in 2012 'after the state government released its Riverbank masterplan'. Minister Koutsantonis, and again I quote:

…told ABC radio the Government went to tender before releasing the DPA because it wanted to speed up development along the riverbank.

There are surely some questions to be asked about how that came about. The article also notes:

A new governance model for the riverbank—where governance is currently shared between the State Government, City Council and private owners—

and, again, I remark that this is not just public land but parklands—

is also being considered, according to the development plan.

So, just prior to the election, in January last year the Liberals came out and said, 'We're going to actually give the car park back to the Adelaide Festival Centre Trust.' We committed to having it back with them, and the car park included, because anyone who knows about the arts in this state should know that having that car park is actually what enables the Adelaide Festival Centre Trust to survive. We get plenty of bums on seats for the activities in terms of shows and so on, but in order to maintain and develop something like the Adelaide Festival Centre we need that back in public hands.

How did the government respond? The Premier, on 13 January last year (this is coming up to the election), said that the South Australian government had ruled out building a high-rise office block between Parliament House and the Festival Centre. He said:

We won't be having a 30-storey building on the plaza area. We can rule that out straightaway but we are entertaining a proposition that we went out to tender for which is essentially a car park.

He says that they are considering a proposal to put the car park and the plaza back in the hands of the Festival Centre Trust—all very well until this year. We are past the election, you have won government again, and so what does the Premier say? He says, 'Oh, actually, we're not giving it back to the Festival Centre and we're going to have a high-rise development out there.' It is a disgrace, and it is all to do with this government's financial mismanagement of this state.

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (16:51): The appropriation bill of $3.291 billion for the Consolidated Account is a routine piece of legislation that goes through this place every year. When you start talking telephone numbers like that, I am afraid that most people just think, 'Well, it's just a lot of money and the government is not going to use it wisely, and we're going to end up with more debt and deficit.' Unfortunately, that is the case.

We have seen almost 14 years of Labor government, and we heard the Treasurer today hark back to the so-called privatisation of ETSA. We do not need to go right back there to remind the whole state, but we should remind particularly the younger members, that this state was in a deplorable position in 1993 after far fewer than 13 years of Labor government. But now we have got to where we are today, and this year we are seeing the government come out with all sorts of plans and bread and circuses to try to distract from the real state of the state.

The nuclear waste issue is just the absolute bee's knees, and people know my attitude to that. I have been going to look at nuclear waste facilities for a long time, and I recommend that members on both sides of this place contact AREVA, visit their nuclear waste repositories in France and look at their reprocessing facilities and their nuclear power stations. They will show you exactly what is going on in the nuclear industry. They have an office on Greenhill Road, not far from this place.

The fact is, though, that this year's budget is going to be a very interesting one. People deride estimates as a near-death experience. I have never looked forward to estimates as much as I do this year because there are so many questions. I just hope that this government, particularly my ministers, do not try to squib the whole exercise by trying to shorten the time and trade off without having Dorothy Dixers. Let's have the full time without Dorothy Dixers. Let's have some real questions and answers put in in estimates. Let's be honest with the people of South Australia as to what is going on in the portfolios these ministers represent.

Looking at last year's budget, the emergency services portfolio is one where I am having some particular issues with my minister, minister Piccolo, at the moment. Certainly, in the area of the disabilities portfolio, I try to work with the Minister for Disabilities to the best of my ability and in as bipartisan a fashion as I possibly can, yet even there I am still struggling to see why South Australia is lagging behind other states in the implementation of the NDIS. In relation to Aboriginal affairs, I have bent over backwards to work with particularly the new minister to try to advance the issues with Aboriginal affairs and reconciliation in South Australia.

People know that I am very, very passionate about the emergency services. I declare that I am a life member of the CFS. I am still active with the Kangarilla and Meadows CFS and my father was in the MFS for 30 years, as was the member for Colton. Firefighting is a very proud profession to be involved with, whether with the MFS or the CFS.

Last year's budget really showed the regard for the emergency services that this government has. When you look at last year's figures in the budget, it was an absolutely pathetic insult to those brave men and women in our emergency services, our firefighters and rescue workers, who, as I have said before, whilst others are running away from an incident, are running towards the incident to do what they can to assist and settle things down. What happened last year with the CFS is that they had a $370,000 increase, in a budget which is just over $62 million. It worked out to be a 0.6 per cent increase. When CPI is at 2.1 per cent and the CFS got a $370,000 increase, there should have been a '1' in front of that. It should have been $1.3 million just to keep up with inflation. The CFS are being asked to do more and more with less and less.

It really intrigues me that, quite rightly in South Australia, we are championing the building of submarines here, yet we build CFS fire trucks in New Zealand. We cannot build them here. We were building them at Murray Bridge and at other vehicle manufacturing places in South Australia, but now most of them are being manufactured overseas, in Tasmania and in New Zealand. Tasmania is building CFS trucks, but New Zealand particularly is building our CFS trucks.

We had Remlap, that small family company in the Barossa, making the personal protective equipment for our CFS and MFS firefighters. What happened there? They lost the contract to Stewart & Heaton, which is a very good company, but an international company which are now, as I understand, sourcing most of the material from overseas and manufacturing in Brisbane the last I heard. No longer is it a South Australian operation. No longer is it a family company at Palmer in the Barossa, in the Mid North, doing this job they were doing so well for such a long time. Where do the allegiances of this government really lie?

The only thing that matches the pathetic increase in the CFS budget is the pathetic increase in the MFS budget. Once again, we saw a minuscule increase in their budget of 1.4 per cent. Their total budget is nearly $121 million. We know that over 80 per cent of that budget is in wages. How you can spend 80 per cent of your wages in a business enterprise and still make it sustainable is something about which even senior firefighters have said to me, 'This is a completely unsustainable model; we are going to have to think about how else we are going to do that,' and that is not cutting wages and conditions of firefighters, before anybody tries to misconstrue or misrepresent what I am saying.

The 1.4 per cent increase in the budget last year was way behind what it should have been when we have an inflation rate in South Australia of 2.1 per cent. I will be very interested to see what happens this year, because we know the EB has been locked in by this government until 2017. I think it is a total of about a 10 per cent increase in MFS firefighter wages—3 per cent each year, plus an extra 1 per cent. How that is going to work with this new structure that the minister is proposing anybody knows. There are a lot of issues about what is going to happen with their EBs and with industrial relations.

We know there has been a no-confidence motion by Public Service Association members who are in the MFS, CFS and SES in this minister already, as well as no-confidence motions by the CFS Volunteers Association and the SES Volunteers Association. We know the police, in one of the minister's other portfolios, are causing him grief. My mail is that the correctional officers are very, very unhappy with this minister at the moment, with the rack 'em, pack 'em and stack 'em mentality still prevalent in government ranks. It is a disgrace.

Going back to last year's budget, the MFS and CFS got done over very badly. The only group that got anywhere near what they deserved were the SES, which actually did have an increase that at least kept up with inflation. It is a disgrace the way this government is treating our emergency services. The SES had a 2.9 per cent increase, but that is a much smaller budget. It is a $13 million budget, not the $120 million plus budget for the MFS or the $62 million plus budget for the CFS.

We know from the Productivity Commission's report that funding for firefighting services in South Australia has been reduced. Of all the states and territories, South Australia is the only jurisdiction where funding for firefighting services has reduced in real terms, apart from last year when there was a small blip increase, but I think that was because of the campaign fires up in Bangor; where some extra money was put in. In real terms, since 2008-09, the Productivity Commission figures show that fire service funding in South Australia has decreased. What sort of message does that send to our MFS and CFS personnel? 'Keep doing what you are doing.' Consider the 13,500 volunteers out there. Even today, the SES, CFS and MFS are out in the storms. They are out at the ResourceCo mulch fire today doing a job that many of us would never do. But what sort of message do we get from this government? 'You can do more with less.' It does not work that way.

How are they funding it, though? They are doing it through the emergency services levy. We saw what happened last year when emergency services remissions were cut. Over $75 million was pulled out of those remissions. That was thrown onto the taxpayers of South Australia as a land tax; they were paying more and more. Even pensioner concessions were reduced by nearly $1 million; so, pensioners are being asked to pay more and more. We are seeing what is happening at the moment with pensioner concessions and local government issues. It is just an unconscionable way this government is acting, to keep belting South Australian taxpayers, South Australian families, and making certain that they are paying out, paying out and paying out; and we do not see any change to that.

The current review that the minister is going through with this so-called SAFER (South Australian fire and emergency services and rescue) is an absolute dog's breakfast. The minister is just not listening. He claims to have spoken to a lot of volunteers and a lot of people within the sector. Well, I do not think the minister has listened. He may have been out there hearing the words, but he has not listened. The Holloway review made recommendations for changes, for a senior executive running a SAFECOM-like body—whether you call it the commissioner or a chief executive—and then some other changes in its structures. Nobody is against change, but it is the way it is being done and the uncertainty about what we are going to end up with that is causing the big issues at the moment.

The Ernst & Young review made similar recommendations for amalgamations and collaborations in some areas of emergency services, but it was scathing of this government having defunded SAFECOM and taken away many of its staff. I remember that it was in this place during the estimates committee that then treasurer Kevin Foley was asked a question about money that came out of SAFECOM. I think it was about a $2 million reduction, and he was asked why he did it. I think the words were, 'Because I can; I can do it.' Perhaps it was a flippant remark from the then treasurer, but the cuts were made and they were deep. SAFECOM has not become what it was meant to be when we passed legislation in this place in 2005. It is a sad indictment of this government that we have to go back and look again at how we can make our emergency services function more efficiently than they do now with less money being provided by this government.

The other sad part about this review is that the minister keeps saying that everybody is on side. I do not believe they are. My information, speaking to volunteers and members of the Metropolitan Fire Service, is that they are certainly not on side. They want to know exactly what is going on. They do not want to see the predetermined picture that was put to cabinet in December 2014 as the final solution. The minister keeps saying that it is not the final solution, that there will be progress, that it will be a journey. When you go on that journey, let us see what the map looks like and let us not just go wandering off into the future without any real plan, without any real destination, and end up somewhere where we do not want to go.

The Emergency Services Reform Office, which I think has half a million dollars of funding and then some secondment from some of the emergency services, is trying to get together working parties at the moment. They are not working well, from what I understand. It is not going down a very smooth road at all.

I was interested to read an Emergency Services Reform update that was actually signed by the Minister for Emergency Services, the chief executive of SAFECOM David Place, the chief officer of the CFS Greg Nettleton, the then chief executive of the MFS Grant Lupton, and the chief officer of the SES Chris Beattie. It said, 'We are excited about the future of the emergency services sector in South Australia.' Well, I can tell the house that is not what they are telling me. In fact, I can tell the house that these chief officers felt compromised by having to sign this, because they are not excited about it. They are not excited about the future of emergency services in South Australia.

We just have to look at what then chief officer Lupton has been able to do, why he left, why he resigned from this. He was not happy with this at all, and he was headhunted. He was headhunted from over 90 chief officers from all around the world, and he now has a fantastic job in the United Arab Emirates. He is doing great things over there, and it is a really sad loss for South Australia that this minister did not recognise or appreciate the expertise we had here. He had it within his grasp if he had listened to what the chiefs were saying, particularly then chief officer Lupton. He could have had that, because Mr Lupton had vast experience in Canada managing volunteers and managing paid firefighters working together. It was an absolute disgrace.

The volunteers association, in a submission to the upper house committee, said, in its summary:

CFS volunteers believe that they have been misled by a minister who has intentionally manipulated the emergency services sector reform under the guise of improving frontline services in order to achieve a long-term union-driven agenda of creating a 'One fire service'... Minister Piccolo's micro-management of the process has created barriers as the minister progresses the cabinet-endorsed agenda without due consideration and respect to the views and opinions of the majority of emergency services personnel…

Adelaide University did some research on the value of volunteering, and it was $200 billion across Australia, so if we work on South Australia's 8 per cent that is about $16 billion in volunteering in South Australia every year. So what is the emergency services volunteers section worth? They are the vast majority of that and we could never do it if we had to pay them, so this minister had better start listening. At the conclusion of its submission the CFS Volunteers Association said:

The minister needs to immediately stop this whimsical approach and take stock of what the majority of the emergency services sector are saying…

The CFS Volunteers Association is really concerned that the UFU is driving this. The UFU elections are on at the moment, and I urge every MFS member—and my father was heavily involved in the formation of what is now the UFU, so I am very much pro supporting the fire services union—to make sure that they vote in the current elections. I do not know Mr Greg Northcott, the current secretary, very well at all, other than he took nine months to answer one of my letters. I understand he is a senior fireman who has never run a fire station but who wants to run a whole fire service. Well, I ask MFS members if they still want to be treated like mushrooms by the UFU in South Australia or do they want to stand up, get up there and go out and vote.

I do not know Mr Wayne Tresize, the other candidate for the secretary's job, but he is certainly a fire commander with a long history. I will let MFS members decide who will be their secretary, but they had better make sure that that secretary, and the whole of the executive of the UFU, is working for the whole of the MFS because they are a highly respected organisation in South Australia. They need to maintain that respect, and they need to have that respect for themselves by demanding from the union the information they require to see what their future is going to be, not the treatment they getting at the moment, being treated like mushrooms and not knowing whether they are going to be in the UFU EB or the PSA EB.

As for Mr Northcott's atrocious attack on chief Lupton in the edition of Wordback last year, when Mr Northcott suggested that Mr Lupton should get out because he did not really know what he was doing, or words to that effect (this was on 22 August), does Mr Northcott feel like a dope now, looking at the job that that chief officer, the longest-serving chief officer in South Australia, the world president of the Institute of Fire Engineers, has now?

This is a bloke who, according to Mr Northcott, could not run the fire service. I have been in the CFS. I was a captain of Happy Valley, a very busy brigade, I have run incidents, I know what is involved, I have had a small glimpse of what Mr Lupton is capable of and, let me tell you, Greg Northcott has no idea about this, and MFS members had better think very carefully about who they vote for.

Mr GOLDSWORTHY (Kavel) (17:10): I am obviously pleased to make a contribution to the debate in relation to the Supply Bill. I would like to initially raise some issues concerning transport and transport infrastructure. There is a particular matter I have spoken about at length on numerous occasions, pretty much for the 13 and a bit years I have been in this place, which is the second freeway interchange that is currently in the very early stages of construction at Mount Barker at what we call the Bald Hills Road interchange.

There has been a pleasing development in relation to the scope of the construction of that project concerning the fact that, within the $27 million budget, they have been able to construct the full interchange. What I mean by that is both sets of ramps heading west and east. These are obviously the entry and exit ramps to the west heading towards the city, and the exit and entry ramps heading to the east towards Murray Bridge. That is a very pleasing development and a very pleasing outcome.

I again want to put on the record, as I have done on many occasions, my thanks to the federal minister, the Hon. Jamie Briggs, who is also the local federal member for the area, for his hard work and contribution in terms of securing the $16 million from the federal government to assist with the construction of the project. There is $8 million from the state government and $3 million from the local District Council of Mount Barker. It is a very pleasing outcome that we are getting the full interchange with both sets, as I said, of ramps to and from the city and to and from the east in the Murray Bridge direction.

In the initial proposal, with the initial scope of works, the government thought that we could only build the ramps heading in the western direction, so only the entry and exit ramps to the city. As I said, it is very pleasing that, through the tender and contract process, the company Bardavcol—a South Australian company, which is a very pleasing outcome there too—in their scope of works, have been able to construct the full interchange, which will be of obvious benefit to what I refer to as the tri-town district: the district of the three towns of Mount Barker, Littlehampton and Nairne.

This will not only benefit the tri-town district but also benefit a much broader area in the Hills region and down onto the Fleurieu with towns such as Langhorne Creek, Strathalbyn and others in that area whose residents use Mount Barker and what we call the Adelaide road interchange—the existing interchange—quite frequently to access the freeway. The Strathalbyn residents in particular will not have to funnel through the township of Mount Barker. They will be able to drive around the outskirts of Mount Barker onto Bald Hills Road and then onto the freeway at that point.

It is the same for the Nairne residents. At the moment, if Nairne residents want to access the freeway, they have to funnel down through Littlehampton onto the Adelaide Road interchange and then onto the freeway to travel to Murray Bridge or to the east or the west of the city. It is a real boon not only for the tri-town district but for the whole Adelaide Hills region. Even for those towns in the north such as Lobethal, Oakbank and Woodside, it is a very short distance from Woodside into Nairne and then it is just a quick run down the old Princes Highway onto Bald Hills Road and they are onto the freeway. It is quite convenient for those middle towns in the Adelaide Hills—Oakbank, Lobethal and Woodside. It is a very pleasing outcome. As members would know, it is an infrastructure project that I have lobbied hard for pretty much the whole time I have been in this place.

I want to raise the point that during the election campaign, the then transport minister tried to muddy the waters by trying to say that there was an extra $8 million available for other works and the federal minister Jamie Briggs disputed that claim, and that is the case—there is no additional $8 million for other works around the place at all. I note that there was an article written by Tom Richardson, I think, in InDaily some time ago saying that Jamie Briggs was right and, if I am correct in recalling the article, that the minister for transport had egg on his face because the federal minister was right in saying that there was not an additional $8 million. That is history. The transport minister at the time tried to make a bit of an issue of it locally but we worked around that, I was successfully re-elected, and we will see the full interchange constructed in the meantime.

I also want to talk about some road safety issues. I note that some information came to the fore last week that we have a road maintenance backlog totalling $1 billion now in South Australia—$1,000 million backlog in road maintenance. I was shadow minister for road safety for a while going back about four years and I remember the figure was $400 million—and the member for Newland might have been the minister for road safety at that time—in the backlog of road maintenance. In that relatively short period of time, we have seen a massive explosion out to $1 billion in the backlog of road maintenance in South Australia. That is a revelation, a staggering amount of money, that we have $1 billion worth of backlog in road maintenance, and not to account for our road maintenance budget now or into the future, but $1,000 million of road maintenance that has not been carried out.

We have all witnessed, particularly those members and constituents who live in rural electorates in the regional parts of South Australia, that because the roads have deteriorated to such a poor state of repair, the default setting is that they reduce the speed limits on those roads. I will keep talking about this in the house until something changes, but if those roads were maintained to a proper standard, then those speed limits would not have to be reduced.

If you drive on Yorke Peninsula, some of the roads are atrocious. If you drive up in the Mid North between Spalding and Jamestown, if that road was in good condition it could be easily 110 km/h but, because it has carried a lot of trucks over a period of time—B-doubles, grain trucks and stock-carrying trucks—the road has deteriorated to a point where the limit has been reduced to 100 km/h. That seems to be the government's default position: allow the roads to deteriorate so that they are in a state where it is not safe to drive at 110 km/h and reduce the limit to 100 km/h or even less.

I remember when I was shadow minister for road safety going to a meeting in the Grosvenor Hotel. I cannot quite recall the name of the body, but it was the Australian association for road safety. I still remember a quote from the chairman at that meeting, that is, the best way to improve road safety is to improve the condition of our roads. I have never forgotten that because I thought that struck at the heart of the issue—roads should be in a safe condition and well maintained with infrastructure such as guardrails and the like. We know that quite a percentage of serious road crash injuries and fatalities are caused by vehicles leaving the road corridor so, statistically, if you are able to keep the vehicles on the road corridor, the motorists have a far greater chance of surviving serious injury or avoiding fatality.

I recall when the member for Newland was the minister, and I think he realised the error of his ways and the mistake he made because he got absolutely hammered on the radio one morning, when he said something along the lines that poor roads do not cause car accidents. There was a lawyer who successfully prosecuted a case against the government that showed that the condition of the roads contributed to quite a serious road crash. I remember the member for Newland was on the radio trying to defend the situation; and it was indefensible and he got hammered for it.

The Hon. T.R. Kenyon: It was excellent: I maintained my position and I'm not apologetic about it.

Mr GOLDSWORTHY: That was going back a few years, but I still remember it quite clearly.

The Hon. T.R. Kenyon: That must have been your best day in parliament.

Mr GOLDSWORTHY: No, there were other good days against you, Tom, particularly when—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Kavel is reminded of it being—

Mr GOLDSWORTHY: There are some other things we can expand on. If he wants to talk about other things, we can highlight them—particularly when something was not a budget measure and it was a budget measure. I looked up at his staff in the gallery and they were cringing at the response the minister gave at the time. The member incited it, so I am just responding.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, order!

Mr GOLDSWORTHY: Talking about some local road safety issues in my electorate, I wrote to the Minister for Transport, I think back in August last year, highlighting the need for some more guardrail construction on a section of road in the Hills. It took a little while—some time, actually—to get a response from the minister. The response was along the lines that it will be put in the priorities of works and the like—the standard brush-off type of thing.

What I do want to highlight is that a section of guardrail has been damaged and is in a state of severe disrepair, where obviously a vehicle has smashed into it. It is severely in a state of disrepair probably no more than 200 metres around from the Lenswood Primary School. In my letter to the minister, I highlighted the fact that the guardrail was damaged and sought his assistance to get it repaired.

I was at an ANZAC Day service a couple of weeks ago in Lenswood and noticed that some of the guardrail had been repaired, but not this particular corner that has been in a state of disrepair for probably 12 months. I know they have gone out and inspected it because the letter said that officers had inspected that section of road, but I implore them to actually repair the damaged section of guardrail where there is just some orange bunting put around it. It is quite a steep drop away from the road, hence the guardrail being there, so I want to highlight that today. I may be incorrect, but I do not think the letter I received from the minister addressed the specific issue of that damaged section of guardrail.

I have noticed around the Hills district that there are sections of road where guardrail is being constructed. What we call the Cudlee Creek to Lobethal Road is in the electorate of Morialta; it was in Newland for a while, but I think it is in the member for Morialta's electorate. There are sections of that road where guardrail has been constructed, which is good, because if you ran off the road and over the verge you would end up in an apple orchard down in the creek, so I think it is very important that that railing has been put up.

I also note that sheets of metal are being put underneath the guardrail to cover the posts to improve safety for motorcyclists if they have a crash. A metal barrier is put underneath the actual Armco railing or guard railing so that they do not go under the fence or get caught up on one of the posts. The idea behind it is that they would knock into it and ricochet back, instead of going through and causing themselves some pretty significant damage by getting hooked up on posts and things like that.

Those are some transport related issues I think are important. I will come back to the minister from time to time and continue to highlight the fact that I think it is important that, in his budget and in his scope of works, guardrail is placed in the section of road between Forest Range and Ashton that winds in and out of two quite steep valleys. The local CFS volunteers and local residents say that if a vehicle did go over the edge and crash down to the bottom of one of these valleys, it might be some time before the vehicle and its occupants were found because of the dense vegetation at the bottom of this very steep gully. My understanding is that no homes are close by, but it does present a considerable risk to any motorist or even cyclist who may, for whatever reason, have an accident and run off the edge of the road and down into the deep valley.

They are some issues that I want to raise this afternoon. I only have a small amount of time left. I could talk about some water prescription issues but we do have another opportunity to speak in relation to the Supply Bill with the Supply Bill grieves, I understand, for another 10 minutes, so I will hold my remarks there and conclude.

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (17:30): Here we come again to the Supply Bill, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I must say I do not think much has changed since last year, or the year before, or the year before that. We come in here and we talk about providing supply to allow for the continuation of the government, the business of running government and supplying services. Those of us on this side of the house continue to highlight the waste and the lack of expenditure on those very needs that would underpin the growth of our economy. We have seen, certainly relative to virtually all the other states in this nation, a decline in the amount of economic activity generated within this state.

As a state, we continue to go backwards. As such, the revenue base continues to be eroded, and it becomes more and more difficult for the government to provide essential services, let alone the things that should be provided as well as the essential services. We are having this amazing debate in South Australia about the future of the delivery of health services. I will paraphrase, but the Minister for Health quite recently said something along the lines of, 'For years, we argued that the fact that we had more hospital beds and more doctors and nurses than any other state in the nation was a virtue; now, we have seen that that is a problem, and basically, we have to cut health services to get back in line with what is delivered in the other states.'

We have only got to that particular situation because of the gross mismanagement across the board, portfolio after portfolio, by this government. We now see that the government can, I think, justifiably argue that it cannot meet its costs. The reality is that it is a problem of its own making. They have nobody to blame but themselves.

I have said many times before in this house that, when I was a young man, I was looking forward to the time when the city of Adelaide would eclipse the city of Brisbane and when South Australia would eclipse Queensland. We were on the cusp of doing that. We were well ahead of Western Australia in population, economic activity and all the key indicators. Adelaide was a much bigger and more vibrant city than Perth. What has happened? What has happened in this state in the past 30 to 40 years?

The reality is that we have an electoral system which has unfortunately delivered outcomes which were not voted for by the people, and we have seen Labor government after Labor government when the people wanted a different government. Parallel to that, we have seen year after year of gross mismanagement of the state's finances. We have seen very little understanding by the government of the day, over a very long period of time, of what the fundamentals are of driving a state's economy. We have had money squandered on all sorts of ridiculous projects when we are crying out, as a state, for good, basic infrastructure to support economic activity.

The member for Kavel was just talking about roads. One of the fundamentals of any economy, particularly where you have considerable distances, is to have good road infrastructure. I read in the paper, I think it was only last week, that the Civil Contractors Federation were lamenting that the need for spending on road maintenance in South Australia is now around $1 billion. We have a shortfall of about $1 billion in road maintenance. That does not just impact on road safety, as the member for Kavel was saying a few moments ago: it impacts on the costs of every business which has a transport component in their cost structure, and there are lots of businesses in South Australia—well, lots of businesses used to be in South Australia—that rely heavily on transport.

Our manufacturing sector relied very heavily on transport, because even the domestic market for products produced by the manufacturing sector were by and large on the eastern seaboard, and we had to transport base products (the fundamentals of the manufacturing processes) into South Australia and we had to transport finished products out of South Australia. One of the things, I would argue, that undermined our manufacturing sector was the lack of spending on good transport systems in and out of South Australia and throughout the metropolitan area, which has undermined the ability of the manufacturing sector in this state to compete in what has become a globalised economy. We as a state just keep making the wrong decisions.

I was very amused recently when our Treasurer was talking with his colleagues in Canberra—when I say 'his colleagues', the treasurers of the other states—and there was a bit of a bunfight going on about the carve-up of the GST payments. The Western Australians are making this argument that there should be fundamental changes to the way the GST is carved up, and our Treasurer stood up and made the statement that the Western Australian government's problem was that they had an expenditure problem, not a revenue problem. Their problem was that they had spent much more money because they had had the largesses, particularly of the mining royalties revenues, coming into their state's coffers, and when that dried up, because they had not geared their expenditure to what should have been seen as the long-term revenue streams, they had got themselves into trouble.

I must admit, a big grin came over my face when I heard our Treasurer saying that, because that is exactly the problem that we are facing in South Australia. When we had the really buoyant economy before the global financial crisis, anybody of any understanding of economics would have known that that was not going to be the norm. That was an aberration. It was a short-term thing and we should have taken advantage of it in that context. Instead, this Labor government in South Australia locked us into expenditure at that rate, and now we are paying the price for it.

That is why we have seen well over billion-dollar deficits, and that is why, as I said, the Minister for Health has to now explain that he has to cut the delivery of services. That is why ministers across all sorts of portfolios are lamenting that they cannot continue to run the sort of budgets that their agencies need, so they are having to cut. That is why the Treasurer keeps talking about things like savings dividends throughout the public sector and throughout the government services sector. His predecessors—and he was part of the caucus, so he has to take some responsibility, and the Premier has sat at the cabinet table for the whole life of this Labor government, so he has no excuse—have made these really poor decisions, taken over a long period of time, which have led us to where we are.

Let me just talk about some specific problems that we have. The government is now telling us, and they tell the member for Chaffey—I did not hear his contribution but I am sure he talked about this—that the commonwealth government has made available some $25 million to help out river communities where water buybacks have impacted on the ability of those communities and the economy within those communities. The government has said, 'We are not going to accept that money from the commonwealth and hand it on to drive economic growth in those communities on the river because it might impact on our GST payments.'

The government never did that when the commonwealth government said, 'Go ahead and spend another billion-odd dollars on the desal plant. Go ahead and spend all that money and we will give you $120 million.' The government went off and spent the money and it did impact on our GST payments. The Treasurer never paused when he had an argument after the last federal election with the commonwealth government over the decision to spend money on South Road down at the Darlington end. That is where the commonwealth government promised that they would spend of the order of $500 million down there, and the Treasurer complained and wailed.

He was playing pure base politics. He was trying to get votes for his Labor colleagues in the federal election. He was trying to win votes for the likes of Steve Georganas in Hindmarsh. He said, 'No, we don't want to be spending the money down there. Our state's priority is the Torrens to Torrens section of South Road. That's where we want the money to be spent.' He never ever put the business case of the two projects on the table. He never gave any documentation to back up his claims, but at the end of the day, because the commonwealth government wants to see this sort of infrastructure produced right across this nation to grow the economy, the commonwealth government said, 'Guess what, we will provide money for both projects.' It was an extra $450 million or whatever the figure is for the Torrens to Torrens project.

I was delighted about a week ago to learn that, because of a reduction in costs because of the downturn in the mining sector, we are going to get an even bigger bang for our buck of the money spent there. That is great. That was really good news, but the Treasurer and the Premier never lamented to the people of South Australia that that extra windfall that they got out of the federal Coalition government was going to impact on our GST payments. They cannot complain and argue that a $25 million federal grant to help out river communities cannot be accepted because it will impact on the GST and, on the other hand, accept $450 million for a pet project of the Treasurer, which basically runs through his electorate, and not acknowledge that there will be about a $400 million impact on our GST because of that.

That is the sort of stupidity that this government has been involving itself in over many, many years. It is that sort of decision-making—uncoordinated, not set to a business plan for the state and the state's future—that causes South Australia to struggle. That is why, when we compare ourselves to all the other states in Australia—even Tasmania, for God's sake—we struggle; because this government does not know how to make a half decent decision.

In the few minutes I have left I do want to talk about a couple of things in my electorate. First of all, the Penola bypass. There has been an argument in Penola and the Wattle Range Council—it even predates the amalgamation of the old Penola council with Millicent and Beachport to form the Wattle Range Council—about a bypass. There was an ongoing argument, and it still goes on. However, at the end of the day a decision was taken by the council on the route of the bypass and how it would be done, and they acquired the land, etc., to get the project going. There was an agreement with the state government and a promise from the state government that they would provide about $12 million or $12½ million towards the construction costs of the Penola bypass.

The Penola bypass will leave the Riddoch Highway to the north of the town, go around to the western side of the town and meet the Riddoch Highway again at the southern part of the town. The $12½ million will only fund about half the works and the state government said, 'We can't do it all. The other half will have to be paid for by the commonwealth.' Goodness knows what would happen if the commonwealth came out tomorrow and said, 'Here is $12 million to finish the Penola bypass.' The state government would probably say, 'No, we are not taking the money because it will impact on our GST payments,' but they have argued for years that the commonwealth should be footing the other half of that project.

However, it turns out that the state government has never asked the commonwealth. It may have in the last 12 months, but certainly not during the planning phase—and whilst they were arguing year after year that the commonwealth had to put their hand in their pocket to help fund this project, the state had never asked the commonwealth for their share. They had never said to the commonwealth, 'This is a priority of our state government, and when you are allocating money for capital works in South Australia we would like this on the list.' Never asked!

Now we have this nonsensical situation where we have half a bypass. So it starts on the western side of Penola, on the Robe-Penola road, and goes around to the south. That is bad enough in itself—we got half a bypass, it is serving a purpose as a lot of traffic is generated by the blue gum industry which comes in on the Robe-Penola road and that gets diverted around the town—but when the funds do become available, however that might happen, to complete the road, they will have to go back and redo the intersection where the bypass meets the Riddoch Highway on the southern part of the town because it will need to be made a flow-through, a straight-through road, as a bypass should be, whereas at the moment, because they are only building half at this stage, they had to make it into a T-junction. Goodness knows how much money was wasted on that because the government could not even get its act together over recent years and put this on its priorities.

I see that the federal Treasurer is saying to the South Australian government, 'Where are your 'shovel ready' projects, we've got some money for you, where can we spend it in South Australia to get your economy going?'. At least we have a government in Canberra that understands how to kickstart an economy, how to generate economic growth, which will see our revenues grow, but they are pleading with the South Australian government, 'Where are the projects?' I can tell the government that there is one at Penola—it is only a small one—that they can put some money into.

The only other thing I will have time to talk about relates to the minister for the environment—and this goes back to his predecessor too—who, along with Treasury, have wanted to impose a new tax on my constituents to fund the operation and maintenance of the drainage system in the South-East. The government has argued that it is only the people of the South-East who are the beneficiaries of that drainage system, and therefore they should be paying for it.

We have had an incredible situation in the last few years. We have had a new drainage system constructed in the Upper South-East: the Upper South-East dryland salinity and flood mitigation scheme has been constructed over the last 10 or 15 years. When that was completed it was maintained and operated by the department, and they got special funding out of Treasury to do that work. About 12 or 18 months ago the operation and maintenance for that scheme was handed back to the South-East Water Conservation and Drainage Board, which operates and maintains the rest of the drainage scheme in the Mid and Lower South-East, but not one extra dollar. It is about twice the amount of work, because there are about twice the number of drains that they now have to manage, and not one extra dollar.

This government is saying, 'You can manage that, you go away and manage that, repair and replace bridges as they fail, make sure that the drains are clean and operational, and you are the only beneficiaries, so you pay for it down there.' That is what the government has been trying to do. The minister got the South-East Natural Resources Management Board to cough up—and we have not been able to ascertain the amount of money, but I know that it is over $150,000 and I have been told that it is up to $300,000 and it might be more. It has come out of our environmental management board's funds, which they raise from local people to cover cost of environmental works in the South-East, to run a citizens' jury on this question of who should pay for the operation and maintenance of the drainage.

I am delighted that a couple of months ago (it might not be quite that long ago) that citizens' jury handed down its final report and basically told the minister that he was wrong, that the beneficiaries of the drainage system in the South-East of the state are the people of South Australia. I made an argument to the citizens' jury. I did not seek to meet with them, but they asked me to come and give them the benefit of some knowledge I might have had, and I pointed out to them that the value of the water that is delivered from the South-East of the state through some of those drains, and is now being directed back into the Coorong and is consequently meeting some of our obligations under the whole of the Murray-Darling Basin Agreement, is worth a lot more money than what the government was asking the South-East to pay in a new tax. They (the minister and his government) are suggesting that the South-East should be paying another $5.5 million to fund the operation of maintenance of the drainage system in that region.

The value of water delivered from the South-East, particularly if the new drain proposed by this state government goes ahead (and I suspect it will), in today's marketplace is worth about $7 million a year. I remind the government that everybody in Adelaide relies on the River Murray, and it is the people of the South-East who are making more than their fair share of contribution towards it, and it should be recognised by this government.

Time expired.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. Z.L. Bettison.


At 17:51 the house adjourned until Wednesday 6 May 2015 at 11:00.


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