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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
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Bills

Supply Bill 2019

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading (resumed on motion).

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee) (15:46): I will continue my comments from before the break on the fortuitous fiscal circumstances that the government found itself in when framing last year's state budget: the $991 million of GST revenue, let alone the $128 million in additional dividends that had been extracted from SA Water, and the additional $81 million in dividends from SAFA.

You might think that the economic conditions to which I referred earlier, including the slowing of employment growth, the slowing of the state's economy, the slowing of retail sales figures, the slowing of the housing industry and also the drop or decline in the share of national exports, would give some thought for the state government to contribute additional resources into supporting economic activity. Indeed, if I cast my mind back less than two years ago to comments made by the then shadow treasurer, the Hon. Rob Lucas from the other place, he advised:

If you look at the last 12 months from July 2016, there has been 2.5 per cent jobs growth nationally, but in South Australia it has been 1.8 per cent.

He referred, of course, to employment growth. He continued:

It is good to see that we have a 1.8 per cent jobs growth figure, which is a bit higher than in previous years, but we again sadly languish behind the national jobs growth figures.

There has to be a reason for that. The excuse from the government is always that it is somebody else's fault. It is the federal government's fault, it is the banks' fault, it is always somebody else's fault but, after 16 years, they are still unprepared to accept any degree of responsibility for the appalling economic and jobs growth figures that South Australia currently confronts.

It is interesting that you would have a treasurer who would describe a 1.8 per cent jobs growth figure as being appalling, let alone that figure lagging behind the national average. What must he think of the 0.8 per cent annual jobs growth figure that his government is currently delivering, languishing of course behind the trend employment growth rate of 2.4 per cent—three times higher than the state's growth rate?

There was a case for investing significantly. In some respects, you might think that that is what the government chose to do. They certainly provided some room for themselves to do that. They even changed the budget's fiscal targets in relation to debt. They removed the cap on general government sector net debt from 35 per cent to enable what appears to be a significant blowout in debt forecast for the general government sector over the next four years—very significant: over $3 billion.

You might think that with all the money available and with all that room to move to ramp up government debt the government would have plenty of capacity to continue investing in those job creation and support programs that were in existence prior to March 2018. I will read out a number of those that have been cut: the economic investment fund; the unlocking capital for jobs fund; the northern connections; the southern connections; the fund my neighbourhood program—although that has not stopped various members of the new government running out and opening projects in the communities they represent funded by the fund my neighbourhood program—the small business development fund; the food park tenant attraction grant program; and the SA early commercialisation fund.

They also include the renewable technology industry development program; the automotive supplier diversification program; the advanced food manufacturing program; the SA premium food and wine credentials program; the energy productivity grants program (although only from next financial year); the mining and petroleum centre of excellence grant program; the premier's research and industry fund; the strategic industry development fund (although those last two apparently are being developed elsewhere); the future jobs fund; the renewable technology fund; the career services program; and the regional capability community grant program.

The retrenched workers program, the jobs first employment projects fund and the personal support program were also cut and are particularly relevant in light of what I referred to earlier, that is, the number of businesses that have announced that they are closing, retrenching workers or scaling back their operations in South Australia. There is plenty of capacity to act, but there was the announcement that they were withdrawing support for the economy.

However, it did not stop there. There were, of course, some extraordinary cuts announced in the budget. I referred earlier to the $46 million to be cut, according to the budget, from both bus and train services, although I note that the minister is at pains to try to change the description of that as it is mentioned in the budget papers to only bus services. The cuts include 880 workers in SA Health, a $26 million cut to regional road funding, a funding cut to the Overland train service and the $1 million not honoured to Crime Stoppers.

The laptop in schools program has been scrapped for year 10 students and the female facilities program has also been scrapped. The expansions of the Klemzig and Tea Tree Plaza park-and-ride facilities were cut, the South Australian tourism budget was cut by $11 million and there were also the closures of the three Service SA centres at Modbury, Prospect and Mitcham. Seven TAFE campuses are to be closed and two sexual health clinics are also to be closed.

I mentioned earlier the privatisation of Pathology SA and the Adelaide Remand Centre, but of course it goes further than that. We have the privatisation of Modbury Hospital patient transfers and the establishment in the Department of Treasury and Finance of a privatisation task force. Indeed, it emerged during estimates that the Treasurer is 'actively encouraging' his officers to identify opportunities for outsourcing and privatisation, the fruits of which are already being born out of the privatisation of the remaining road maintenance task falling to DPTI.

It was announced a couple of weeks ago that the regional road maintenance gangs, which for many years—decades—have been employed by the Department of Transport, are to be outsourced. This follows the first big crack at outsourcing road maintenance operations that occurred when Diana Laidlaw was transport minister and, of course, Rob Lucas was treasurer. This essentially completes the job.

One thing that those opposite fail to realise is that when essential services such as electricity, road maintenance, water utilities—should it come to that—or gas services are privatised, the introduction of a private sector profit margin needs to be achieved. Those opposite will always sing the praises of the market's capacity to deliver better outcomes at more affordable prices more efficiently for consumers, but it comes at a grievous cost. There has been no greater example of that, as the member for West Torrens has already foreshadowed to this chamber, than the privatisation of ETSA, which experiences its 20-year anniversary this year.

Members of the public might be surprised to know that a significant component of their electricity bills relates directly to the profit margin that is being made by that private company headquartered in Hong Kong. That amount is somewhere between 10 and 20 per cent each year—a return on those electricity operations that were privatised under the former government.

Given that the average power bill for a South Australian household is well in excess of $2,000 per year, we are talking somewhere in the vicinity of $200 to $400 more every year that South Australians are paying in their electricity bills as a result of privatisation and as a result of the inclusion of that profit margin. It is extraordinary for those opposite to be railing against electricity prices and the record of the former Labor government. It is a remarkable statistic that this is what they have rort on South Australians, many of whom can least afford that sort of cost increase over that period.

We also saw in last year's budget an increase in fees and charges. I am talking about the regular increase in fees and charges. There was an extraordinary number of new fees and charges, or fees and charges increases, well beyond the normal indexation, which last year, if my memory serves me correctly, was 2.2 per cent.

We have the government's war on the hotel industry fought on another front, that is, the massive ramp-up of liquor licensing fees, with an extra $3.1 million to be levied from the 2019-20 financial year. While the hotel industry tells us and the community that they cannot afford it, the Deputy Premier has confirmed in parliament that she is intent on receiving all this money from the hotel industry. That, of course, escalates each year, so we are looking at nearly $10 million in additional liquor licensing fees imposed by the Attorney-General. But the Attorney-General does not stop there.

In a government that talks about red-tape reduction, she is flying the flag for new additional red tape in South Australia. She is introducing a licensing regime with fees for the real estate property management sector. Perhaps I do not pay close enough attention to all the small businesses in my electorate, but I am not sure that real estate property managers are, above and beyond, the most important industry that needs a better regulation and licensing regime. I would have thought that maybe labour hire workers deserved some protections, rather than the operations of real estate property managers, but not, as we heard today in question time, according to the Deputy Premier. There is $1.4 million in this financial year and $700,000-odd growing each year thereon in fees, which will have to be coughed up by the real estate industry.

New opal mining fees are being imposed by the member for Stuart and a new mine royalty rate will see further funds extracted from the minerals and resources industry. The EPA has taken the opportunity to increase regulatory costs and a new On the Run tax has been introduced by the member for Bragg, taxing underground petroleum storage systems for the first time. Next year will see $750,000 raised and $1.5 million raised thereon.

There are higher firearm fees, there are, of course, higher cost recovery fees for SARDI (South Australian Research and Development Institute) and there is the absolutely outrageous and egregious attack on Housing Trust tenants, with more than $45 million in additional Housing Trust rents levied over the next four years. There are higher court fees, which once again the Attorney-General, the Deputy Premier, is responsible for levying.

There was the one-off 5 per cent increase, an extra $3 million raised by the Minister for Environment, in NRM levies. The election commitment was that they would cap NRM levies so that people did not suffer increases every year. What he did not tell people was that he was going to jack them up by 5 per cent before he imposed that cap. As the saying goes, a rising tide lifts all boats, and that will mean an increase in that level of NRM fee for evermore.

It is timely to talk about fees and charges because the grab for revenue did not stop at last year's budget. We have already had foreshadowed a grab for additional revenue in this coming budget. I already touched on the cries of being dudded, from the Treasurer and the Premier, over GST revenues as a result of the latest Commonwealth Grants Commission review of GST relativities as well as the update to the national pool figures in the federal budget. There is the claim, of course, from the Treasurer and the Premier that South Australia will be $500 million worse off.

If you paint it in the worst possible light, if you ignore the extraordinary deluge of GST that flooded into this state during the preparation of last year's state budget, that might be true. But if you ruled a line against the state's finances that the government received on forming government—that is, those in the 2017-18 Mid-Year Budget Review—you will notice that for the 2018-19 financial year they were budgeted to receive $6.615 billion; they are still budgeted to receive $6.716 billion. That is $100 million more net of those alleged reductions from the CGC update and the federal budget.

Against that same benchmark from the 2017-18 Mid-Year Budget Review—the latest GST figures going into the last state election—the difference for the next financial year is indeed negative, but negative $150 million, not the $500 million plus dollars claimed by the Treasurer. So between two financial years, the net difference is $50 million, an unfortunate but entirely manageable change in the timing of GST receipts. At least, it would be manageable if that deluge of GST money that came in last year were not spent in the budget to leave only very little room to move for the government should there be any downturn in revenues. This was not the only revenue line that was anticipated to continue increasing by substantial amounts.

We saw conveyance duty revenues, or what we would know as stamp duty revenues, forecast to increase year on year by 8 per cent. That would be heroic in the face of the current real estate market, particularly given we are predominately talking about residential transactions here, given the former Labor government abolished conveyance duty on commercial property transactions. It also brings into sharp focus the context by which this current government rushed headlong into a deal, pushed by Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg, for a new allocation of GST.

Nothing could be more important when it comes to sustainable state finances than ensuring that we had a good deal for GST revenues here in South Australia. And we had a good deal for GST revenues here in South Australia. In fact, all the states and territories around the country had a good deal for the distribution of GST. It was one meted out nearly 20 years ago for the introduction of the GST, a new tax system introduced in legislation in the commonwealth parliament that ensured that there was a pure model of horizontal fiscal equalisation.

I warned the government at the time that any move away from a pure HFE model for the distribution of GST grants would significantly disadvantage South Australia. There is no way around it: South Australia, as a smaller state, as a net beneficiary of GST revenues, is one of the jurisdictions that stands to lose the most if the HFE model on the distribution of GST grants is in any way diluted. But we did not see that from the Treasurer and we did not see that from the Premier. They were more than happy to take what they were given by Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg.

They did that on the basis that when the model changed there would be additional top-up payments to South Australia leading up to the 2026-27 financial year. I am the first to admit that some time ago that felt like an eon away, but it is not—it is at the end of the next parliamentary term. I am positive that in 2026-27 not even the venerable Hon. Rob Lucas will still be around, gracing these corridors, at least in the guise of a member of parliament. Given recent developments in Liberal leadership, I am pretty confident that the Premier, the member for Dunstan, will not be leader let alone in parliament in 2026-27.

The Hon. D.C. van Holst Pellekaan: You never know. It could happen.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: There is a long queue between the Minister for Energy and that position, I am sure—and all of them know how to use cutlery, don't they?

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: That's right, although I think we can exclude the Minister for Industry and Skills; I think that is a reasonable assumption. Beyond that, I am sure there will be people lining up for that particular position in the South Australian parliamentary Liberal Party.

However, it is pertinent because not too long from now these new financial arrangements for the distribution of the GST will come into effect here in South Australia. At that point in time, that additional assistance from the federal government, that $257 million over the five or six years leading up to that date, will no longer be available. If you have the Treasurer complaining about a $500 million write-down in GST revenues in one year, then it puts into context whether or not that extra $257 million is significant.

In the scheme of things, in the scheme of receiving between $7 billion and $8 billion a year in GST, which we should be by that time, it is not significant; it is a rounding error. It is important but, given the quantum of GST grants, it does not measure up as a very significant contribution and certainly not the very significant contribution that has been spruiked by the federal Coalition government, the Premier and the Treasurer.

What happens beyond that has been a massive diminution, a massive watering down of the GST deal that South Australia will be able to get in future years. Remember how all this started. Western Australia, currently the fiscally strongest state in the federation, was complaining that the mining boom and the massive deluge of billions and billions of dollars of extra revenue from their mining industry that they were receiving each year meant that they were getting a reduction in their GST grants—not unreasonable under the tenets of a pure horizontal fiscal equalisation model.

It is not unreasonable at all, especially given that the way in which GST grants are rebalanced for those states experiencing significant uplifts in revenues, whether it is mining royalties or whether it might be their own source revenues. There is a lag for that. That means that from 2006 or 2007, when Western Australia was right in the thick of these additional mining royalties, they were also right in the thick of the GST revenues that had been calculated for them two or three years ago, so they were benefiting twice.

What they started complaining about was the mining royalties continuing on but the GST revenue starting to drop off, and then of course those calls became screams when the mining royalties also continued to drop off. Was there a flaw in the model for the distribution of GST grants? No, there was not. It was working as it was meant to. If any criticism could have been levelled at it, maybe it could have been to do with the timing lag in the re-evaluation of a GST grant by the Commonwealth Grants Commission. Maybe it needed to be shortened from three years. Maybe some other minor adjustments needed to be made to it or maybe we just should leave the model alone.

If the federal Coalition government felt they were going to lose seats at the next election in Western Australia, they could just pay more money to Western Australia rather than buggering up the GST distribution system for the whole country. But that is not what they chose to do. They chose, as I just expressed it, to bugger up the GST distribution system for the whole country.

Now states like Western Australia, and even Queensland, may find themselves unusually in the position of being the fiscally strongest state in the federation by virtue of the strength of their mining sectors. They will no longer have such a significant reduction in GST grants in recognition of the huge uplift in mining royalties. Instead, they will have a flaw in the level of GST grants that they will receive, a flaw which is almost entirely irrelevant to South Australia.

As I said, we are a net beneficiary of GST grants. We are not a jurisdiction that receives less than our population share, so the benefit experienced by Western Australia through these new arrangements going forward comes to the detriment of other states. When we have what has happened in the last few months—and that is GST revenues heading back towards levels of what they were in 2017-18—then we understand that the millions and millions of dollars of GST revenues that we have placed at risk beyond that date, beyond 2026, are really going to hurt the budget position of South Australia.

We called on the federal government to guarantee that no state would be worse off under the new GST deal, and they did not do that. They said that they did it, but they did not. They only did it up to that date of 2026-27. To have a guarantee for only eight years is ridiculous. This is the single largest source of revenue to our state. This year, it is nearly $7 billion and growing, going forward. To have the size and distribution model of that only guaranteed for a further eight or so years is not good enough.

Imagine the federal government saying, 'We are only going to pay you health grants for another eight years and after that we will just have to have a chat to you about it and see if we still think it is a good idea,' or it could be regarding education funding, or for that matter an amount of water coming down the Murray. All those outcomes would be unacceptable if they were time-limited at only eight years, but for some reason this government thinks it is okay to dud our state out of a reasonable and fixed share of the GST or at least a fixed formula of the GST.

I thought to myself, knowing from a previous hat that I wore, that surely the South Australian Department of Treasury and Finance must be telling the government how important it is not to water down the GST model in South Australia. Surely, they would be telling them. So we placed a number of freedom of information requests to the department to see what advice they were providing. Those requests were put in towards the end of last year. You will not be surprised, in the context of the performance of this current government, to learn that it took over four months for the FOIs to be determined. I will read some excerpts from the Department of Treasury and Finance advice to the Treasurer on this very matter:

The principle of horizontal fiscal equalisation is probably the most important underlying principle in Australia's system of federal financial relations.

Full equalisation must always be the overriding objective, and moves away from this objective, like adoption of a 'reasonable' approach, are not supported.

You have to think about what was being countenanced at the time this advice was provided. Two different options were being mooted by the Productivity Commission: a full per capita distribution model, which would have seen South Australia lose $2 billion a year in GST grants, or a 'reasonable' approach, which would have seen us lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The advice goes on:

Equity is at the heart of HFE [horizontal fiscal equalisation] and each state and territory must be given the same capacity to deliver services and deliver outcomes to their citizens.

In a Federation it is appropriate for Commonwealth funds to be distributed in a way that allows all Australians to have access to a consistent level of services, infrastructure and opportunities. This is best achieved with a system of full equalisation.

The resource rich states and the more populous states that house the majority of Australia's head offices have inherent fiscal advantages over the smaller states.

South Australia believes that the current system of HFE is appropriate and should be retained.

This is the advice from the Department of Treasury and Finance to the Treasurer. It continues:

The proposed move to an equalisation benchmark based on the fiscal position of New South Wales or Victoria represents a shift away from the current system of full fiscal equalisation.

If adopted, this would represent a significant change in Commonwealth-state relations. There will no longer be an objective to provide each state and territory with the capacity to deliver a standard level of services and infrastructure to their citizens.

There you have it: a warning from the Department of Treasury and Finance to the Treasurer that moving away from the original model to the model that has now been adopted by Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg will mean that smaller states like South Australia cannot provide the same standard of services or infrastructure to its citizens. The advice goes on:

In the future, the fiscally strongest state (currently Western Australia) will have the capacity to deliver better services, lower state taxes and more infrastructure to their citizens than other states. There could now be incentives for individuals and businesses to migrate to Western Australia to take advantage of a lower tax environment or access a wider range of services. This could also put competitive pressures on other States to lower their taxes and reduce the quality of their services.

There is the warning from the Department of Treasury and Finance: 'Do not sign up to this model. You will make states like Western Australia stronger than the others, particularly smaller states, and the smaller states will not be able to provide the same services and will not be able to provide the same level of infrastructure to its citizens.' The advice goes on:

The additional Commonwealth top-up funding does not provide certainty that all states and territories will not be worse-off. The relativity estimates used in the Commonwealth's modelling are just projections and highly uncertain. The projections rely on the gap between Western Australia's relativity and the next strongest state narrowing in the future.

If Western Australia's relativity were to be much lower than projected (possible if iron ore prices grow) the benefit of a bigger GST pool may not be sufficient to offset the loss to smaller states and territories from the change in the revised equalisation objective.

So in an environment where there is higher global demand for Western Australian iron ore, their economic activity picks up, Western Australia receives higher royalties and the national pool of GST grows might not be enough to compensate South Australia for a decline in GST revenues as a result of the new model that has been adopted. The advice continues:

In order to safeguard the interests of South Australia and all other states…a further mechanism is needed to ensure that if the Commonwealth's estimated trajectory of relativities does not eventuate, a further contribution from the Commonwealth would be provided.

That is exactly what the opposition called for: a guarantee that South Australia will be no worse off and, if it is found to be worse off, there must be top-ups from the federal government. It is shameful not only that Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg have not guaranteed that past 2026 but that our state Premier and our state Treasurer have signed up for this in order not to be a thorn in the tyre of the federal government's objectives in trying to get this issue dealt with. That is a dreadful outcome for our state. While the Treasurer and the Premier will not be around to experience the impacts of that in South Australia, I hope that some of us are. However, I do not relish this parliament having to deal with budgets and budget bills that are unfortunately less fiscally effusive than they could be.

Beyond GST and beyond that claimed need by the state Treasurer to prop up the state's budget position in light of the forecast downturn in GST revenues from the period of the last state budget, it was a surprise to me to receive a phone call from a public servant a couple of weeks ago asking if I was aware of what the government was doing with regard to the annual indexation of fees and charges. I had to admit that while I was very familiar with the regular process of the government indexing the myriad fees and charges, the hundreds and hundreds it levies across many different portfolio areas, I was not aware of any plans beyond that.

I was advised by this public servant that agencies had been instructed not to investigate or to model a larger than normal increase in fees and charges but to go beyond that and prepare drafting instructions for parliamentary counsel to put those larger than normal increases in train; that is, a decision had effectively been made to get these higher fees and charges ready. That same day—not related to me, I can add—InDaily broke the news that higher than normal fees and charges were being looked at by the Hon. Rob Lucas.

He was forced to come out and admit that, yes, a directive had been issued to all government agencies, but he described it as merely investigating this, not beginning the process of implementing it. That was not what I was told by that public servant. Issuing drafting instructions to parliamentary counsel makes it clear that the government is much further down the path in some areas with this than others. This is significant because the government collects over $2.5 billion each year in the sale of goods and services and the levying of fees and charges.

Usually, in recent times the increases have been around 2 or 2.5 per cent. This is calculated, and has been for decades, as a percentage increase as an amalgam between the Adelaide metro CPI and an index of wage increases across the public sector, which is used as some representation of the cost of delivering services to South Australians. That is why the fees and charges largely track but sometimes are a little bit higher than the inflation rate. Moving beyond that, a 1 per cent larger than normal increase would mean an extra $25 million if it were applied across the board. You do not have to be too quick to do the maths: the 2 per cent is $50 million and the 3 per cent is $75 million.

The 3 per cent is interesting because 3 per cent annuls the $71 million or $72 million in emergency services levy relief that was provided last year by the government. You will remember, Mr Deputy Speaker, that they went to the election saying that they were going to reinstate $90 million of relief to households, and what they actually reinstated was $71 million or $72 million of relief to South Australians, because, of course, they increased the emergency services levy (ESL) budget by the difference—by that $18 million or $19 million and they took the $90 million from that; so, really, the relief to households was only just above $70 million.

Now it looks like that ESL bill relief is about to be extinguished by this increase in fees and charges, so you cannot even trust the government to make good on their promises to lower costs for South Australians, and that is in addition to the claim of better services and more jobs I have already spoken about. It is extraordinary that we would have a government that is willing to give money back to South Australians only for it to be taken some nine months later with a hike in fees and charges. Of course, that would be most keenly felt if it were applied in the area of transport: driver's licence fees; motor registration charges, beyond the compulsory third-party insurance premiums which are levied each year; and, of course, Metroticket prices.

One of the last decisions that the cabinet made under the former Labor government was to provide discounts to Metroticket holders, particularly for 28-day and 14-day passes, which the current Minister for Transport spruiked as his own in April of last year. However, you can imagine how betrayed commuters would feel in being told that they were being stung high Metrocard or single-trip ticket prices for $46 million less of bus and train services. Of course, it does not really wash with motorists, either, who would be faced with higher registration costs while having been promised upgrade after upgrade to South Road and who have continually been led down the garden path.

It is interesting because, as I mentioned before, the ceiling on general government sector net debt has been removed by this government. The ceiling was 35 per cent. It has been removed, and that has enabled the government to increase that net debt to revenue ratio from that maximum of 35 per cent and it is now forecast to reach 42.1 per cent. Net debt by 2021-22 is forecast to reach $8.9 billion, a 63 per cent increase in debt over the next four years—an extraordinary outcome given that this is meant to be the party of fiscal rectitude and that this is meant to be the party of financial management.

We see debt explode under the government, and you might think, 'Oh, well, maybe they're getting on with the job of building things in South Australia.' Well, there is some building work underway. There is, of course, the Northern Connector project, which was announced in 2015 by former prime minister Tony Abbott, Jay Weatherill, Jamie Briggs and me. Doesn't that cast the mind back! Unfortunately, it was on the day of the Abbott assassination, but luckily we got ours in just in time.

There are, of course, works continuing on the Darlington project and the work which was due to start at least nine months ago on the Flinders Link project, which we found out yesterday still has not started and which is going to be delivered late and nearly $50 million over budget, so there is infrastructure spending built in to the forward estimates. We also factored in a state contribution for the Pym Street to Regency Road contribution, as well as for the duplication of the Joy Baluch Bridge at Port Augusta.

However, what we were also promised two federal budgets in a row was that there would be billions of dollars extra for the future stages of South Road. Last year, we were promised $1.8 billion for infrastructure projects in South Australia. I remember it clearly on the front page of The Advertiser, '$1.8 billion'. What did we get? $395 million across the forward estimates—less than a quarter of what was promised; $1.2 billion of that amount was promised for north-south corridor upgrades, upgrades to South Road, and we received less than $200 million of that. The balance was allegedly beyond the forward estimates.

This year, we saw a carbon copy. We were promised $1.5 billion for South Road. Was it all there? No. Less than 10 per cent of it was there. The rest of it, the bulk of it—the amount of money actually needed to get on with infrastructure projects over the next four years—is not available. It is beyond the forward estimates. We know that money that is factored in but not in the forward estimates, money that is counted beyond the forward estimates, is not real money.

Do not take my word for it. You can take the words of the federal campaign spokesman for the Liberal Party of Australia, Simon Birmingham, a senator for South Australia. He said that money beyond the forward estimates is 'never there' and on the 'never-never', and I think he makes it pretty clear: if it is not in the forward estimates, it is not there. We even had the same contribution from the member for Schubert: if it is not in a budget line, it is not in the budget.

This means that there is going to be a significant delay before we start work, an inexplicable delay. If we did indeed have this money in the forward estimates up-front, as we were told we were going to get, then we would have seen work start already on the section of Pym Street to Regency Road, and nothing is happening out there. The duplication of—

The Hon. S.K. Knoll interjecting:

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Well, nothing is happening out there. The member for Schubert can laugh. He might callously think—

Dr Close: He doesn't go there very often.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: —he doesn't go there very often—that these sorts of road upgrades are voluntary or optional.

The Hon. S.K. Knoll: Excuse me?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: No, despite the member for Schubert asking to be excused for his tardy performance in securing money from the federal government, he cannot be excused. He cannot be excused because the role of a hardworking state transport minister is to go to Canberra to secure money. That is certainly the task that I had and it is certainly the task that I delivered: $2.5 billion for those three projects—one of which is already finished, the next of which is almost finished and the one after that will be finished shortly after.

That is $2.5 billion of projects. In fact, not only were they delivered under budget but they were also delivered ahead of time in the case of the Torrens to Torrens project. So far under budget were they that the savings from those three projects funded the state's contribution and the majority of the federal government's contribution to the Oaklands crossing upgrade.

I am sure you will hear a lot from the member for Boothby—one of the first to sign the petition to roll Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister and install Peter Dutton as Prime Minister of Australia—that she, in fact, was responsible. It turned into the Spartacus project: everyone was claiming to be Spartacus at that announcement. There was Paul Fletcher, the federal minister responsible, myself as state minister and then this flurry of Liberal state and federal MPs, even candidates—given how close it was to the election—claiming responsibility for having negotiated this deal. I can tell you why this deal came about, on the record in Hansard, so I am happy if somebody wants to get up and try to correct me.

When the last federal budget came down, and when we saw hundreds of millions of dollars delivered to a Western Australian urban rail project that did not even have a name let alone a business case, when we saw hundreds of millions of dollars delivered for other projects in Queensland that did not have a business case and I said, 'What about the money that Malcolm Turnbull said he was going to give to South Australia for the Pym Street to Regency Road upgrade if we provided you with the necessary paperwork in April 2017?' he looked at me a bit embarrassed.

I said, 'There is only one solution for this that I would like to see and that is us getting the Pym Street to Regency Road money. Failing that, the other thing we should get on and fund is the Oaklands crossing upgrade.' He agreed to do that and we agreed to use the savings from that project. I should also mention the other two rail upgrade projects that have been delivered in South Australia: the Goodwood junction project, just south of the city, to grade separate the freight and the passenger rail lines, and the Torrens junction rail upgrade to grade separate the freight and the passenger rail lines.

These were delivered under the former Labor government and delivered under budget so that the savings from those projects could fund the $85 million Flinders Link project. That is what happens when you go to Canberra, secure the money, get on with delivering the projects, get out to tender quickly, have a good tender outcome and work collaboratively with your tenderer to make sure that you have the right design so you can save money and continue investing in broad projects.

Other than those existing South Road projects, it really seems that the only projects that are taking up infrastructure spending over the next four years are the $650 million in school upgrades, which were conceived and funded by the member for Port Adelaide and the then treasurer, the member for West Torrens, and the $270 million for The Queen Elizabeth Hospital—again, put in the forward estimates by the former state Labor government.

There are also some other projects in the forward estimates that do not seem to have much progress on them, unfortunately. There is the upgrade of Springbank and Daws roads, which had just under $25 million committed to it by the former Labor government in the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure budget in the forward estimates, and a project dear to my heart, which was due to be nearly half completed by this very date, was the intersection upgrade of Cheltenham Parade, West Lakes Boulevard and Port Road.

This is one of the busiest intersections in the western suburbs and an intersection with an extraordinary crash history, given that Port Road is a major arterial road separated by a very significant median, which increases commensurately the number of turning movements for those people trying to navigate that type of intersection. As people would know, it is turning movements at intersections that cause the greatest number of motor vehicle accidents.

We have had delay after delay with these projects, and there is still no understanding from the council, which has been waiting to hear from the state government about their intentions with that intersection upgrade so that they can plan the next stages of their stormwater upgrades down the median of Port Road, given the work they have already done down Old Port Road. Tardiness is becoming a feature in the transport portfolio.

At the beginning of September last year, we learnt that there would be the closure of three Service SA centres and here we are, nearly eight months on, and we still do not know how those Service SA centres are going to be successfully closed and how those services are going to be provided to citizens in South Australia. It is extraordinary that you could tell South Australians that you would delay a budget for months so that all the background work, all the planning, all the preparation, all the program development and evaluation, even business cases, could be done so that as soon as the budget was announced you could press the button on all these projects, and on all these initiatives, and get on with them.

But here we are, and it looks as though a significant number of these savings measures will be unable to be delivered or delivered very late. That is important to note because we have already seen that, aside from some of these specific savings measures, such as the closure of Service SA offices, many agencies across government have unallocated and unidentified savings they need to achieve.

For example, this year $135 million of savings need to be delivered. We have a couple of months to go until the end of the financial year and the Treasury is expecting all those agencies to save $135 million. Or, I would say, all those agencies but not quite because we saw in the Mid-Year Budget Review that SA Health was being given some further breathing space on these savings tasks imposed by the new Liberal government.

Nonetheless, the savings tasks are extraordinary. As well as the privatisation of the Adelaide Remand Centre and the cutting of rehabilitation programs for offenders in our prisons, the Department for Correctional Services has another $2½ million that it needs to save. The Department for Education, perhaps through the advocacy of the member for Morialta, seems to have escaped relatively easily with only $2 million to save, but $2 million is still no small beer, particularly in light of our understanding that the first rounds of TVSP calls have not quite gone as well as the government would have hoped.

We see the member for Stuart's Department for Energy and Mining with $2.2 million of savings to achieve this financial year. SA Health, despite having some more breathing space in their savings task, seems to have got off a little lighter. Their head office has to save $5.6 million this year. Public imaging and diagnostics is a $1.1 million saving and the national benchmarking saving, which presumably is what the corporate liquidators have been called in from interstate to achieve, had $73 million worth of savings to achieve in this financial year alone.

That is a lot of money—$73 million is nothing to be sneezed at, even in the context of a health system the size of South Australia's—but that task for SA Health, as forecast in the state budget, increases: next year, it is $126 million; the year after it is $204 million; and the year after that it is $295 million. That is $698 million of savings to be identified through 'national benchmarking'. Maybe that is why they called in the interstate corporate liquidators. Maybe they have a national perspective on benchmarking.

We have $21 million over four years in human services. We have $15 million over four years in industry and skills. Maybe that will slow up the number of appointments to the Construction Industry Training Board for the Minister for Innovation and Skills. We also have further savings for the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure of $44.7 million—those are not the bus cuts—$38 million of savings for police, $25 million of savings in the Department of the Premier and Cabinet, $10½ million on top of those SARDI fee increases I raised before for Regions SA and a further $6½ million for primary industries.

There are $26 million of further cuts in the Department for Trade, Tourism and Investment and $84.4 million in the Department of Treasury and Finance, which probably reminds people why the Treasurer is 'actively encouraging his officers to come up with new outsourcing and privatisation options here in South Australia'.

What has also been of interest to me is the delay in the number of reports that we were promised were urgent first priorities for this government. We have been told by the government, the Treasurer, the Premier and the Minister for Water that South Australians were paying far too much in their SA Water bills and that there had been some egregious cash grab by the former Labor government in the last pricing determination made by the former government and that it had been done by an artificial inflation of the regulated asset base of South Australia. This was such an outrage to the government that they said they would immediately hold a full investigation into the water price-setting process, with the aim of substantially reducing water bills for South Australians going forward.

That was all the rhetoric we heard through 2015, 2016, 2017 and the early months of 2018, but when they came into government suddenly things went quiet. When somebody in the media said, 'By the way, where is that water pricing inquiry you promised you would establish?' the government then appointed the former chair of the Essential Services Commission, Mr Lew Owens, to undertake that inquiry. Here we are, more than a year on, and we still have not seen the fruits of that. I wonder why.

If the government truly believe that the regulated asset base is overvalued by billions of dollars, then surely they can be issuing a direction to the Essential Services Commission about a lower value for the regulated asset base, lower by billions of dollars, so that it can flow through to people's water bills. However, perhaps the government has realised why the former Labor government took that decision about the value of the regulated asset base: because it was based on advice from the Department of Treasury and Finance at the time. Maybe they will realise that over the forward estimates there is between $300 million and $600 million a year of additional infrastructure investment in SA Water's asset base.

Deputy Speaker, if your contention, like those opposite, is that higher asset values lead to higher water bills, why would you be investing nearly an extra $2 billion over the next four years in expanding the asset base? Surely, that will only flow through to higher water bills. Surely, that will mean that the building block pricing structure, which has been used in South Australia for many years in establishing water prices, and the additional increase to the asset base of SA Water is only going to result in higher prices for South Australian consumers.

If you marry that up with what I advised earlier, that SA Water is being raided for additional dividends, it is substantial for SA Water. In the current financial year, it is an additional $26.6 million. Next year, it is an additional $62.4 million of dividends from SA Water. In terms of what that would mean to somebody's water bill, there are approximately 900,000 households, I think, give or take a few tens of thousands and, as we know, there are approximately 150,000 to 160,000 businesses in South Australia, not all of which will have a separate water account.

Let's say there are a million billable addresses here for SA Water. That $60 million represents $60 each if it is spread around them. That is what the government has done. It has not rushed to try to lower water prices, as it promised South Australians it would. Instead, it is ramping up the value of the assets in SA Water's books and extracting high dividends from SA Water. When it comes to how the government spend their money in more discretionary areas, we see they have not been quite so fiscally prudent.

I want to talk about a couple of particular matters of expenditure from the state government. While they were cutting funds to SA Pathology, they thought it would be worthwhile spending millions and millions of dollars over the next four years setting up health boards in South Australia. It is a surprise, really, because I always thought that, under the tenets of responsible government we had in South Australia, the health minister and, through him, the chief executive were responsible for the operations of SA Health.

Clearly, there is an appetite for the Minister for Health and the government to try to devolve that responsibility to a group of unelected, unaccountable board members who will run our local health networks. This was something that was thrust on us more than 12 years ago by the then Rudd government. It was always the position of the state Labor government that health boards are not ideal. Any board and any member of a board should always act in the best interests of the organisation it superintendents. That is a basic fiduciary duty that all board members have under the Corporations Act. That stands to reason; I do not think anyone would question that.

However, in the context of SA Health and the statewide health services having a proliferation of health boards that are all only singularly focused on their own patch to the ignorance of what is happening beyond them it means that you come up with disjointed and suboptimal outcomes across the health system. I would argue that it is in the interests of a health board to argue very much in favour of—and potentially to the detriment of other health boards—their own organisation first and foremost. That makes it extremely difficult for a chief executive and it makes it extremely difficult for a health minister to try to ensure that there is a system-wide approach to managing hospitals and health services. However, that is what the government is spending millions of dollars on.

Of course, way out almost in the never-never but not quite, $20 million is being spent on GlobeLink. I have to raise it. I have to talk about GlobeLink so I can be the only member of parliament who is talking about it because apparently it has vanished. Apparently, it has just been forgotten. They got past the unpleasantness of a Liberal candidate in a Hills seat being challenged for their safe Liberal margin by a Nick Xenophon Team candidate.

Now that they have got past all of that and have finally been elected to their safe Liberal Hills seat, they can stop the pretence that they are going to remove freight rail services from metropolitan Adelaide, that they are going to stop using the $300 million-plus investment for the Goodwood and Torrens Rail Junction upgrades, that they are going to turn their back on all those intermodal facilities that have only been opened in Adelaide's northern suburbs in recent years, including one that the Premier himself visited out at Regency Park, Northline.

Once we have put all that pretence aside, hopefully GlobeLink can die a slow death. Unfortunately, while I might be the only member of parliament talking about it in this parliament, there is another member of parliament, hopefully short-lived, the member for Boothby, the cheer squad for Peter Dutton, who is also claiming to be removing the freight rail services from metropolitan Adelaide and strongly pushing GlobeLink. There are a few flaws in the GlobeLink plan, of course.

Not only is there virtually no money across the forward estimates, aside from the $20 million for a business case apparently in the last financial year of the forward estimates, but there is no other money of any substance being provided at the state level. There is no awareness of the project from the federal department of infrastructure. There is no awareness of this amongst Infrastructure Australia, although we have a new appointee to Infrastructure Australia, a former executive of the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure, Mr Rod Hook.

Hopefully, GlobeLink gets a look in just before SkyWay gets a ventilation. I am not sure whether SkyWay will get to the top of the tree, given the warnings from financial authorities in Europe about SkyWay basically being a pyramid scheme. However, if GlobeLink gets a guernsey before Skyway at Infrastructure Australia, maybe then the federal government will become aware of GlobeLink, but until then it seems to be an embarrassment that still sits around this government that still has not been dealt with. Maybe it will be dealt with. Maybe it will be killed off in this budget, because we know that the Minister for Transport likes to take his time killing off government election commitments which he knows are undeliverable.

We had the extraordinary seven-month wait to kill off the tram right-hand turn. It was remarkable, really, given that he was advised in his incoming government briefs that it was unachievable. We went through the farce and expense of getting additional reports, additional consultancies conducted to reaffirm the advice that had already been provided by both government engineers and external consultants that the tram right-hand turn could not be delivered.

After that delay, maybe we are just in for a delay on killing off GlobeLink, but we will wait and see. Given that it is $20 million—and I presume they do not get out of bed for less than $37 million—I wonder whether KordaMentha will tender for it. They did not have any experience in the health network, and I do not believe they have any experience in transport infrastructure, but maybe they will still win a tender. In fact, it was not a tender; it was a direct-to-market approach.

Funny that, because if I had been a health bureaucrat who was getting some pressure to try to find somebody who could perhaps provide some external expert financial advice, I might have thought, 'I wonder if there is anyone in South Australia who is good at this. Do we have anyone who is skilled in health administration? Do we have anyone who is skilled in financial administration? Do we have anyone in South Australia who has a combination of those two skills?' Apparently, the answer from health bureaucrats and the government is that, no, we do not have anyone in South Australia. It had to be KordaMentha. It had to be.

We do not know why it had to be KordaMentha, but I am hoping we will find out, because the Auditor-General told the Budget and Finance Committee in the other place yesterday that he will certainly be having a look at the KordaMentha procurement, which is really pleasing. It is not often that somebody can win a select market approach for a consultancy of $880,000 and write a report, one of the recommendations of which was that their contract be expanded for an $18.7 million consultancy.

Once we get through that next piece of work, if it is all going glowingly—and, according to this morning's 'Tiser, KordaMentha will comment on whether they are doing well or not. It is not for SA Health or anybody else. KordaMentha will be the judge of whether they are doing a good job or not, and then they can have the full $37 million that they believe they can extract in consultancy fees from SA Health. That is more than the first year of savings required from SA Pathology. It is just extraordinary.

It is not the only procurement that the opposition is interested in either. We also had the remarkable decision of the Marshall government to award a single-service contract for across-government travel services to QBT travel. It is remarkable, given that the tender process specifically sought a panel of providers, more than one, so that when people were looking at booking travel services they could choose whether it was the incumbent, if they were successful in making their way into the panel again, or from a range of new travel services providers. But the contract was not awarded to a panel of providers. Indeed, it went to QBT travel.

It is of interest because that company is run and owned by the federal Liberal Party treasurer, Andrew Burnes. You would have thought that that fact alone might raise enough eyebrows within government to ensure that if the government was going to go through a process where QBT travel was bidding for this work, then you would ensure that this process was wrapped in probity to the greatest extent possible.

You would ensure that there were probity advisers. You would make sure that ministers involved in the deal, who would perhaps be taking the recommendation to cabinet for cabinet to approve the awarding of the contract, had no contact with the company during the tender process. You might even ask whether the Premier or any other ministers had any shares in QBT travel while this process was underway.

We do not know the answer to that because when we put the questions in question time the Premier responded with, 'I cannot believe you are asking questions about this. It is not a big issue.' Well, it is a big issue. It is a $56 million contract that has been awarded to somebody the Premier does know. It is a $56 million contract that has been awarded to a company owned by one of the most senior members of the federal Liberal Party in this country.

The circumstances around it are remarkably similar to the way in which the federal government awarded their travel services contract to a company called Helloworld. QBT travel is a subsidiary company of Helloworld. You might recall that there was some furore in the federal parliament, if my memory serves me correctly, about how a $420 million across-national-government travel services contract could be awarded to Helloworld.

In the federal government, the circumstances were a bit different from those we had here in South Australia. In South Australia, we had a single provider, everyone's favourite, Carlson Wagonlit. They were the provider of travel management services to the government of South Australia and also, I think, to the parliament. I believe it was the experience of that single contract that informed the recommendation to seek a panel of providers so that people felt they had a choice and did not necessarily have to go with one provider, let alone Carlson Wagonlit, if they were to be successful.

In the federal sphere, this was reversed. They had a panel of providers providing travel management services. You will remember that there was an election in September 2013 when there was a change of government. Within months of that change of government, immediately a new tender was issued by the federal government for a travel management services contract. It went from a panel of providers to a single provider. It went to Helloworld, from the same group of companies and the same ownership that we are talking about here with QBT travel.

It turned out that Mr Andrew Burnes, the federal Liberal Party treasurer, who owns Helloworld and QBT travel, had made a donation of $500,000 to the federal Liberal Party and had also, I am led to believe, hosted fundraisers. It is remarkable that we could have a similar situation here in South Australia where, upon the election of a new Liberal government, we immediately see a tender process that is changed so that, instead of ending up with a panel of providers, we have a single provider and, again, it is a company owned by Mr Andrew Burnes.

When these sorts of decisions are being taken, there is a great emphasis on the role of the Auditor-General to thoroughly examine these sorts of procurements. The government, as did the previous government, has structures in place, like the State Procurement Board, to provide a range of policies and to liaise with departments about how they should be conducting procurements.

It is often found by the Auditor-General or previous auditors-general that sometimes processes in terms of government spending decisions around procurements have not been conducted according to the letter of those policies set down by the State Procurement Board. I will be very interested to know to what extent the Auditor-General will be examining these two procurements: KordaMentha, for $37 million if it is pursued to its full extensions, and QBT travel, a $56 million procurement for across-government travel management services.

I should also make reference to the other discretionary spending that I must admit I was somewhat surprised to see, and that was, in March of this year, the very quiet announcement of a $400,000 payroll tax advertising campaign by the government. Remember, this is a Treasurer and a Premier who had railed against government advertising, who had said that it was outrageous, that it was political and that it should only be used if absolutely necessary.

There is some government advertising that is necessary, absolutely—for example, the advertisements that go out advising of fire danger season and the advertising of the road safety campaigns superintended by the Motor Accident Commission. Of course, a number of different advertising campaigns are run throughout the year by SA Health, particularly at this time of year as we head into the winter period and those times that cause a higher level of demand on our hospital network. But does $400,000 cut the mustard for a payroll tax advertising campaign? Of course it does not because this payroll tax cut commenced from 1 January 2019.

People do not need to apply for the payroll tax cuts; they just happen. It is an adjusted rate. People report their taxable payrolls to RevenueSA and a payroll tax liability is calculated. People do not need to say, 'I own a small business and I would like to access a lower rate if it may be available in legislation. Could I please have that?' It happens automatically. To advertise these payroll tax cuts three months after their implementation smacks of a government that clearly has some market research back that states that nobody knows what it is doing and nobody knows about individual initiatives like payroll tax.

They have chosen to spend $400,000 on a government advertising campaign for payroll tax, which is blatantly hypocritical given what we were told by the former opposition about government advertising. Then, of course, we have the advertising that we are assured will continue, yet there are no signed agreements, for road safety campaigns with the Motor Accident Commission. Those opposite like to say that MAC was privatised; it was not.

Mr Cowdrey interjecting:

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: It is funny, actually. The member for Colton—

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Duluk): Order! The member for Lee will not respond to interjections. You have been doing such a wonderful job and I would wish for you to continue as you are going.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Thank you for your timely interjection.

The Hon. S.K. Knoll: Wonderful audition, Mr Speaker.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: He doesn't need to audition; surely he will walk straight in—

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Duluk): Order! Can we just continue with this supply debate? I am listening intently.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I am not looking at you; it is just one of these three. Surely there will be room soon.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Duluk): Member for Lee, no more protection.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: The conjecture is that the core function of a motor accident commission was the writing of CTP insurance. Maybe it should have been called the CTP Insurance Commission. Maybe it should have been called the Making Claims Commission. Maybe it should have been the Recompense for Injuries Suffered on Roads Commission. It is not: it is called the Motor Accident Commission because its whole objective and aim is to reduce the number of motor vehicle accidents we have on our roads.

The Hon. S.K. Knoll: Where does the funding come from?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: In fact, that's a good question that's raised, if I can respond to this untimely interjection.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Duluk): Order! No, you cannot respond to interjections, you know that—and you shan't.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Thank you for your magnanimity, Mr Acting Speaker. Where does the funding come from? It comes from appropriation. It comes from a government that is willing to provide funding for government advertising campaigns.

The Hon. S.K. Knoll interjecting:

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: No, indeed the arrangements that were put in place by the former government continued funding to the Motor Accident Commission so that it could continue spending—

The Hon. S.K. Knoll: By appropriation.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Exactly—which is what I just told the chamber, thank you. It is nice to have a young Padawan over there finally learning something in this chamber. The problem is that once you wind up the Motor Accident Commission it raises the question of what happens to all the advertising campaigns it currently runs. What happens to that appropriation?

What we understand is that it is to be transferred off to the Minister for Police or, more particularly, to South Australia Police. Is this something that South Australia Police is happy with? Not quite yet because they are expected to take the money over; however, the government, via their minister, the Minister for Police, is insisting on having some control over how the police commissioner will expend those funds. More so, we have the Minister for Transport and his department also wanting to maintain some control over the advertising campaigns that are run, let alone the research activities that go to inform them.

It is important to mention those research activities because they are the ones likely first against the wall when it comes to the abolition of the Motor Accident Commission, which takes effect from 1 July this year. Those funding arrangements for those large broadscale MAC campaigns that we see—like the support, for example, that goes towards the Tour Down Under each year—are not locked in beyond the cessation of contracts, most of which end within the next 12 to 18 months.

I understand that that may be no news to some members in here. That 12 to 18 months must seem like all the time in the world, which is a little disheartening, really, when the vast majority of the South Road funding that was promised is not to be received in the next 12 to 18 months, or even 36 to 48 months. It occurs at some point allegedly, according to Simon Birmingham, in the never-never in the next 10 years.

However, those of us who are actually concerned about road safety, those of us who are actually concerned about bringing down our road toll and those of us who are very concerned about the trend we are seeing in this current year of a remarkable escalation in the road toll in South Australia do ruminate on whether this is the right move by this government, and of course it is not.

What other agency sits independent of other vested-interest agencies, like SA Police and the transport department, to come up with evidence-based policy advice to the government on how it should be investing its money, not just in advertising campaigns but in road safety measures as well? What we are going to see is either unfettered control for the police commissioner or some level of influence from the transport department. That in itself is not a good thing, but we will be losing that moderation.

That is only one of a number of agencies that are being abolished from last year's budget, and we still have to see the measures that will be rolled out in this coming budget. We do not know how much of the more than $5 billion is going to be expended out of the provisions of this bill in meeting up those savings shortfalls that I mentioned—the $1.263 billion of unbudgeted savings across those agencies.

We certainly do not know what further punitive measures the government is going to introduce beyond the fees and charges increases that are currently being prepared by the government, and we certainly do not know who else is going to be in the firing line. With those brief comments, I end my contribution.

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

A quorum having been formed:

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (17:13): I rise to speak on the Supply Bill, and I will spend my time talking about both the environment and education portfolios. On the matter of the environment portfolio, I think we have seen a very disappointing trail of poor decisions, inadequate funding and wrong-headed policy directions and legislative directions. It has been perhaps unsurprising but, nonetheless, disappointing to see. If we start with the big issue, which we have spoken about a lot today, which is—

The Hon. V.A. Chapman: We saved her dolphins.

Dr CLOSE: Without any speed limit in one section in front of the speedboat club—with no speed limit whatsoever—let's see how we go with saving the dolphins, shall we? That was the Minister for Transport, in any case, and not the Minister for Environment and Water.

The River Murray, which we have canvassed extensively today and on previous occasions, merits the highest position in my speech and concern about the priorities of this government because this river system is arguably the most vulnerable environment that we are dealing with. It is certainly significantly under threat from overextraction interstate, from poor adherence to governance procedures interstate, from an unwillingness on behalf of the current commonwealth government to do anything to require additional water to come down the river, as is expected in the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, and, having had those years of inactivity, now it is also under threat from the drought.

We are approaching a time of very serious crisis for the River Murray in South Australia. We have seen this year, just recently, that the proposed initial allocation for our irrigators is 14 per cent. That is as low as it has been since the end of the Millennium Drought. That is a virtual crisis for our irrigators and a matter of enormous concern on this side of the chamber. What is this government doing, because it is hard when you are in South Australia? We have the most efficient irrigators. Our irrigators are already doing all that you could ask of them.

We are at the bottom of the river and, as was described in the royal commission, the canary in the coalmine. The state of the Murray Mouth and the Coorong is an indicator of the future state of the whole system. Given that situation, we need a South Australian government to show leadership and firmness of purpose, to adhere to the legal expectations and requirements of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and not be complicit in watering it down and not be complicit with states that do not want to send any environmental water over the border.

The drought envoy, former water minister Barnaby Joyce, belled the cat very clearly. He does not see why irrigators in New South Wales should provide any water to protect the environment in South Australia. That is what we have been dealing with—that commonwealth government and the attitude of both the New South Wales and Victorian governments—and this government thinks it is a good idea to sit down and hammer out something that they wanted all along.

Another large part of the responsibility of a minister for environment and water is the protection and the active conservation of our protected systems, our parks. Yet what I keep hearing from people within the environment department, particularly in the parks service, what I hear from people who are activists in the environment movement, who care about nature and biodiversity and who recognise that our parks system is an absolutely integral part of the maintenance of the health of all our South Australian environment, is that this minister is not really interested in parks except for Glenthorne National Park.

What I hear is that their 'vanity project', as they describe it, of Glenthorne National Park is the only area that this minister is seriously interested in. People worry about the priority for the international bird sanctuary dropping down, they worry about other metropolitan parks dropping down and they worry about the very large parks around the state that are just not as important as this little project that the minister has his name attached to.

We have talked a lot about rangers on and off and the minister will say, 'Well, the previous government did not care about rangers because there are fewer people with the ranger title and therefore that means that we were getting rid of rangers.' My understanding is that, to a large extent, there was a diversification in the titles of people involved in maintaining our protected area system and that what once might have been called a ranger was a research officer or a conservation officer, someone working on biodiversity restoration or habitat restoration.

This government wanted to go in the other direction and have more rangers. I think a lot of people genuinely welcomed that commitment. Imagine the disappointment when they looked at the budget papers and saw that there was no additional money coming into the department to pay for those rangers and that to pay for additional rangers the department was going to have to cut other activity. Imagine the concern when we start to see that rangers are being offered targeted voluntary separation packages. How could that be? How can there be a target for a ranger to leave the workplace? How can we be paying someone to stop being a ranger when we have a government that want to have more rangers?

How is it that we have people currently doing maintenance and construction work who are being told that they will not be doing that anymore but that they will get a new title, which is 'ranger'? Does that mean that they are actually a ranger, or are they still doing the maintenance and construction work? Who knows. Does the maintenance and construction work continue to happen, or does it simply not happen anymore because we now have a new title, which is 'ranger'? It is not a magic pudding.

Climate change was the area that got the biggest cut in the budget—some $11 million coming out of climate change—at a time when we are absolutely desperate to deal not only with emissions reduction, which is not squarely the business of the environment and water department, but with adaptation. We are in a warming world. The summer that we have all just experienced—and I am not sure if it is raining yet—and this remarkable dry period that we are experiencing at present ought to alarm all of us, not just because people who live in cities and live in houses are going to have additional pressures on their electricity and their water charges, which is a very real adaptation concern, but that the environment on which we all ultimately depend is under terrible strain.

If the environment department is saying, 'Well, actually climate change doesn't matter to us; we are not interested in adaptation and mitigation strategies and we are not interested in working out how we need to manage our parks differently because they are going to be drier, because having a prescribed burn period is now getting harder and harder because the time when it is dangerous to have a fire is increasing, when the fuel load is increasing and we can't bring it down because we can't have a prescribed burn because it's too hot and too dry,' we need an area in the department that is dedicated to this work, yet this government has seen fit to slash that area.

Waste is also a very important area of concern for how we manage a more sustainable future. I support the minister in his contemplation of what we do about single-use plastic. I am looking forward to seeing what comes out of the consultation that has occurred, and I am very hopeful of being able to support his proposals. I can tell you who is not too happy at the moment about the minister's attitude to waste and that is local government, because local government has been hit with enormous charges associated with the sudden cessation of China taking our waste.

The Hon. S.K. Knoll: I thought you were going to say a solid waste levy.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Duluk): Order, minister!

Dr CLOSE: They are now having to pay more in order to manage the waste that used to go overseas to be recycled and now cannot be. While I support the government's decision to put some money into developing the industry for additional recycling, I know that local government are feeling utterly abandoned by this government in the contemplation of the additional charges that they are likely to have to pass on to residents to manage this issue. This government has shown absolutely no concern about it.

We have the question of reservoirs, one of the shiny policies that this government came up with. I will be asking a number of questions in estimates about how we are going with making sure that cryptosporidium is not making its way into our water supply and that we are making sure that giardia is not making its way into our water supply. I know that they have held off at the moment from allowing water-based activities.

I do not know whether they have seen the sense in not proceeding with that or if they are just still determining how they are going to sneak up on it without having the very serious water quality experts coming out and explaining just how dangerous that is without spending a huge amount of money on additional water treatment plants. We will be watching very carefully how they manage their shiny little policy. It will be very nice for people to engage in a bit of nature around reservoirs, but it will do absolutely nothing to deal with the profound difficulty and challenges we have with our biodiversity extinction crisis and climate change.

We have not heard much about marine parks for a while. It will be interesting to see whether the minister does indeed proceed to annoy every single part of the environment movement by taking on the important sanctuary zones in our marine park system. I am hopeful that he will be too wise to do that.

In relation to heritage, the last shed in the inner harbour in Port Adelaide is about to be knocked over. They have already put the chain around it and we understand from council workers that they will be moving in this week to knock it over. The minister said that it was the most difficult decision he has had to make as minister to not allow it to be maintained on the Heritage Register during the three-month window of opportunity he had to remove it after the Heritage Council said that they would regard it as being meritorious of being on the heritage list.

The reason was not that he does not believe that it is worthy of protection. He says he does and I believe him. It is because this government will not spend any money on Shed 26. This shed was always going to take some government money and some negotiation with the developers. This government is quite happy to sell heritage. They are quite happy to sell Edmund Wright House for $6.3 million—that is excellent, pocket that money, but do not put any money into—

Members interjecting:

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Duluk): Order!

Dr CLOSE: Exactly. You were corrected by your colleague, well done. Take the money, but do not put it into heritage in Port Adelaide. Well, I can tell you exactly what the people of Port Adelaide think about this government.

The Hon. S.K. Knoll: Did you fund Shed 26? Did you stump up the $8½ million?

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Duluk): Order!

Dr CLOSE: You need to be polite.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Duluk): Deputy leader, please do not respond to interjections.

Dr CLOSE: Well, could you be a little fiercer?

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Duluk): Minister, please do not interrupt the deputy leader. You will have your right of reply very soon. Deputy leader.

Dr CLOSE: Thank you, Mr Acting Speaker. As I look around at all the issues that the people who are associated with environment and water care about, I have seen that, one by one, this government have gone counter to the responsibilities that they have to protect our environment and to prepare for the future.

Interest group by interest group has been let down by this government in the environment portfolio. One by one, it has been, 'No, we're not listening to you. No, you're wrong. No, we are cutting that. No, we know better. We know better than you do. We know better than a royal commission about how to protect the River Murray. We are not even going to respond to the royal commission in a timely fashion, let alone acknowledge the seriousness of the criticism that was made.'

Turning to education, there is far less to talk about. Education has been awfully quiet, except for one thing and that has been the centrepiece—the move of year 7, which is the move of 12 year olds from one school to another school. Fair play—the government went to the election last time and this time saying that they would make this enormous change to move 12 year olds from one school to another school.

They won the election and have every right to do it, but, unfortunately, they did not provision to do it properly or well. So what they have to do is cobble it together, giving some additional money for the capital upgrades required in some of the schools, almost exclusively in Liberal electorates. They have changed zones overnight. They have imposed—

Mr Pederick: What about the high school in Whyalla—$100 million.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Duluk): Member for Hammond!

Dr CLOSE: They have imposed restrictions on siblings being able to attend the same school as the older child who is fortunate enough to get into a program at a school.

The Hon. R. Sanderson: You got rid of sibling rights altogether at Adelaide High in 2010.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Duluk): Order!

Dr CLOSE: Now it has gone for all of them, so congratulations on being part of that government. They took the money that was assigned to Building Better Schools, which was all about improving the infrastructure of our public schools to make them attractive to parents to send their kids to—what proportion we are still not told, but it is clearly a very high proportion, to reallocate to build classrooms for kids who had classrooms in schools down the road.

If you want to move 12 year olds from one school to another, fine, but pay for it. Do not take the money that was being used for Golden Grove High School for a performing arts studio and say, 'No, we are going to repurpose that, and you need to have that now for moving year 7s.' Do not take the money for the Para Hills school that is having its special programs shoved to one side to build classrooms for 12 year olds who already have classrooms down the road.

If you want to do it, do it properly because those schools deserve to look and be the best. Those schools deserve to have every dollar that was allocated to them—every dollar—spent on looking better and having more functional specialist teaching areas, not general classrooms for year 7s. There is an enormous number of transportables sitting in those schools that bothered me, that I wanted to see gone.

I was so pleased when we were given the money for Building Better Schools, the nearly $700 million that would mean that a good portion of those transportables would finally be taken away from those schools. However, that is not going to happen anymore because those schools need those transportables in order to fit in their year 7s. This is a robbery of schools that needed and deserved upgrade money to fund an unfunded election commitment. I find that affronting.

As you go from school to school, where their capacity management plan has been put in place, where sibling rights have been taken away, where zones have suddenly been changed, where there is anxiety that zones will change in the future because no-one trusts this government on zones anymore, you will find over the next few years a growing resentment amongst the parents of South Australia about the attitude of this government to its one policy on education, which was to move where 12 year olds learn.

I want to be clear here: I am not being critical of the public servants in the department who are doing this; I know some of them. One of the leading people—I do not know, but I have heard—comes from the environment department and is an excellent public servant. I just think it is a pity that their intellect and their effort are being wasted on a project that has not been adequately thought out by the government, that has not been adequately funded by the government and that has no substantial educational value that anyone can point to.

If you want to do it, do it, fine. You took it to the election. It is hard when other states do something different. I know the cringe that we have, that we had better do what the other states are doing—fine. Do not look at the fact that in Western Australia the suspension rates for 12 year olds went up when they moved into high school. Do not look at the disengagement in our lower SES communities when you take a 12 year old from a primary school and put them in with high school kids.

Do not look at that. Just say that because other states are doing it we should do it. Okay, fine, because you won the election on it, but fund it properly and do not take the money away from schools that had expectations for what kinds of upgrades they were going to be able to have, taking it away from identified projects the school community was looking forward to.

Members interjecting:

Dr CLOSE: I do not have to convince you, and you can shout at me and you can try to undermine me, because I know what will happen: you will hear steadily how the parents in your communities feel about that, and I think you will pay the price.

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL (Schubert—Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government, Minister for Planning) (17:33): I was going to speak about something else, but—

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Duluk): I remind the minister we are on the Supply Bill, so he has to talk about supply.

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: Well, actually, that is everything. Thank you, Mr Acting Speaker. In the last five years, we spent $589 million on education infrastructure. Over the next five years, we are going to spend $1.6 billion on education infrastructure. I think that South Australians are going to realise that this government is spending more on schools than we ever have at any time in our history. The biggest problem we will have with education infrastructure is making sure that we can deliver all the projects and help work with the commercial construction sector to gear up so that they can actually deliver the mammoth amount of money that this government has put into delivering education infrastructure.

Regardless, I rise to talk about the beautiful electorate of Schubert. We have just completed another Vintage Festival in the Barossa. Probably the most exciting time on the Barossa calendar, it comes every two years. I want to use this Supply Bill speech not only to reflect a little on the past few weeks but also to talk more broadly about the Vintage Festival as a statement of the beautiful community in the Barossa Valley.

My wife and I moved to the Barossa in 2011. It was part of a conscious decision about when and where we were going to raise our family and also about the kind of community that we wanted to live in. In trying to persuade my wife to move, we got involved in the local community and really tried to understand the beauty of the local community and the people there. As a couple who have lived in other parts of Adelaide, having moved a number of times before moving to the Barossa, what really stood out was how different this community was and how integrated and connected this community was compared to any other place in which we have lived.

There is a strong sense of community spirit that exists in the Barossa in a way that Amy and I have not experienced anywhere over our lifetime. This community spirit manifests itself in a number of different ways. It has a historical beginning in the way that the Barossa was founded by a group of Prussian settlers who were escaping persecution for their religious beliefs and who came to a land that was very different from where they had come from. Having to adapt their farming techniques to this new land meant having to work together even more fervently than they did in their previous homeland.

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

A quorum having been formed:

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: Residents of the Barossa needed to work together, and they formed a very deep and abiding community connection with each other from its earliest days. Certainly from a farming perspective, people had to work together to understand how to grow crops in this new land. Their combined faith in the Lutheran church also brought them together. The church was the original institution that drove change in the Barossa. The churches were the ones that built the schools, the churches were the ones that did the community outreach and the churches were the ones that provided those social services we now rely on the government to provide.

Because of its remoteness at that time from other parts of Adelaide, it became quite insulated but quite strong. The spirit that manifested itself at that time still pervades the region today. But today it is different. Today, we still have those formal institutions, whether they be churches or whether they be service clubs. The Barossa also shows its community spirit in a number of more informal ways, and they are the ones I would love to celebrate today.

For instance, we have just completed a vintage festival, which saw a whole series of events and individuals within the community deciding to put their hand up to help make sure that those events got off the ground. I am talking about the Vintage Festival Ball or the parade as well as the Young Ambassadors program. All these things were run by volunteers who put their heads together so that the community could have a wonderful week of activity.

We also saw, for instance, the Angaston Town Day last Sunday. Again, the Angaston Community and Business Alliance is a group of volunteers working together to put on a show to highlight the best that Angaston provides. I acknowledge people like Sarah Barrett and Steve Falland and everybody who was involved with that. They do this for the love of their community. In fact, watching everyone hanging around wanting to pitch in to pack up the rest of the day’s proceedings again shows that people are not scared to roll up their sleeves and get involved, which is again a degree of community spirit that I have not experienced anywhere else.

Another example is the Barossa Swimming Club. A couple of gentlemen, Stephen Cook and Lee Docherty, came to me about three years ago now and said, 'Stephan, we want to start up a swimming club here in the Barossa for our kids. We need some help to be able to do that.' They went about a process of setting up a brand-new club from scratch that now boasts something like 40 or 50 kids swimming on a regular basis.

They compete at intrastate and regional carnivals, and really punch well above their weight. I was present this year at their presentation and saw how they not only help kids to swim but also help them grow as human beings and instil in them a sense of pride, discipline and self-worth. Again, that was off the backs of a couple of people who had an idea and worked together to set this up.

We see this with institutions like the Kind Hearted Kitchen, which again was just a bunch of people—Rachael Braunack, Ruby Stobart and a few others—who saw a need to provide pre-cooked meals to people in the community who were in need of them. They got a kitchen together, they put out the call for donations and they just got on with it. It survives today, and every so often it has a cook-up, and again they put that call out to the community to donate produce. It does not need a formal structure, and it does not need a whole heap of red tape and regulation, but what it does need are some volunteers willing to stick up their hand to help improve their local community.

It manifests itself in organisations such as the Barossa Area Fundraisers for Cancer, with Tash Goldsmith and the rest of the team over there. Again, this is just a bunch of individuals who, through tragic personal circumstance, decided that they wanted to do more to help provide transport for people to get to and from their chemotherapy sessions, as well as do some broader fundraising. They created this organisation run by volunteers who go out and raise a phenomenal amount of money for the local community.

We see it also with things like the House of Hope, which was built off the back of the church and Reverend Christine Manning. Again, it is trying to identify a need for the community to have a place for people to come and have a meal and for kids to come after school to be able to have a chat about some of the issues that are going on in their life. There is very little in the way of government involvement, except for a group of volunteers who are willing to help out.

I also want to acknowledge Kath Gribble and the work that her crew do feeding people who rock up on a weekly basis. This is again something that was just spurred out of the individual experience that Kath had with an individual man and seeing how there was a need in the community. Instead of relying on everybody else to get it done, Kath and a group of those volunteers got together and helped to provide that service on a weekly basis.

None of these things are institutions. They are groups of people who are willing to get involved. Again, one other example is that last week, on Thursday, we had our ANZAC Day services right across the community, and a lot of them were auspiced by the local RSL. In Angaston, we do not have an RSL and for about 30 years we have not had an ANZAC Day dawn service.

One local gentleman, a guy by the name of Peter Feist, decided that he wanted to see that return to the Angaston community, and without relying on anybody else he just got on and put together the service. We had the fourth year this year, which I was lucky enough to attend, and out of a town of about 2,000 people we saw close to 400 people rock up. Again, this was nothing official, nothing formal, but a guy who wanted to volunteer within his community. He was not scared to stick is own hand up, put his time in and create an event that the community has come to enjoy.

These examples speak to the kind of community spirit that exists within the Barossa, but it also manifests itself in other ways. It manifests itself when there is difficulty and tragedy. Like no other community I have been involved in, if somebody knows you are having a bit of a tough time, they will knock on your door to see if you are okay.

We have had a bit of that tragedy in the Barossa of late, with the tragic passing of a number of individuals, and we have heard stories of people checking in on others to make sure they are okay, to make sure if they have not felt like cooking dinner that one is provided for them and to be there to be able to have a chat, unannounced, and it is these people who are willing to put their hand up and say, 'I am part of this community and I am going to do what it takes to make sure we look after everybody else in it.'

What is also interesting about this is that what started off as quite a closed community of Prussian Lutheran settlers is not a community that now looks inwards. It does very much look outwards. The Barossa is a place that is growing. It is one of the few regional areas in South Australia that is growing and it is doing so off the back of its growing industries. I cannot overstate the importance of the food, wine and tourism industries to the Barossa. They provide the heartbeat that provides a very strong sense of identity.

Those food, wine and tourism businesses are entrenched in the community and volunteer culture that exists within the Barossa. We saw it on the vintage parade day when a whole host of businesses got involved in this community event. The winning float was Pindarie Wines and the amount of money that would have spent putting together their Mad Max float was phenomenal. I look forward to seeing that again in a couple of years' time. A business like Charlie Melton's provides the Nine Popes band every vintage festival, and he is willing to have a bit of a laugh at himself as he walks up and down the street playing his fake guitar. These are examples of how businesses in the Barossa are very much taking part in the community spirit that exists there.

As I said, the Barossa is growing. New people come to live in the Barossa all the time from all walks of life from all over the country and indeed from many parts of the world. I, myself, was one of those people who moved into the region in 2011. But instead of the new people coming into the Barossa diluting that culture and community spirit, the strength of that spirit means that when new people come into the Barossa community they are caught up in the ethos of what we are about and get involved in it. In fact, a lot of the people I have mentioned were not born in the Barossa; they are people who have bought into what it is we are about.

Our food, wine and tourism culture means that we have a very outward and internationalist outlook. We sell our wines all over the world and we have winemakers and wine marketers who spend an inordinate amount of time overseas away from their family, selling the best of what the Barossa has to offer and, again, telling that story. Because of that internationalist reach, we combine that history and strong sense of spirit with a sense of innovation and creativity that means we continue to go forward.

When new people come to the Barossa, they bring new ideas and help to continue to reinforce what it is we are about. The Barossa Vintage Festival and the Young Ambassador Program, which concluded on Saturday night, are massive examples of that. They are 11 young people who spent the last few months immersing themselves in the food, wine and tourism culture of the Barossa and its community spirit. Saturday night was their time to shine and to be thanked for all the hard work they have put in over the past number of months.

I want to thank the three winners—Melissa Helyar, Lauren Hutton, and the overall winner, Maddy Hopgood—for their efforts. They are three shining examples of what is so good about the Barossa. I have no doubt that they will be three individuals who will help to push the Barossa forward. We see former crops of young ambassadors still involved in the community—in fact, I see them dotted all over the place working for various businesses—going on to use the skills and life experience that they learnt during the Young Ambassador Program to help our region.

I say all these things by way of saying that I am extremely proud to be the member for Schubert and the person who gets to represent the Barossa Valley. It is a place that never ceases to amaze me with its ability to continue to move forward and do good things. In a world where we see rates of volunteering struggle, an increasing reliance on government to provide service and, in some quarters, a breakdown of the social fabric, it is wonderful to be part of a place where we have a recipe and a formula that encourages people to get involved, to volunteer, to put up their hand and to just get involved in their local community. While that continues to happen, I will continue to come into this place and spruik the very good work that the people of the Barossa undertake. I look forward to that continuing for many years to come.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mr Pederick.


At 17:51 the house adjourned until Wednesday 1 May 2019 at 10:30.

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