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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-05-12 Daily Xml
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Federal Budget

The Hon. J.M. RANKINE (Wright) (14:25): My question is to the Premier. Can the Premier outline to the house the impact of last year's federal budget on families and what can be done to address the impact?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier) (14:25): I thank the honourable member for her question. Obviously, the last federal budget was a catastrophe not only for the nation—

Mr Tarzia interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Hartley is called to order.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: —but also for the Liberal Party and did irreparable damage to the—

Mr Tarzia interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Hartley is warned.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: What we are looking for out of this federal budget is—

Mr Tarzia interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Hartley is warned a second and final time.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: What we are looking for out of this budget is a vision for the future of this country which is not just about cuts. People have pretty basic needs: they want a secure job for themselves and their family, they want a good school, a good healthcare system—

Mr Pisoni interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Unley is called to order.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: —and they want to be cared for in their old age. These minimum basic responsibilities of a government to answer these questions were not answered in the last federal budget.

Mr Knoll interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Schubert is warned for the second and final time.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: There is an important initiative in the last budget that should be reversed in this budget and that is the cuts to pensioner concessions; that was a particularly cruel cut. It was something that was visited onto state governments and we picked up the bill for the first year. We are looking very carefully at the federal budget delivered today to see whether it remedies that defect.

The other very substantial cut was the decision to cut vital road funding and financial assistance grants to South Australian councils. This is something that minister Brock, Minister for Regional Development, has been campaigning tirelessly on on behalf of councils across South Australia. It is vital for regional South Australia that the funding equivalent of around $96 million be reinstated to councils across the state.

Of course, it is vitally important that the $80 billion cuts to health and education across the whole of the nation are grappled with in this budget. We do not hold out much hope for that and this has been something of a topic of discussion at the COAG meeting. It was a central issue at the COAG meeting and it has led directly to a retreat of first ministers that will be established in July this year.

It is absolutely crucial that those cuts to health and education which involve breaches of existing agreements are acknowledged by the federal government and there is a process which allows us to grapple with the hole that has been created, remembering, of course, that there is no genius in just putting in an accounting measure where you breach an agreement.

The costs remain in the system, the expenditure is required to be made in the system—hospitals need to be run, schools need to be run, nurses need to be paid, and teachers need to be paid. It is just that the funding has been withdrawn and so we now have this gaping hole in those responsibilities. We are calling for that process to be revisited and we look forward to the retreat which we have committed ourselves to engage in on a constructive basis.

We also stand ready to work with the federal government to deliver infrastructure projects. We have outlined a series of projects which we think will deliver enormous benefits for the state and the nation, but also would create a degree of stimulus, especially for our northern suburbs. We have put on the list of things to ask for support: the north-south freight corridor, including the northern connector; the Strzelecki Track; and, of course, even the Kingscote airport which the member for Finniss might be pleased to realise.

We do look forward to a budget tonight that creates confidence, that turns away from the cruel cuts we saw in the last federal budget, and we look forward to saying more to the house after that has been revealed.

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