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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
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Bills

Appropriation Bill 2017

Estimates Committees

Adjourned debate on motion:

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

(Continued from 3 August 2017.)

The Hon. M.L.J. HAMILTON-SMITH (Waite—Minister for Investment and Trade, Minister for Small Business, Minister for Defence Industries, Minister for Veterans' Affairs) (11:02): I rise to speak on the estimates process and signal that I have been a long-term supporter of the estimates process in my 20 years here. I think it has delivered good outcomes for South Australia. I know it has its critics but, certainly when I was in opposition and now that I am in government, I think that it is good for both sides of the house.

In government, it gives departments an opportunity to spring-clean, to really dust off all the issues of concern and bring them to the attention of the minister, to focus everyone's attention, at least once a year, on an entire array of issues that developed in the preceding year related to budget, how the money is deployed and performance against budget. On each occasion as a minister, both in the Liberal government and now in the Weatherill government, I have found it to be a very good process indeed.

In opposition, it was particularly useful. A good opposition will use this as an opportunity to really scrutinise the budget, to go through it line by line and obtain a stack of information. I am sure that those opposite did that during the course of the estimates session. I am not one of those who is critical of estimates; I think it is a very good process. I am particularly encouraged by the fact that it is under the control of the House of Assembly. I think that is a distinct advantage in the way we work as compared with the federal parliament.

I want to go into some of the details. The budget is produced in the fourth year of the election cycle, and at an interesting time nationally given the state of the national economy. You would have to say that things at the national level are, in historic terms, reasonably buoyant. At the national level, unemployment, for example, is at a very low level. I remember being in business in the 1990s, when unemployment was 12 or 13 per cent and interest rates were around 18 per cent. I can tell you that it was tough running a business in those days. I employed about 126 people in six businesses across the state. I remember advertising a position vacant on one occasion and receiving 423 written applications for the job.

To those who would go around and portray the economy as being in some sort of crisis at the moment, compared with what it was like in the 1990s, I would say you have to be joking. It is buoyant by comparison with what it was like back in 1993, 1994, 1995 and 1996. Our unemployment rate in South Australia is too high. It is at the top end of the nation. That is unacceptable and we need to work tirelessly at that.

I frequently remind the house that the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment or the natural rate of unemployment used by most economists is in the 4.5 to 5 per cent category, a group that for one reason or another may not be employable for reasons often not of their own choice. There are people with disabilities, there are people with drug and alcohol issues, there are people with a host and array of factors that might militate against employment. It is really that gap between 4.5 to 5 per cent and the level that we have at the moment that focuses my attention. That is the one that we need to really work on, and the government is working on that.

The costs of borrowing money at the moment are at record lows. We have had all the reports saying that South Australia is one of the top five or 10 places in the world to live and to work. We have had all of the economic indicators, from anyone from KPMG through recently to CommSec and Deloitte, pointing out that in terms of the cost of doing business South Australia is pretty competitive, but it could always be more competitive.

I acknowledge that there are other reports out there that talk about business confidence needing to improve at the moment. I have always found business confidence to be a pretty wobbly measure. It is very subject to the newspapers of the day or the stories of the day. It flows and ebbs, and does U-turns and jumps and falls all over the place. I certainly prefer harder economic measures, and that is why I was very pleased to see Deloitte and CommSec indicate that business investment in South Australia was leading the nation just a few weeks ago. Those hard economic indicators are to me far more important than the so-called question of confidence. I will come back to that point later.

We do face some economic challenges, but they are challenges that many would like to have. I lead trade missions. The unemployment rate in Europe at the moment, in most nations there, is fluctuating from between 9 and 10 per cent to, in some cases, well into the 20s. There are the costs of borrowing money and a host of other considerations in a range of markets with which we deal. A lot of people would like to have the problems that Australia has at the moment. We are in a period of unbroken economic growth. The nation, by any measure, is doing rather well.

We just need to have a bit of a reality check every now and then for those who would go around and purvey doom and gloom, including during the estimates process. In Australia, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, things are pretty buoyant at the moment. Commodity prices have recently risen and foreign direct investment flows are strong. As I have mentioned, employment at the national level is looking very healthy, and there is growth and activity right across the Australian economy, which is pleasing.

That is not to say that it does not need restructuring. We are in a process of transformation, and that came out during budget estimates. We are moving from a high volume, low value, low margin manufacturing base into a high value, high margin, low volume manufacturing direction. We are moving away from motor cars towards building submarines and frigates. We are moving away from whitegoods towards building medical devices and technology products and more and more into the services sector. I was encouraged to see that in terms of growth services exports lead the nation at the moment, at around 9 per cent compared with 7 per cent nationally.

There are all these areas of growth, but I want to move from there and move into some specific areas, to do with estimates, for which I was responsible. Firstly, in the trade and investment area, it is pleasing to see that in chain volume terms we are at around $15.4 billion a year of goods and services exported. The only reliable figure the ABS recommends for use in assessing these things is the chain volume measure. The FOB price on-board measure produced monthly jumps all over the place. It is not adjusted, it is an unreliable figure, by the ABS's own observation, and the chain volume figure is the one to use. By the way, it is up from around $10.4 billion in 2006-07.

Growth is particularly strong in wine, in fruit and veg, in food generally and in primary production generally. As I have mentioned, services are growing strongly. We are also doing very well in a host of other export categories, including, of course, copper, lead and various other commodities, including wheat. All these things are heading in the right direction. We are not blessed with the bountiful quantities of coal they have in New South Wales and Queensland, nor with the masses of iron ore and natural resources in WA, which exports 42 per cent of Australia's total exports. We are just not as lucky as they are in terms of those natural gifts. We have always had to be a fairly savvy, smart state, we are at the end of the river and we have always had to think on our feet—and we are—and you can see signs of that everywhere in our economy. Exports are particularly strong.

I want to make some references to comments made by some others. First of all, I noted the very intelligent and constructive contribution made by the member for Goyder in response to estimates, which I read with interest. I also read with interest and listened to the contribution made by the member for Chaffey, the shadow minister for exports. I am sure he and I would both want to see growth in exports and growth in the number of jobs and the amount of investment we receive from it. Around 72,000 South Australians go home every night with a meal on the table based on selling our goods and services.

It is clear from the estimates process and the questions that were asked that the opposition is struggling to work out what it wants to do to try to develop a policy on exports and investment. That does not surprise me because the program I have introduced over the last three or four years was the one I wrote when I was the shadow minister for trade and investment, opposite. It is exactly the program the Liberal Party took to the last state election, and I know that because I wrote it. I have actually implemented the exact plan that would have been implemented had things turned out differently at the last election, and that is because it is the right thing to do. On that basis, it would be good to have seen a little bit more bipartisan support for that program since it is effectively the one the opposition embraced at the last election.

Instead, we have had quite a lot of criticism of China, some of which has been quite nasty, if I may say that. China is our biggest trading partner and a great friend and a very important part of the jobs and investment story for South Australia going forward. We have had kneejerk type criticisms of what we are doing that have not been based on much careful reflection but were shots from the hip in an effort to criticise without making constructive alternative suggestions. The fact is that we have done a lot to get more companies overseas.

The challenge in this area is to educate, inform and encourage South Australian businesses to go overseas and sell their goods and services. We have done that through a revamped export partnership program. We have done that through a regular schedule of outbound missions to our major trading destinations. We are the only state that has an annual program of outbound missions and regular inbound missions, and we are commended everywhere we go for that.

Rather than leading trade missions on a whim when a gap appears in a minister's diary or a premier's diary and suddenly asking companies to come, or conducting government-only trade missions without businesses accompanying them, we have a very business to business approach. We take large numbers of companies away, they sell their goods and products, we put buyers together with sellers, sellers together with buyers and investors together with investments. It is very proactive, it is very hands-on and the business community love it. They love it, and they are voting with their feet by attending these missions and by growing their business and then going back separately later to follow up and to carry through because if the government to government side is right the business to business side will be right.

The opposition are obviously considering setting up larger, bigger flashier offices around the world as part of their offering. If they want to put the money into that, fine, go right ahead. It will swallow up millions, if not tens of millions of dollars. I can tell you that they are very expensive to run. They have been critical of the embedded Austrade approach we have taken of having an office of one person embedded with Austrade. I caution them because they will find, whether you are talking to tourism or trade, that you are better off to be inside the tent with Tourism Australia or Austrade, knowing what is going on, being part of the information network and in a position to push the cause of South Australia, than to be out there at a separate address, in a separate building on your own, isolated from that information and those contacts and trying to paddle your own canoe.

The member for Chaffey talked about how impressed he was with Queensland's office in Tokyo, and I am sure they do a very good job. I have met with the trade commissions of nearly all the states in various other parts of the world, and they are not all that happy. There is no point in having flash offices overseas if their only role is to receive ministers and take them on guided tours. You need people who are well connected, who do not lose their value when the regime or the government changes because their contacts have all gone out with the change of government. You actually need people who can help South Australians to sell their goods and services. So I raise some concerns about that.

If I were starting with a blank sheet of paper, I would like to see a whole lot more cuts to government spending. There are all sorts of things that could be done and all sorts of programs that could be reformed. It is easy to talk about that, and I am sure there will be debate about that leading up to the next election. This is not a time to be sacking thousands of public servants, if that is the opposition's intention, because all these promises they are seeking to make can only be funded by significant cuts to government spending. Whichever way you slice that, it boils down to whether you are going to cut 1,000, 5,000, 10,000 or 20,000 public servants. I cannot see how that is going to help the unemployment situation at the moment.

That can only be the opposition's plan. They need to be really frank about that because where else is the money going to come from? They do not want any form of tax reform; in fact they want to cut a whole lot of taxes, but they just will not tell anyone where the money is coming from. It does not grow on trees, so I look forward to having a more intelligent and informed debate with the opposition once they tell us where the money is going to come from.

The bank tax issue has flavoured estimates. I see it as tax reform. Most of the money that will be raised from the banking tax is going to be spent on payroll tax cuts, property tax cuts and various other tax cuts or incentives directed towards small business. The money is basically coming from the big end of business and going to the small end of business. I see it, effectively, as a tax reform. I do not like any new tax at any time; it irks me. The less tax the better. I am for low tax and small government and efficient government. I do not blame the banks for defending their bottom line but, at 30¢ in a hundred dollars, I fail to see how the end of the world is going to be nigh as a consequence of this particular measure.

The advertising campaign that is going on with the full encouragement of those opposite is what is doing the damage, not the tax itself. It is talking the state down. It is incorrectly rubbishing South Australia. As the Minister for Investment, I can tell you that there are nothing but green shoots and positive signs everywhere I look in regard to investment at the moment. We are getting lots of inquiries. It is ironic that business investment is at an all-time high and leads the nation, according to reports by CommSec and Deloitte's in the last two weeks. It flies in the face of the argument the banks are running.

We all know what they are trying to do. If I were a banker, I would probably be doing the same thing—that is, trying not to pay tax—but the fact is that governments impose taxes. This tax is being redirected to small business by and large. The banks may not like that, but I think the small businesses that will be the beneficiaries will.

In regard to the Defence aspect of estimates, I draw to the house's attention that we face some serious challenges going forward. We need to decide as a nation, before we go further with contracts, whether or not an Australian company is going to build the submarine to the DCNS design or the Naval Group's design, or whether the designer is going to be invited to also be the builder, and whether that leaves us with a sovereign capability and a truly indigenous industrial capability to build our own submarines. I think this is a really serious concern, and we need a resolution to it.

The same concern exists with the frigates. Are we going to get Fincantieri, Navantia or BAE not only to design but build the ship? I favour a model where an Australian company is the builder, Australians are doing the work and we optimise the supply chain. I think that is going to become the key issue going forward with naval shipbuilding.

There has been some publicity and I was asked questions about Land 400. We know exactly how many jobs are on offer with Land 400 and how much the state government was prepared to offer. It is like going to a house auction and being suckered into paying far more than the house is worth through a bidding war. I suspect that what has happened, when all the information is known, is that Queensland and Victoria have been pushed right up in terms of what they were prepared to put in on behalf of their respective taxpayers to a point where it may not be quite as beneficial for those states as they might think, when you actually look at the number of jobs and the amount of investment on offer. I wish them well. We were not prepared to be drawn into a bidding war, given a very thorough assessment of what was on offer there.

In regard to international students, we are doing well, but I would love to see us do better. We have an International Students Action Plan out there; similarly with migration—I would love to see stronger flows. Generally, I think the estimates process has been worthwhile. I thank members opposite and all my own staff and departments for the help they provided.

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (11:23): I rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill, which comes before us subsequent to the estimates process. This is a process in which the minister responsible for portfolios presents to a committee of the parliament, usually with a significant number of senior advisers from their department or areas of responsibility, to provide information to the parliament, via this committee, arising out of the budget of that year.

It is an important process established originally by premier Tonkin, and it has been one that I think overall has served the parliament well. In the 15 years I have been here, however, in regard to the presentation of ministers, I would have to say there has been a variety of assistance given by different ministers; some have been quite forthcoming. I remember that the member for Ashford, when she was a minister, would promptly provide information to the committee. When it was not available to her from the people sitting around, she made sure that it was provided promptly.

However, the myriad who are presented today, unfortunately, I think fail to give any credibility or credit to the government in their responses. Surrounded by very senior people, they frequently take matters on notice which are clearly available and in relation to which advisers are rushing to present their material to the ministers. Unfortunately, anything they see as slightly controversial they will of course take on notice. So it is sabotaged, I suggest, by lazy ministers who fail to act when they should and who attempt to frustrate a process to which in the ordinary course of business they ought to be proud to present on a budget they have endorsed.

With that, can I turn to the Attorney-General, who presented with the Chief Justice on the Courts Administration Authority and with senior personnel for the Attorney-General's Department, together with consumer and business affairs, the Electoral Commission and State Records, matters in relation to which I was a member of the committee. Firstly, can I say this: I raised with the Attorney a number of questions that were outstanding from last year, that is, the 2016 estimates. This is not uncommon; we frequently have to ask for them. The Attorney took great delight in advising the committee that he would check on what happened with those answers, but he accepted that they should have been answered. He thought they had been.

We then found, as he presented to the committee later, that he had identified that a number of those questions had been presented, apparently, to the parliament on 20 December 2016. That is eight months ago. On further inquiry, it became clear that not only had the answers to those questions never been tabled in the parliament, never in that time, but apparently the email through which they had been presented to the parliament had never even been opened or read.

That is a matter that I think should be brought to the Speaker's attention. Since then, I have been provided with copies of those, and I understand that sometime this week those answers to the questions for the 2016 committee will in fact be tabled, as they should be. Any suggestion that it is outside of the practice to provide answers outside of the proposed estimates time would not only make a mockery of the system, because we frequently get them outside of the proposed time, but in addition to that, subsequently I have received other questions from other ministers. I want that matter brought to the attention of the Speaker, and I do not want it to be repeated. If there is a breakdown in the system of that information being provided, then it ought to be dealt with.

Apparently, there was an old email used from the Attorney-General’s office. That may be the fault of his office. I do not really care whose fault it is. These are answers to the parliament and we should see them, the committee should see them and I should see them, having asked for them. I will not say anything further about that, but if it was the Attorney-General's office's fault then he can give me the usual apology.

In respect of the budget this year, the Attorney-General's Department and the courts administration area in particular received some continued maintenance and repair work, an extra Supreme Court judge, some redevelopment of the superior courts building at 1 Gouger Street and the Sir Samuel Way Building and, frankly, not much else. That is disappointing. In the lifetime of this government, we have had three announcements of a courts precinct rebuild and three cancellations, the last one followed up within weeks by a $100 million development at the Festival Centre when the government had claimed it did not have the financial resources to progress the courts precinct.

As has been indicated frequently by Chief Justice Doyle and now Chief Justice Kourakis to the committees of this parliament, our superior courts buildings are in a disgraceful state of disrepair. At a recent ABA conference in London it was a source of mirth that we had a Supreme Court building in which there was a mattress still lashed to the wall at the bottom of a stairway as some kind of occupational health hazard management model to collect somebody if they slipped down the stairs. It is an utter disgrace. Chief Justice Doyle could not even get into his own courtroom because of inaccessibility in terms of disability provision when he was in a wheelchair for a period of time. It is a disgrace. We have the worst superior court buildings in the country, and they are a source of great embarrassment.

People should understand that this is the workplace of not only many people who work for the Courts Administration Authority but also judges and their staff, offenders—it is true—plaintiffs and defendants. These are normal citizens who go to a government service to have their case litigated in an appalling situation. That is not to mention the number of witnesses for cases, who come along to support civil and criminal cases, who are living in that squalor. It is unacceptable and clearly needs to be remedied.

The government's commitment of $31 million to re-create courtrooms on the top floor of the Sir Samuel Way Building was identified in estimates as $18 million for that and $13 million to be spent on the Supreme Court building. That is the 1 Gouger Street property, which is owned by the state, the former of which is leased by Funds SA. The Chief Justice was helpful in his contribution, telling us that, at a rental cost of some $6 million a year, something had to be looked at in terms of paying out the tail of that 40-year lease and/or land value and that that would be a financially sensible way forward.

The 40-year lease expires in 2023. Given the government's financial commitment to someone else's building, it is expected that it will sign a further period of lease and/or hopefully take the Chief Justice's advice and acquire the building so that the services that are there can continue. Any precinct rebuild now will take some time. If things change in March next year, we will have more comments to make about that, but at the moment this is the expenditure that will be introduced. Apparently, the first tranche on 1 Gouger Street will be completed this year, followed by work to be done on the Sir Samuel Way Building by June 2019. It will create two new criminal courtrooms and refurbish another area for civil matters.

There is some financial support for the Civil and Administrative Tribunal (SACAT) that has been established as more areas of responsibilities are moved across. The Attorney is so slow in introducing the legislation for that to actually happen that I will be surprised if that $6.1 million is spent in this financial year; in any event, it has been announced. The Legal Services Commission gets a tiny bit extra. The most disappointing aspect was the lack of provision of financial support for our community legal services, particularly in regional areas.

Even the federal Attorney-General saw the folly of attempting to cut out community legal service costs. Although significant amounts of federal money are still tied, he had the good sense to backflip on his original decision on that in the federal budget. The state Attorney, however, obviously failed in the cabinet, if he put the submission at all, to get continuing support. We now have this absurd situation where, although there can be some tissue of services rescued in Mount Gambier, the rest of the southern part of the state, including the Riverland, has to get services from Christies Beach, which is a three-hour drive away. It is utterly absurd. If the Attorney's submissions fell on the deaf ears of the Treasurer in the cabinet room, then the Attorney's failure to deal with that area is not to his credit and he has failed the people of regional South Australia.

Some moneys have been put towards an ice strategy for the Stop the Hurt program, which apparently came as a result of a task force jointly chaired by the police and mental health ministers. We are yet to have a briefing about that because not much has been forthcoming. How ridiculous! That report, apart from some glossy pictures, has been published on their website. The recommendations from that report, of which I understand there are about 50, are a secret. We are not allowed to see the report. Obviously, it has been expensive for the ministers and their entourage to skip around the state.

We are not even sure who they consulted. Did they just talk to themselves or have lunch at Port Pirie or something? I do not know what they did, but it is a secret. We are not allowed to know. This is the most pressing issue for young people, in particular, in this state, yet we are not even allowed to see the report. We are not allowed to have any particulars of what has been recommended. I find that disgraceful.

While we are on secrecy, the $1 million report and business plan for the courts maintenance and continued structural requirements, commissioned by the Department of Transport and Infrastructure under minister Mullighan, is also a secret. Nobody is allowed to see that. We have asked for it in estimates: again, it is a secret. For goodness sake, why are we not able to see what is being recommended by either external consultants or internal persons who are advising the government? The people of South Australia pay for these reports. In this case, the Department of Transport paid $1 million for this business plan and report on the infrastructure requirements of the court precinct, and we are not even allowed to see it. It is utterly disgraceful.

It is hardly surprising that we have a situation where the Attorney will not even progress the integrity bill to deal with whistleblower reforms in this state, which has stagnated in the i-cloud between these two houses of parliament because he will not convene a meeting to actually progress it. It is scandalous conduct. It is juvenile behaviour for a minister and he perpetuated that behaviour at estimates.

A further temporary deputy coroner is to be appointed to help with the critical shortage there, apparently to deal with some backlog. We have been waiting for one for Graziella Daillér from 2014—a shocking shooting murder-suicide in respect of which we want some answers. After the Abrahimzadeh coronial inquiry, it is scandalous to think that the Coroner has not had the funds to progress that.

The Coroner is now burdened with the responsibility of dealing with multiple deaths at the Oakden facility and has no money to do it. The government's answer to the independent statutory authorities of this parliament is to starve them of money so that they cannot actually do their job. Instead, they commission a secret inquiry by MinterEllison to undertake the issues in respect of potential breaches of the obligations under the Aged Care Act and other matters. Really, the government just perpetuates a continuing problem.

A paltry $270,000 for justice reinvestment in respect of the safety and wellbeing of our Aboriginal people is symptomatic of the government's refusal to deal with important areas of support for a community that is absolutely in pain. People who have jobs are fearful that they are going to lose them and people who do not have jobs are worried about providing for their families. We have major social dysfunction.

I will speak later today about unemployment. As at the end of last year, there are close to 60,000 unemployed in this state, not to mention the underemployed, who are expected to be in the hundreds of thousands and mounting. The situation is quite dire, yet the government has abandoned these important areas of service and support, which they have an obligation to provide to the people of South Australia. On the other hand, the Attorney-General's Department is quite happy to spend over $20 million to refit their facilities in the GPO Tower—a flash new office for the Attorney-General. I think there is about $24 million all up to relocate all of the Attorney-General's Department over into the new GPO Tower.

I have no issue about the provision of adequate accommodation for those who work hard, and that includes those in the Attorney-General's Department, but this is on the back of consumer affairs having a refit of all their offices last year. I think that was about $4 million. The government is quite happy to spend money in respect of the services of those who work for them at the high end, I might add; just about everyone else in the government has to hot-desk these days. The high end get their facilities in the new offices but not others.

Forensic Science SA has a major role in respect of the work that it does, particularly in DNA crime scenes and the drug driver and illicit drug testing that it does. The failure to deal with the performance indicators in respect of turnaround times is a direct reflection of the government's failure to provide adequate resources to ensure that that occurs. When I asked what the full-time equivalents for the 2017-18 year was, Forensic Science SA is actually going to lose half a person. How they expect them to do more work and comply with these areas is beyond me.

In respect of the youth offenders boot camp, we have this absurd situation where again another secret report, the final evaluation, is due out this year. We are not allowed to see the interim report. Again, taxpayers' money has been spent on this, but we are not allowed to see whether it was good and should be continued, whether it was hopeless and should be abandoned or whether it is not a bad idea but needs some remedy and we could make amendments. Again, it is all a secret.

As for the Fines Enforcement and Recovery Unit, what a mess! We have a situation where the major portion of close to $379 million is owed to the state, and it is growing. All that does is prop up the very dodgy budget of the Treasurer as an asset on the balance sheet, but it does nothing to act as a disciplinary tool for those who should be paying their fines or provide appropriate relief and alternate penalties for those who clearly cannot pay their fines.

With those comments, I indicate that we are again waiting for a whole lot of answers. There are a whole lot of red stickers on my material, so the Attorney is on notice. I expect him to deliver those; I think a date has been set in September for answers to be provided. When they come here, I hope someone in this house makes sure I get a copy.

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (11:42): It is my pleasure on behalf of the people of Stuart to rise to contribute to the Appropriation Bill 2017. We all know this is about the estimates period that follows the budget period. Let me put on the record right at the start that budgeting is always difficult. It does not matter if it is the smallest household or the largest national economy: budgeting is difficult. There is never enough money to do all the things that you want to do.

It actually comes down to your priorities. It comes down to picking necessities and picking priorities. Of course, that is one of the foundations of politics in our system. Many priorities are the same and many priorities are different. There is also another difference, and that is the capacity to manage money. We on this side of the house believe that we would be much more efficient and much more effective budgeters on behalf of the people of South Australia, keeping in mind that the money is not ours.

The money does not belong to government, the money does not belong to parliament or to MPs; it belongs to the people of South Australia. It is money that they have been taxed by the South Australian government or the federal government and then a share of that tax from the federal government has been passed on to the state government to spend on behalf of South Australians. It is not the government's money; it is South Australians' money, to be spent for their best benefit.

I have to say that through the budget, towards the estimates period, estimates is a very frustrating thing for opposition. The government knows that. I understand that they know that. I understand that they try to make it frustrating. It is frustrating not only for members of the opposition but also for members of the public because they know it is their money, they know it is being spent on their behalf and they are incredibly frustrated that the government frustrates the opposition when it comes to finding out how that money is being spent.

The process is meant to allow detailed questions to lead to detailed answers so that everybody can know exactly what is going on, but that certainly has not happened this year. I sat in on defence industries, veterans affairs, employment, science and technology, manufacturing and innovation, automotive transformation and, from the opposition's perspective, I also led the mineral resources and energy session.

In those seven different sessions that I sat in on, there were very few open and frank answers about how the money is being spent or why the government has established the priorities that it has established. I say again, 'Don't worry about us. Don't worry about the opposition MPs. Worry about the South Australians who are frustrated because the government won't give us answers on their behalf,' because we represent South Australians as well; it is not only the government that represents them.

The opposition and this whole parliament represent South Australians, so we are asking those questions on behalf of the public so that the public can get the answers they deserve, but unfortunately they were not forthcoming at all. I understand that we are only a few months out from the election and tempers get frayed, that relationships are stressed and life becomes a lot more difficult in this building the closer you get to an election. Guess what? That is just bad luck. The government still is obliged to provide straight answers, even a few to several months out from an election.

It will not surprise anybody in this house that one of the most argumentative ministers in estimates was the Treasurer, the Minister for State Development, the Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy. He has a particular knack of putting forward his view and nobody else's view and avoiding and dodging questions. I suppose in many ways that might well be described as a political skill, but the reality is that the overwhelming majority of people in South Australia do not view it that way. The overwhelming majority of people in South Australia view it as dodgy, as a way of avoiding scrutiny and applying spin to a particular point of view.

Be that as it may, it is the opposition's job to get the best that we possibly can out of the estimates process. Some people find estimates dull and some people find it ineffective, but my view is that, as frustrating as it is, it is the opportunity that we have and, if the government gives us only a small percentage of the value out of it that we are entitled to, we should still take whatever we can get on behalf the people of South Australia.

This year, of course, there was a strong focus on energy. In the estimates session I led as the shadow minister for energy and mining with the Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy, the focus was entirely on energy, not because mining is not important—it is very, very important, and I am an extraordinarily strong supporter of our mineral resources industries in this state, including petroleum—but because that is where the public focus is and that is where the biggest mess is at the moment with regard to government policy.

Also, this year the government provided less time for mineral resources and energy than it has in previous years, so time was tighter. Interestingly, the minister took government questions this year, which he has not done in all the last several years in which I have participated as the shadow minister. A greater focus on energy, a shorter time allowed by the government and the minister's taking government questions all meant that the opportunity for me to ask questions was significantly diminished, so I thought it was appropriate to focus on energy—apologies to the mining sector. It is just the way it had to be this year, but that does not mean for a second that mining is not important; it certainly is.

The reason that it was so important for the minister to provide straightforward, helpful answers is that energy in our state is a mess. Everybody knows it. Everybody all over Australia knows that energy in our state is a mess, and everybody knows that, after 16 years of state Labor government policy, energy is a mess. The government has punished South Australians with outrageously high electricity prices, job losses and blackouts. The government has said that that is necessary because it wants to reduce emissions, help the environment and have an extremely quick leap towards a lower carbon emissions world.

But one of the most startling things in the budget—this is the information that the government itself put in the budget—is that emissions generated within South Australia from electricity generation will actually increase from 2016-17 to 2017-18. It will increase from a target in the last year of 43½ per cent—I would have to check that—to a forecast for the 2017-18 year of 55 per cent (and I know I have that number right). They are punishing all South Australians with increased electricity prices, job losses and blackouts, all to reduce emissions, they say, yet their budget says they will not reduce emissions. That is absolutely disgraceful.

This has led directly to South Australia having the highest unemployment rate in the nation for the last several years. It is not an accident. High electricity prices flow through from the smallest household to the largest employer. It is an additional cost on every household and every business. The reason I focus on business is not because I am so focused on business profitability but because I want businesses to be able to employ people, and if a business is not making a certain level of profit and does not have a secure future then that business cannot provide secure employment and secure employment is what every person deserves to have. Everybody deserves secure employment—that is why businesses need to be successful.

This increase in electricity prices and the blackouts—we all know the Business SA figures say nearly half a billion dollars was lost from the statewide blackout on 28 September last year, plus the other five blackouts that we have had in the last year or so—have had an extraordinarily negative impact upon business and that is why employment is suffering, among other reasons. But we all know—every member on this side of the house knows and every government member knows—that if we had lower electricity prices, we would have higher employment; it is just a fact.

This business that the government trots out about privatisation nearly 20 years ago being the cause and the devil that has created all this is absolute rubbish because for most of that nearly 20 years Victoria and South Australia have both been privatised and for most of that nearly 20 years South Australia has had the highest prices and Victoria has had the lowest prices for electricity. So that privatisation argument is dead and buried and absolutely ridiculous.

As we know, there are some commentators who say South Australia has the highest electricity prices in the world. That is absolutely shameful. It is also shameful that the minister would not honestly, directly and in a very open way answer estimates questions that people quite rightfully want to know the answers to. They want to know why we are in this situation. Of course, through the budget, from the government's announcement back on 14 March and all the way through the estimates period that we are talking about at the moment, the government has clung to its $550 million plan, which it says is going to help South Australians in this area.

Interestingly, the government said at the beginning of this process, back on 14 March and in the days immediately afterwards, that the government's plan would reduce electricity prices. That is what they said. If they spent $550 million of taxpayers' money it would reduce electricity prices. However, you cannot find any government member, let alone the minister or the Premier, saying that these days. They have totally walked away from that commitment because, as the opposition said at the time, that was never going to happen. Unfortunate as that fact is, they tried to oversell, they tried to overspruik and they said things which now you cannot get them to say again because they know they were not true.

What we quite regularly get, and what we got through estimates, was the government saying, 'Don't worry about all of this; we're going to spend $550 million,' but they will not provide any detail at all about how that money is going to be spent. The answer is, of course, that as they keep changing their plan, as they have done half a dozen times, the answer is always, 'It's okay; it's within the budget.' Let me tell you, Deputy Speaker, if I were to drive your car—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: You wouldn't fit in my car!

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: —and if I were to crash your car and I then said to you, 'Don't worry about it because I'm going to spend a lot of your money getting your car fixed,' you would not be very happy. If then I kept changing my plans about how it was going to be fixed and if I had said at the start, 'Don't worry, it will be completely fixed,' but a bit later on said, 'Maybe I'll fix it a bit; maybe it will be sort of fixed. I can't keep the promise that I made to start with,' you would be even less happy. Then if I said to you, 'But don't worry, Deputy Speaker, it will all be within the very high budget of your money that I told you that I would spend,' you would not be happy.

However, that is what the government is telling the people of South Australia. The government is telling the people of South Australia not to worry because it is going to be within the $550 million budget of South Australians' own money that the government is going to spend to fix the problem that the government created—and they think that is okay. They think that is okay but no-one else thinks it is okay.

No-one anywhere in South Australia thinks that is okay. I know that if members opposite were in a position to speak openly, many of them would say they know it is not okay, as well. It is not okay to say that they are going to spend $550 million of taxpayers' money to fix the problem that they created and then, when they cannot explain exactly what the solution is (and they change the solution regularly), say, 'It will all be within the $550 million so you don't need to worry.' No-one is falling for that.

South Australians are being left in the dark about how their money is being spent, whether it is considering the big battery near Jamestown, the gas generator which we were told initially would be in place for this coming summer, the diesel generators we have subsequently been told will be in place for this coming summer or what will now be the same generators which can run on diesel and can run on gas and will be in place for two years and then will be transferred to gas, which they are going to lease to begin with but there is an option to buy them but they cannot tell us what the price for the lease or the price for the purchase is, and they cannot tell us when they are going to transfer from a lease to purchase.

It is no wonder that nobody out there is comfortable with this plan. It is no wonder that they are angry about the fact that they are being told, '$550 million of your money, it will all be okay; don't worry about it,' when none of those very straightforward questions will be answered, not even in the estimates process, which is exactly where those questions should be answered. Even with regard to some technical questions—and it is fair to ask technical questions in estimates when there is a budget allocated to the work to be done—it is fair to ask, 'How is this particular money going to be spent? What is going to be done with this money?' It is fair to ask even very straightforward questions like, 'Are the connections into the grid at Jamestown at the Hornsdale Wind Farm sufficient currently to allow for the installation of the new battery next to the wind farm? Will there be extra connection infrastructure required to make that happen?'

Of course, then the energy minister looks up and laughs and says, 'That's how little the opposition knows about this stuff. Why would you ask a question like that?' as some sort of high and mighty defence, and then turns around to the advisers and starts chuckling, so they all start chuckling as if they think it is funny. They do not, but if the minister chuckles, they chuckle and that is just what often happens. There are a lot of unanswered questions about this energy plan. The government will have to answer these questions. They also have to explain why they are backing away from the commitments they made when they initially announced the plan.

This plan has been changed half a dozen times, and no doubt it will continue to change. A very fair question that comes out of all this—and one we hear regularly, and I do not mind it at all—is: what about the opposition's energy plan? That is a fair question, and the very fair answer is: the opposition's energy plan will be released well in advance of the next state election.

The opposition's energy plan will be focused on delivering affordable, reliable electricity for South Australians that will flow through to increased employment in every way imaginable, as I said before, from the smallest household to the largest employer. Every single South Australian is affected by electricity. We will deliver a plan months out from the election that makes it very clear how South Australia will again retain affordable and reliable electricity for the benefit of every South Australian.

Mr TARZIA (Hartley) (12:01): I also rise to speak about the estimates process. I was delighted to be involved in an array of estimates sessions, including but not limited to some of those involving the Attorney-General's Department, as well as multicultural affairs, the departments of volunteers, investment and trade, police, industrial relations, Consumers and Business Services, employment, manufacturing and innovation and automotive transformation. I wish to touch on a few of those today, starting with some of the issues that were raised in relation to the Attorney-General's various areas.

We learnt that at the moment the state's prosecutors are labouring under workloads that one prominent figure in the law is saying are 30 per cent higher than those of their interstate colleagues whilst receiving far less funding. Obviously, this is unacceptable to us, but it is also unacceptable to the DPP. I note that recently, in a published local paper, the DPP, Adam Kimber SC, said that resourcing remains a consistent theme of his tenure.

We know that funding per case in South Australia is currently about $10,500, and the closest to that is Western Australia, with $17,000. However, they point out that solicitor file loads are twice those in some states—almost 30 per cent higher than the nearest comparator. Mr Kimber goes on also to state that, while the Rann government knew about this issue, it has been exacerbated in recent times.

We also learnt—and of course we are not having a go at any of the judges; we know that they do a fine job and do their work to the best of their ability—that what we have here is a government that seriously thinks there are not any votes in the law. That is why they have allowed some of the courts to spiral into, quite frankly, a state that is not one we should be proud of. Another thing that came out in relation to this area is that a number of unpaid fines are owed to the state government's Fines Enforcement and Recovery Unit. Quite early on, as a backbencher, I proposed a bill that sought to eradicate one of these problems; however, the Attorney opposed—

The SPEAKER: The member is anticipating debate on one of his bills, I see.

Mr TARZIA: No, this is a past bill, sir.

The SPEAKER: A past one; I am sorry.

Mr TARZIA: No, thank you for clarifying that.

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