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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-03-20 Daily Xml
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State Economy

Ms HILDYARD (Reynell) (15:19): I rise today to reflect on the past year since this government commenced its ridiculous and damaging agenda of cuts, closures and privatisation. It has been a year of overpromising and underdelivering and a year that stands in stark contrast to their baseless slogans. It has been a year of fewer jobs, fewer services and higher costs.

Our state must always strive to be fair and to include all in every aspect of South Australian community life. It should value and empower everyone's contribution, and it should thrive in terms of jobs and economic growth. Sadly, the people of South Australia are not being treated fairly, nor are they being included and empowered, nor is our state economically thriving and nor are employment opportunities growing.

Alarmingly, South Australia's unemployment rate is at an 18-month high, with 6,600 more South Australians unemployed compared with March 2018—a figure that makes a mockery of the prolific number of DLs from those opposite promising more jobs. If you are employed, given this government's desire to trash protections for vulnerable workers and the fact that they are lock-step with their mates in Canberra who are obsessed with slashing penalty rates and championing wage inequality, you can rightly be very worried about your job security into the future. They are already making threatening noises about cutting public sector jobs—

Mr ELLIS: Mr Speaker, I draw your attention to the state of the house.

A quorum having been formed:

Ms HILDYARD: People can be very rightly worried about their job security into the future. Those opposite are already making threatening noises about cutting public sector jobs on top of the 880 jobs they so proudly announced they would cut from Health in their cruel, cutting first budget.

On the economic front, debt continues to rise, and it is becoming very clear that they will go nowhere near delivering a surplus anytime soon. Millions of dollars of bus cuts have seen South Australians all over our state, and particularly those in outer suburbs, disadvantaged and deeply worried about their ability to get to work, to school, to medical and other appointments, to their Service SA centre (if it still exists) or just to participate in the activities that connect them to social life in our community.

Just a few weeks ago I was speaking with Elias as he waited for a bus on South Road at Morphett Vale to get to a regular appointment at Flinders Medical Centre. As he waited and waited at the bus stop, he was deeply shocked and worried about how he would continue to get to his regular appointments on time, given this government's delivery to South Australia of cruel, heartless cuts to services that people should be able to rely on, and given that the bus he was about to catch was one on the hit list of those opposite. The $46 million of bus cuts are not to be celebrated as some grand first-year achievement.

I shudder to think what will happen to Elias and others who not only have to attend medical appointments but who also have to have tests handled by SA Pathology, which those opposite are about to sell off, who are waiting for elective or other surgery, or who call an ambulance. Ambulance ramping is dangerously at its worst with our courageous, front-line ambulance officers and other health workers calling on this government to unblock the health system as people's lives are put at risk. The elective surgery waiting list has blown out, with 1,100 more people now waiting, often in pain, for some much-needed medical intervention.

If people are feeling vulnerable about their ability to access health care, with this government's cuts to Crime Stoppers, the selling off of our Remand Centre, cuts to community safety grants and access to CCTV, including at our managed taxi ranks, which are relied on by many, particularly women, late at night, they are not going to be feeling safe either at home, in the community, or when they are out and about in the city—not that this government seems to have too much regard for the role of women in our community here in South Australia.

The $24 million dedicated the Female Facilities Program has been cut, the Female Participation Grants have disappeared, targets around equality no longer exist and the government has refused to support legislation that would have seen women who are discriminated against at work as a result of their experience of domestic violence able to make complaints and seek redress via the Equal Opportunity Commission.

But none of that is surprising because this is a government with four women members out of 25 in this house, an appalling number that speaks to whom they value and whom they do not and to the fact that, despite their rhetoric about strong plans, they have no plan whatsoever to achieve gender equality, with multiple women from their own party now calling out this failure of the boys' club. Those on this side of the house will be there for South Australians and will ensure their voices are heard as we brace for the horror of what those opposite will bring forward as we head into their second 12 months.

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