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

Supply Bill 2019

Supply Grievances

Adjourned debate on the motion to note grievances.

(Continued from 14 May 2019.)

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (15:37): South Australians know that they do not want their essential services privatised. They know that buses being in private hands over the past 19 years has been an issue, and they do not want to see trains and trams being put into private hands.

Overnight, we have heard that the government is considering privatising our train and tram services in South Australia. That would be a disastrous move for our state. It goes completely against what Steven Marshall, the Premier of South Australia, said before the election when he promised, 'We do not have a privatisation agenda.'

The Premier promised that to the people of South Australia and the government have gone back on their word now. They are privatising prisons, privatising SA Pathology, privatising ambulance transfers in the north-eastern suburbs, and now we understand that they are considering privatising our train and tram services. That is only going to lead to worse services and higher costs, and it will make it harder for South Australians to get around.

We know that they have already booked in over $30 million worth of cuts to our public transport in this state. It has led to significant cuts in buses across many areas, particularly my electorate. We do not want to see the same thing happen to our train services. The Seaford rail line in my electorate is a bedrock of our public transport in the South. We do not want to see that line sold off to the highest bidder.

We do not want to see prices rise, we do not want to see services cut, we do not want to see maintenance cut. This government has a privatisation agenda, and it has a clear agenda to cut as many costs as it can to cut as much from the budget, and it does not care what the consequences are for those hardworking South Australians in the outer suburbs who rely on these services and who want them to stay in public hands.

We will keep fighting for those services to stay in public hands. We are not going to relent. We want to make sure that our public transport trains and trams stay in public hands in South Australia.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee) (15:39): Mr Deputy Speaker, you will be thrilled to hear that I have been deputised by the Leader of the Opposition to be the lead speaker in this grievance debate on the Supply Bill.

Mr Pederick: Limited to 30 minutes.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Yes, and no-one is more pleased than the member for Hammond about the time limit imposed on me in this regard.

I rise to talk about a number of issues that relate to my electorate, the electorate of Lee. The first issue I would like to talk about is the Coast Park, which, as members would be aware, is an initiative over 20 years old in metropolitan Adelaide. The idea was to expand a 70-kilometre long shared walking and cycling path along the coast, from North Haven to Sellicks Beach, to give South Australians, members of the community, an opportunity to enjoy our wonderful beaches.

This vision has always received bipartisan support. Indeed, I understand that it was an initiative strongly pursued by former Liberal minister Diana Laidlaw. However, there are some missing sections of the Coast Park to ensure that it is completed as it was always intended, and we have heard from other members who represent southern suburbs electorates that there is some progress in fixing up the small parts that need to be delivered, but there is a very prominent part that has not yet been delivered—in fact, two parts: one between Semaphore Park and Tennyson and also between Tennyson and Grange.

Three years ago, the former Labor government provided funding for these sections to be completed—$6 million shared fifty-fifty with the City of Charles Sturt. That funding has been provided not just by the government but also by the council. It is sitting with the council ready to spend. It is a hugely popular project in my electorate. Earlier this year, I sent out a survey to all households in my electorate, and I had more than 500 households responding, which is an extraordinary return when one considers the type of polling we are seeing for the current federal election and the relatively small samples they are getting in response to that polling.

Of the just over 500 responses (503 responses to be accurate), 497 were in favour of the project and only six were against. Fortunately, my interests align directly with the 497 people in my electorate who support this project. I also made it very clear in the run-up to the last state election that I will be pursuing the completion of this project. You might recall that the now member for Black, the Minister for the Environment, told this place that a key election issue between Labor and Liberal in the electorate of Lee would be about where the parties stood on the Coast Park. I welcomed that challenge because I know what I am supporting, and I am supporting the completion of the Coast Park.

However, the support in my electorate is not quite unanimous. There is a group of residents who continue to do everything they possibly can to frustrate the completion of this Coast Park. We have seen a legal challenge sponsored by two residents who live in houses along the very coastline—and they have also joined with the Coastal Ecology Protection Group (CEPG)—who have made it their mission to ensure that this project is not delivered.

Unfortunately for the Coast Park project, they had a win in the court to slow down the council and its progress in delivering this project. This, of course, was celebrated by these self-anointed conservationists. They are so concerned with conservation that some members of the CEPG, and indeed those two people who joined with them, have taken to conserving the dunes they are trying to protect by living in houses built on top of the dunes. That is how concerned they are with the conservation of those dunes.

However, happily, there are other people in my electorate who are willing to make their voice heard. Late last year, Grange resident Dr Pascale Quester, who participated in workshops and consultations on the path, was quoted in the Messenger about the threat of this Coast Park not being completed. He said:

It's appalling the project has been held up by residents…The concept of an unbroken coastal path…and even if we just don't build the 2km in the middle, then the whole project has been a huge waste of money…It's a trumped up campaign for a single purpose of stopping people from walking in front of their house on what is not their land.

It is Crown land: it is not private land there for the private enjoyment of those people who are fortunate enough to live along it. I would call on those people who have made it their mission to wake up and understand that we should have a responsibility to the broader community. That is what being neighbourly is about: making sure that we extend to those people who live around us the same benefits and privileges, where appropriate, that we are able to enjoy. Just because they are privileged enough to live along the coast does not mean that it becomes their exclusive domain.

I make it clear to this place that I will continue to lobby and push for the completion of this project. I hope that the Minister for Transport does not come good on his threat in the Messenger to withdraw the $6 million of funding from the Coast Park project so that it cannot be completed. As we saw on election day in 2018, it is unfortunate that some of the most vocal people opposing this, who have appeared in media spots about this project, pulled on the blue T-shirt for the Liberal Party and handed out for my opponent, opposing me and my stance on the Coast Park. Let's hope that ends.

I would also like to talk about some planning issues. I have spoken before in this place about the impact that residents in my electorate are experiencing from unfettered infill development, particularly in the suburbs of Seaton, Semaphore Park, Grange and West Lakes, not exclusively in those areas but predominantly in those suburbs. We are seeing large blocks of over 600 square metres subdivided. We are seeing two-for-one, three-for-one and sometimes four-for-one development, where up to four townhouses are built on these blocks of land.

I am sure that all of us would agree that infill development has its place in ensuring that we combat the threat of urban sprawl from metropolitan Adelaide, but not in the manner in which it is proliferating in my suburbs. Just before the state election, I was interested to see an article in The Advertiser listing the suburbs with the highest number of property subdivisions in metropolitan Adelaide. No. 1 was Campbelltown, and very closely behind at No. 2 was Seaton, in the electorate of Lee.

I was even more interested to see that shortly after the election the Speaker, the member for Hartley, wrote to the new Minister for Planning, the member for Schubert, asking for a special arrangement for the City of Campbelltown so that the development plan could be amended to stop how badly these infill development projects were being conducted. He wanted to see a reduction of the impact on the local community from this unfettered development, just as I do in my electorate.

We see that these townhouses are being set very close to the roads, minimising the opportunity for off-street parking. As a result, overnight and on the weekend the huge influx of cars has to park on the streets throughout the community. Existing members of the community, some of whom have lived there for over 50 years, are finding it impossible to navigate their local streets, with cars parked over footpaths. They are unable to see out of their driveways to reverse out or even turn out of their own street into another street to get to where they are going because of the plethora of parked cars everywhere.

Unfortunately, I have had very limited success encouraging the City of Charles Sturt to think about the impact on the local roads and streets before they approve new dwellings on subdivided blocks. I hope that the Minister for Planning, the member for Schubert, can extend his special deal that he made with the City of Campbelltown to some of the other members—perhaps to the member for Colton, who I am sure is suffering similar problems in suburbs like Henley Beach, let alone other areas such as Fulham or Flinders Park, where some of these large, desirable blocks are being subdivided, resulting in these sorts of issues.

I was also pleased that, in 2017, the former Labor government was able to commit funding for the intersection upgrade of West Lakes Boulevard, Cheltenham Parade and Port Road. This is a very large intersection with very high traffic volumes. The intersection also has a very poor history of road crashes resulting in casualties and fatalities. This intersection needs to be upgraded principally for residents leaving West Lakes Boulevard heading to Port Road, particularly to get into the city, and likewise for those travelling on Port Road back to West Lakes Boulevard. It is a major exit point for the thousands and thousands of residents living west of this intersection.

Money was provided at a critical time because of course the City of Charles Sturt had just finished that section of the Port Road median stormwater upgrade project to prevent flooding on Port Road. The council stopped its landscaping works around this intersection in the expectation that this project would start. The project was due to commence in the middle of 2018 and was due to be completed by the middle of this year but, unfortunately, it has not even started.

So the 43,000 vehicles using that section of Port Road, let alone the tens of thousands of vehicles navigating that section of West Lakes Boulevard, continue to be stuck in traffic. In the morning peak, it can take up to seven cycles of traffic lights for people seeking to leave West Lakes Boulevard to turn right onto Port Road. This is a project that needs to be attended to.

We also provided $16.4 million to extend the Outer Harbor train line into the heart of Port Adelaide, to rebuild the old spur line, which had not been used for more than 30 years, and to build a new station, called the port dock railway station, adjacent to the National Railway Museum, just behind the Port Adelaide Police Station and Magistrates Court complex. This was a recognition that in the two diagonally opposite areas of the redevelopment of the Port, the Port Approach (South) and Dock 1 area needed a better, higher frequency, higher capacity public transport service.

That project, which entered into detailed planning in 2017 when that funding was provided, was due to start in the middle of 2018 and be delivered this calendar year. Unfortunately, once again, construction has not started. These are two major transport projects that will benefit thousands of people in the western suburbs, and they have completely fallen off the radar of the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure and, presumably, his department.

That is a segue into talking about the broader performance and broader management of the portfolios of transport and infrastructure, particularly over the last 14 months. It is not just the area that I represent in the western suburbs or areas close to it, such as Port Adelaide, which are suffering from a lack of attention and due diligence from the Minister for Transport. It is easy for anyone to make themselves out to be a good, competent, high-performing minister when your activities are almost exclusively running around re-announcing projects that have already been funded, for which money has already been put aside and for which progress has already been commenced by the former government.

That is indeed how the member for Schubert, as the transport and infrastructure minister, started his tenure as minister. He was quick to crow about the progress that was being made on the Northern Connector and he was quick to spruik the improvements that would be brought about by the Torrens to Torrens project—two major projects, together valued at nearly $2 billion and together employing over 1,000 South Australians, which were put in train. Funding was provided and secured by the former Labor government in partnership with the former, former, former Coalition government, with Tony Abbott and Jamie Briggs.

He has also been quick to spruik the benefits of the Flinders Link project. This is a project where funding was secured from savings delivered from the Goodwood Junction project, a project that was funded in 2013 and commenced that year, a project that he has had no responsibility securing funding for since he has been minister, although, of course, over his time, we have seen a blowout of $40 million and a change in scope in the project.

With Oaklands crossing, once again he was quick to take the credit. Not only is he taking credit for that but we also see the federal member for Boothby, Nicolle Flint, taking credit. In fact, when I was transport minister, I was shouldered out of the way at the press conference when the relevant federal minister, Paul Fletcher, and I were seeking to announce in mid-2017 that the state and federal governments had reached a funding agreement. Once again, this was a project funded by savings from other state and federal government projects delivered by the former Labor government, in this case, savings from the three major north-south corridor projects: Torrens to Torrens, Northern Connector and Darlington.

We have seen the member for Schubert spruik the Glenelg driverless shuttle project and the Flinders University driverless bus project, two projects that were initiated and funded by the former Labor government. Not even two weeks into his term as transport minister, we saw him spruik public transport fare reductions—unfortunately, those that were already approved by the state government's cabinet under the former Labor government—and, of course, he has been thumping his chest about what a remarkable opportunity there is in sealing the Strzelecki Track. Welcome to the coat-tails of the 11 years of work that has preceded him.

However, the story is a little bit different when we come to focus on those parts of his portfolio, those initiatives, that have been exclusively his domain and his responsibility. We saw in the state budget the remarkable announcement that three Service SA centres would be closed. That announcement was made as part of the release of the budget in the first week of September. Two weeks later, his department sacked the director who was in charge of Service SA centres, Tanya Lancaster. She was summarily sacked by the government, presumably because she spoke out about the lunacy of this measure closing these Service SA centres.

Here we are, many months later, and we still have no further information, no further idea and no further instructions for the public about how they are meant to access the services that the government provides through those three Service SA centres in the electorate of Adelaide, the electorate of Waite and also up at Modbury, bordering the member for King's electorate and the member for Newland's electorate.

We have seen train carriage cuts. We have seen bus service cuts. We have seen cuts to managed taxi ranks—three crucially important areas of public transport all cut by the minister. We heard him say that there is no further support provided by the state government for the Footy Express service. Instead, he will unpick the good work of the former Labor government and expect the two footy clubs to cop it in the neck. We can imagine what the impact will be on footy fans. They will either have to pay higher membership fees or we will be flooding the city with an extra 10,000 to 20,000 vehicles in the couple of hours leading up to and in the hour after every AFL game at Adelaide Oval.

The minister was comprehensively dudded by his federal counterparts when it came to South Road funding. We were told in May 2018 that there was an extra $1.2 billion for South Road; less than 10 per cent of it eventuated over the next four years in the forward estimates. To make it even worse, the same duping happened in the most recent federal budget when we were promised an extra $1.5 billion for the north-south corridor upgrades. Again, hardly any of that money was actually in the forward estimates and, as we know, according to Simon Birmingham, if it is not in the forward estimates, it is on the never-never. It does not count. The same comment was also made by the member for Schubert.

However, we were promised that we were getting a section, the Pym Street to Regency Road section, which the former Labor government had set aside money for in its state budget. However, we have not even seen work start on that. Now we have seen the Torrens to Torrens project finished, we have seen the Northern Connector project well past halfway and due to be finished this year, and we now see the Darlington project which should be well past halfway but, of course, the end date in the last state budget, the first budget of the Liberal government, changed the completion date of that and pushed it out. We are entering a valley of death for infrastructure construction projects here in South Australia.

We saw the minister's unbelievable stubbornness in refusing to admit for more than six months that his government would not be delivering on its election commitment for a right-hand turn for the tram. He received exactly the same advice that I received when I was transport minister, and that is that it is logistically near impossible, logistically not worth the effort, and not required for tram services to be run for the tram to turn right. But what did he do? He went though a charade for six months of engaging external consultants, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer funds and then, more than six months after the election, he belatedly admitted that what Labor had been telling him for the best part of the year was in fact right and the tram right-hand turn would not be happening.

Of course, that happened after we were told time and time again that the tram extension down North Terrace would be completed 'very soon', 'within weeks', 'by May', or, what was set in stone, 'by 1 July'. All of that was missed, of course, presumably because as soon as the election was over, from Sunday 18 March 2018, workers downed tools and did not pick them up in any substantive fashion for more than a month. It is no wonder that tram extension blew out in its time line for so long. It was just because the minister took his eye off the ball about what the current crop of projects was that were funded, in process and needed to be delivered.

We saw him break a legal requirement for him as minister to consult with the Adelaide city council that has a legally binding lease agreement—between the council and the minister, regarding development at the Adelaide Oval—that he must consult with that council. He failed to do that before the Adelaide Oval hotel was announced.

We saw the humiliating backflip on the Springbank Road intersection upgrade, when he tried to persist for weeks that having two intersections would be better for motorists than one. Anyone who has obtained at least their L-plates and has driven a car knows that that is complete rubbish. Given that there are more than one million licensed motorists in South Australia it was only a matter of time before he had to conduct that humiliating backflip.

He was charged with the responsibility of delivering rate capping in South Australia. He came up with a weak, convoluted and unworkable bill that would not cap rates at all, that could indeed allow significant increases in rates. What do we see? Rate capping imposed? No, of course not. It is stuck languishing in the other place where, as we have heard in the last 24 hours, they do not like working past 5.30. We also saw one of his key departments, Renewal SA, have three chief executives in two weeks. It was formally leaderless for months. We saw rock throwing re-emerge on the Southern Expressway. He was caught napping in a response for that for weeks until, after many weeks of the opposition urging him to do something, he finally decided to install anti-throw screens on road overpasses.

We saw him cancel the park-and-ride project that Labor had funded at Tea Tree Plaza and cancel the park-and-ride project that Labor had funded at Klemzig—all in favour of an expanded park-and-ride that he wants to deliver in the Speaker's own electorate, the member for Hartley's electorate, at the Paradise Interchange. He has cut road maintenance. Presumably, that was the message he was delivering to residents of the South-East when he travelled down there to attend a Liberal Party fundraiser rather than front the damage that was occurring at the Darlington upgrade of South Road, with the concrete slumps that have occurred there along a 220-metre stretch.

We saw him sit on his hands month after month while dolphins died and while calves were killed in the Port River. It was a simple fix: all he had to do was tell his department to put some speed restrictions in those sections of the Port River and the other waterways around Torrens Island and Garden Island to stop the unfortunate hoon boating we have seen, particularly by jet skiers, in that area. He refused to do it until both the member for Port Adelaide and the Portside Messenger and its journalist, Ashleigh Pisani, humiliated him into backflipping and finally installing greater speed restrictions there.

We saw him led by the nose by his department straight after he became a minister. He tore up the cabinet decision to have Renewal SA moved down to Port Adelaide to fill the government office accommodation building that had been built specifically to house 500 public servants down there. Instead, he said, 'We have a far better idea: we are going to lease it out to the private sector.' You can understand where this predilection for privatisation comes from.

So, what happened? That building languished empty for month after month. All those small businesspeople who had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own money in generating new small businesses in the Port were left there without an audience for months. That was the reason we were putting those public servants down there. Then what did we see? Rob Lucas had to intervene and send down the public servants so that finally this building was not charging the government dead rent. All that could have been prevented if the April-May 2018 time line was adhered to by Renewal SA moving down to Port Adelaide.

Renewal SA would not be the only government department that does not want to be close to an area for which they are responsible. Deputy Speaker, you can ask why the EPA is not down at Port Adelaide. Perhaps they have not checked out the quality of the baristas down there. Perhaps all those members of the EPA who love living closer to the eastern suburbs are too addicted to the coffees that get made in Victoria Square.

We also saw the promise to increase regional speed limits on roads that had had speed limits reduced from 110 km/h to 100 km/h on the advice of road safety experts and on the advice of the transport department. He promised to immediately change that decision and increase those speed limits. Well, here we are, nearly 15 months later, and none of those changes have been made. The reason why is that it is unsafe for those motorists and it is unsafe for those road users.

Do members think that he has the capacity to answer honestly when he is asked questions by the member for Mount Gambier in question time about whether he is still going to do it? Of course he is not going to do it; he is too terrified about being responsible for a road death by encouraging motorists to drive at faster speeds on those particular roads. Rather than say, 'Do you know what, now that I have the advice, we have changed our mind; this is not an appropriate thing to do,' he continues to hold out the charade about increasing these speed limits.

He refused to assist the member for Reynell and take action in relation to Wicked Campers and the disgraceful, sexist slogans that we see paraded around our community by this particular company. There is a precedent for doing something in this state. It is the reason why we do not have particular four-letter words emblazoned on numberplates, and it is the reason why we do not have that sort of language and that sort of insinuation emblazoned on signage alongside our roads. It is because it is illegal and it is precluded by law. He is not happy to do that for signage on the side of vehicles. He is not interested.

Despite spruiking how good these new driverless shuttle buses were going to be at Glenelg and at Tonsley, he allowed the Australia and New Zealand Driverless Vehicle Initiative, the national office for pursuing autonomous vehicle technology, to be snared by New South Wales after the former Labor government had attracted it here. He also closed his mind to my entreaties and yours, Mr Deputy Speaker, about the importance of regional rail services on Eyre Peninsula. That has just been allowed to flutter away without any intervention to Viterra, Glencore or even Genessee & Wyoming. It is a disgrace.

I have already spoken about the Coast Park and the threats he made to my community to withdraw that funding. Of course, it is timely that we see the Minister for Environment here because between the two of them they have turned a leasing opportunity for Edmund Wright House into an outright sale, where they will no longer have any control about what happens to that building. Don Dunstan would be turning in his grave about the disgraceful legacy that these two have left.

Mr BOYER (Wright) (16:10): I, too, rise to make a contribution on the Supply Bill. Rather than repeat what so many others have said already, and given that we were here so late last night, I thought I might use this time to instead look at the disparity between what those opposite tell us our financial position is and what the actual data says it is through the lens of television. I will do it in a way that generation X and maybe generation Y will understand. Certainly, there is one generation X member of this place who will be very familiar with this analogy.

When I look at the state of the budget and some of the decisions that the government has made over the past 12 months, it reminds me of an episode of The Simpsons called Duffless, when Homer is convinced by Marge that he is in denial about his drinking and to give up beer for a month. In this episode, Marge challenges Homer's view of himself by asking a series of questions designed to highlight the disparity between what he sees and what others see.

In a memorable scene, Marge sits up in bed, reads from a book called Is Your Spouse a Souse? and asks Homer the following questions as he brushes his teeth: 'Do you ever drink alone? Homer says: 'Does the Lord count as a person?' 'Do you ever hide beer around the house?' 'Do I ever,' says Homer as he opens the toilet cistern and pulls out a can of beer hidden inside. 'Do you drink to escape reality?' Homer turns, faces the bathroom mirror and makes his imaginary muscles bounce up and down in time with a tune that he is whistling.

I use this analogy because this must be the tenor of the conversations taking place in the cabinet room at the moment, as the same kind of all-pervading delusion that gripped Homer has certainly gripped this Marshall Liberal government, a Marshall Liberal government that would have you believe that everything is fine or, to use their own vernacular, 'South Australia is the stand-out economy amongst all states and territories.'

Now, that is some Orwellian doublethink. I can hear it being introduced now, in Troy McClure's voice no less: 'From the people who brought you best-selling titles like I'm Not a Climate Scientist But, and The Art of the Deal by the Minister for Water and, Government, Just a Right Turn Away by the member for Unley.' I would not be at all surprised if the Minister for the Environment claimed the water found under the Darlington motorway as a victory for the River Murray.

The point of The Simpsons analogy is that when it comes to the state of the South Australian economy this Liberal government is just as deluded as Homer was. Of course, the rhetoric is grand and no doubt when they look in the mirror they like what they see, just like Homer did, but the numbers tell a very different story indeed. In fact, the numbers show that since the state election building approvals are down 17.8 per cent for total dwelling units approved, and the value of building approvals in all sectors is down by 20 per cent.

The numbers show that the youth unemployment rate in South Australia has spiked to 15 per cent, up from 11.5 per cent when they took office in March last year. This means that since the election of the Marshall Liberal government an additional 6,800 young South Australians aged between 15 and 24 are unemployed.

But what is probably most remarkable is that state debt will increase under this government. Think about that for a second. The party that enjoys nothing more than lecturing us on fiscal restraint and the need for a balanced budget has handed down a budget under which state debt will go up. What is the Treasurer's response when the media asks for an explanation on this spectacular backflip: 'This is not the debt that you're looking for.'

The numbers show that retail trade is sluggish in South Australia, too. In fact, it was growing at 2.9 per cent under the former Labor government; it is now growing at just 1.7 per cent. The numbers show that our share of national overseas goods exports has fallen from 4 per cent to 3.4 per cent, and the numbers show that international visitor numbers are down 3 per cent on the year to December 2018, with South Australia's tourism revenue plummeting by more than $70 million.

Even if it were true that South Australia is the stand-out economy amongst all states and territories, what do we have to show for it? As a member of parliament in the north-eastern suburbs, I ask: where is the investment? If a tidal wave of optimism and confidence has washed over us, as those opposite would have us believe, there is very little to show for it.

Indeed, all we have in the north-east are cuts, closures and privatisations: the closure of Service SA at Modbury, despite the fact that the number of transactions performed there continues to go up, year on year; the closure of the Tea Tree Gully TAFE, despite the fact that youth unemployment has jumped to 15 per cent; the privatisation of patient transfers from Modbury Hospital, despite a solemn promise from those opposite that never, ever again would they privatise that hospital or any of its services; the seemingly inevitable, drawn-out privatisation of SA Pathology; and, of course, the indefinite postponement of the desperately needed expansion of the Tea Tree Plaza park-and-ride, despite the fact that the existing park-and-ride is full by 8.30am almost every weekday.

Health, training and transport are all under attack in the north-east. This can mean only one of two things: either the economy is doing well and those opposite do not give a stuff about people in the north-east, or the economy is not doing nearly as well as they would have us believe. Either way, it is a bad result for South Australians living in the north and north-eastern suburbs.

At the end of that particular episode of The Simpsons, Homer completes his month of sobriety and races to Moe's for a cold Duff. As Homer draws the pint glass to his lips, he is suddenly overcome with guilt and races home to spend time with Marge. Of course, there will be no such fairytale ending to this story. The cuts, closures and privatisations that have been part of this Liberal government's first budget since 2001 certainly do not represent a bold new policy direction for the Liberal Party in South Australia. In fact, they are nothing more than a continuation of the same agenda that was cut short at the 2002 state election.

If we are looking for an episode of The Simpsons that more accurately portrays what is likely to happen next with this government, we should look no further than an episode called The Springfield Files. In this episode, Moe tries to sell Duff Beer at a premium by enticing patrons with Swedish Duff, which is just regular Duff on which he has drawn, with a texta, an umlaut over the U. This Premier is nothing more than the umlaut above the U in 'Lucas'—a smiling face on the same old agenda of cuts, closures and privatisations. There is nothing new, there is nothing different and there is nothing progressive about this government. It is just the same old Duff.

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (16:17): It is very hard to follow on from that contribution. Well done! I want to speak in my grievance opportunity about the extraordinary community in Port Adelaide and the effort they have made over many years, particularly in recent weeks, to continue to protect the heritage of Port Adelaide.

When I was running in a campaign in order to become a member of parliament, it was very clear to me that there had been many missteps taken in the Port. Not least was the most recent misstep taken prior to my coming into parliament, which was to permit the razing of a number of sheds, including a boat yard, in order to facilitate a development that simply was not happening. There had previously been the difficulty that had been visited upon the Port by the containerisation of shipping, which meant that ships were able to become a lot larger.

As with all inner harbours around the world, the ships left and went to the larger berths nearer the open sea, and the Inner Harbor life was diminished. This was always going to be a difficult transition for Port Adelaide, but it was made more difficult by a combination of developments elsewhere, such as the West Lakes development. In fact, I understand, although I do not have personal evidence of this, that into the early eighties the shopping precinct in Port Adelaide was second only to Rundle Mall or city shopping in South Australia in terms of the number of shoppers and the range of shops.

Of course, that all went, at least in part due to the development of West Lakes and, in fact, due to the location of the big supermarkets and department stores further back from the wharf in Port Adelaide itself. There were attempts made, and I particularly laud the effort to have the National Railway Museum established—which is still not at all government run: it is run by dint of volunteers with the occasional grant—the Aviation Museum and, of course, the History Trust's Maritime Museum.

The establishment of an excellent museum precinct in Port Adelaide has been welcome and, particularly when I had small children, we would spend hours and hours roaming around those three museums. Nonetheless, the Port became pretty sad and tired. It seemed to me and also to the then member for Cheltenham, who had become the Premier shortly before my by-election, and then subsequently after the 2014 election, the member for Lee, that as adjoining members around the community of Port Adelaide, we needed to do something substantial and significant to support the area.

While previously there had been a deal of economic activity—and I pay tribute to the establishment of Techport, which then facilitated the more recent decision to build submarines and offshore patrol vessels, the decision to have opening bridges for the railway and the road to the north in order to continue to allow tall ships to come into the inner harbour—nonetheless, what was needed was a more human-focused and more heritage-focused program.

What we saw in that period when the former member for Cheltenham Jay Weatherill was premier, and once in particular we also had Stephen Mullighan in the seat of Lee and in the role of transport and infrastructure, was a focus on revitalising the life of Port Adelaide, upgrading the facades along St Vincent Street and completely redoing the traffic flow, including facilitating car parking, which meant that businesses were able to have customers. Still one of my biggest fans is the person who owned the Mayfair Bakery at that time, who started off not impressed with yet another politician but became convinced once he had some good car parking available for his business.

The development of the Hart's Mill precinct was very important. It is an incredibly beautiful building that had been allowed to languish. The refurbishment of the flour shed meant we were able to have community events, the offering of community events and the subsidy of community events. The use of Renew Adelaide for a while to facilitate businesses starting up in some of the empty shops, and the decision to build a new building to house 500 government workers and bring them out of the city and into the Port were tremendous steps forward.

Almost the first thing that Jay Weatherill, member for Cheltenham at that time, did was to suspend the contract that was clearly not going anywhere with the people who had commenced the Newport Quays development but had stopped doing any further development, and for whom the government earlier on under different leadership had razed those sheds to the ground.

The termination of that contract, the settlement of that contract, and then the process of doing a precinct plan lowered the density, lowered the height limits, and also identified important buildings that would be preserved and featured as part of developments. All of that was an incredibly important time. We had a community consultation group that was incredibly helpful in making sure that we were listening to the community and being in step with what their ambitions were for Port Adelaide.

Tragically, we have now seen a very disappointing turn of events with one of the last remaining sheds in the inner harbour, and the last one on the Glanville-Semaphore side of the Inner harbor. We had a developer who had maintained a picture of that shed—Shed 26—on its plans. It was in the precinct plan as a site that needed to be maintained in its aesthetic.

We had Robert Morris-Nunn, a brilliant heritage architect from Tasmania come over. We paid for him to come and work with the National Trust of Port of Adelaide, with Renewal SA and the council to look at ways in which that building and others could be adapted and re-used, and not necessarily exclusively for community use but for facilitating private use within the framework of maintaining the heritage character of the Port generally and of those buildings in particular. It was therefore very disappointing for the community to hear late last year that the developer no longer wanted to maintain Shed 26 as part of their picture for what was going to happen on that site.

It is particularly disappointing because the previous government had made an explicit decision that the option would be maintained to negotiate with that developer to have government money associated with doing up that building as we got to the point of seeing what the designs would be, what their ambitions would be and what contribution they were prepared to make in order to make their development special and lively, reflecting the place that they are in rather than being anonymous—any kind of development, any place, just dropped into the middle of one of our most precious heritage areas.

It is very disappointing given all of that background and, I think, all of that reasonable expectation. I, as the local member, the previous government and the community had that expectation that this would be a different development this time. It was very disappointing to discover that they had determined to knock over the shed.

The community had not sought to have heritage listing because we are aware that that constrains the kind of development that can occur, and what we wanted and expected was that there would be an open process of determining how to bring to life Shed 26 without having to put on that kind of legalistic burden. However, in the face of the prospect of demolition, heritage value, heritage protection, was sought, and the Heritage Council found that, not on one but on four of the criteria, the shed was deemed to be worthy.

I know that there is a process. There is a process that says that there might be other considerations prior to the inclusion of a place on the Heritage Register. I believe that the environment minister, who is responsible for the Heritage Act, genuinely was in some emotional or moral conflict over making that decision. He certainly expressed that very clearly in public, and it is not him that I turn to say that we should have done something different but to the minister for development, the Minister for Infrastructure, from whom the funding was always going to have to come if we were going to make this development work.

The decision not to do that was an explicit decision that was taken by that minister and by this government that the heritage of the port was not worth putting money into, even though the shed itself had been determined to be worthy of heritage value, and my community is greatly saddened by that decision.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Duluk): I call the member for West Torrens after he acknowledges the Chair when he comes into the house.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens) (16:27): I am sorry, sir—

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Duluk): The member for West Torrens has the call.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I apologise, sir, but often its the stature of the person in the chair—

An honourable member: Will you let that go?

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Duluk): I will let that go, but that's about it.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I seek the apology of the house for not noticing—

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Duluk): Indeed.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: —the member in the house.

Mr Boyer interjecting:

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Duluk): Thank you, member for Wright.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: It is almost as if I saw right through him, like his leader does, every time there is a promotion up for grabs.

Mr Boyer interjecting:

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Duluk): Thank you, member for Wright.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: He sees right through him.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Duluk): Member for West Torrens, you do not want to be kicked out again today, do you?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Again, interjections from the Chair show the smallness of the occupant of the chair. Again, Mr Acting Speaker, it shows probably why others have been talked about being promoted, but I digress from my grievance. I do have a great deal of affection for the member for Waite because I actually think he is a man of convictions, and when I find out what they are—no. I do think he is a man of conviction, and I enjoy my banter with him in this place. It is important that we have a bit of cross-party banter because it keeps the vibrancy and the robustness of our democracy well.

What does concern me, though, is the agenda of this government. The government was elected on the basis of, I think, three core principles; one is that they argued that it was time for a change. They argued that, if they were elected, they would provide better services and they would somehow be able to lower the cost of living. One of the first acts of this government was to increase debt by $3 billion. After they increased that debt, a dramatic series of cuts was outlined in their first budget as a government. Yesterday and today we have learned that the government is contemplating privatising our rail network.

I asked a question today of the member for Unley. When he was shadow minister for transport and infrastructure, he issued a press release talking about an enterprise agreement that he claimed contemplated the privatisation of our train and tram services and how the government could not and should not privatise those train and tram services because they had not sought a mandate from the people. When I asked him that question today, the minister refused to stand up and answer, and it was left to the Premier to answer the question.

I have no concern about or criticism of the member putting out that press release. I think it is entirely appropriate for an opposition member to put out those types of press releases. What I think is important, though, is consistency—consistency of messaging. What does it say to the people of South Australia that the Premier was filmed in a debate with the former premier, the Hon. Jay Weatherill, and the then opposition leader was asked, 'Will you privatise state-owned assets?' and the Premier responded, 'We don't have a privatisation agenda'?

He comes to office and outsources the Remand Centre. He comes to office and we find out through tender documents—no public government announcement—that the government is outsourcing field services in DPTI, which are things like monitoring traffic lights and the maintenance of traffic signalling, important pieces of public infrastructure. We also found out yesterday and today that the government is actively contemplating the privatisation of our rail and tram fleet and those services.

I say to government members, especially the backbenchers who will be forced to go out and sell this message: where was the consultation with the public? When did they get asked, or have the government misinterpreted their election result as a mandate to do as they please when they please for four years? This would be a mistake, but the government's arrogance—and I do not mean that personally, but I am talking about this generically from the way the government is conducting itself—is that they now believe that they can privatise our rail and tram services and it will have no consequence at the election. Well, actions have consequences.

There will be consequences from privatising our train and tram services. What are they? The public will notice a reduction in services. Why? I was questioning the merits of the transport minister's policy announcement of diverting bus routes away from a program of taking people to a destination but rather to a waypoint. Rather than catching a bus in Torrensville, Richmond or Golden Grove and coming into Adelaide, buses would become transit links between railway and other forms of mass transport rather than being a mass transit system in themselves. Instead of buses heading to a destination, they will move in the opposite direction between tram stops and train stops; they will move backwards and forwards. Why would you do that? The public do not like catching two forms of transport to go to one destination.

Then there is this other lie perpetuated by the government that patronage is down. Patronage is not down: patronage is up. People are catching more buses, trains and trams; it is up. It is a lie to say that it is not. Why would the government lie about patronage being down and then, rather than have buses head along traditional routes into the city—because Adelaide is a city-state and has mass transit heading from the suburbs into the city, to one destination—have buses move towards train stations and tram stops? We now understand why. They are fattening the lamb before sale.

Mr Malinauskas: Market day is coming.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Market day is coming. How did we discover this? It was not through some open government decision-making process. The minister got caught out in question time.

For any new backbencher who thinks that question time is irrelevant, look at yesterday and today. Three days before a federal election, the Minister for Transport has unleashed another issue into the seat of Boothby, and that is the potential privatisation of our tram and train services. That will now be a major focus of that campaign in the dying days of the campaign. The question will be: will the public get a better service or a worse service if they privatise our trains and trams? The Labor Party says it will be worse.

The Labor Party says that they have no mandate to do this. The Labor Party says that 75,000 people a day use and enjoy this service, and we want it to grow. You do not grow it by selling it. You do not grow it by increasing fares. Public transport is not meant to be a profit-making exercise. It is an essential service provided to the public by the government. Who benefits? Well, individuals who catch public transport are able to save money on car costs, insurance costs, car parking costs and petrol costs. It improves the environment. People pay off their mortgages faster. It lowers the cost of living. For the rest of us who drive cars on roads, it decongests our roads.

When our roads are decongested, we spend less money on maintenance, new infrastructure programs to decongest our roads, and grade separations—which are very expensive. So if more people catch trains, trams and buses we will all save. Yet this government, which cuts $46 million from our bus transport system, is now planning to divert buses coming into the city.

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

A quorum having been formed:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: By cutting bus services by $46 million and diverting buses to tram and train stops with this hub-and-spoke approach, we are seeing the government prepare the people of South Australia for a sale of their tram and train network, and we will all suffer because of it. The people who will suffer the biggest consequences and who will be let down will not just be the commuters but the government backbench. They will be forced to go out to defend a policy they have had no say in formulating.

The member for Newland, the member for Colton, the member for Elder, the member for Morphett, the member for Black and the member for King are all members who have played no role in formulating this policy, but they will be the ones who will be expected to go out to street-corner meetings and bus stops in the morning to defend this dog of a policy. But that is how the Premier operates. Everyone on the government benches, especially the backbenches, is expendable because the Premier has met his objective. He has become Premier.

Mr Brown: That's all he wanted.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: That is all he wanted. Now, without consultation with his backbench, they are privatising our trams and our trains. And how did the backbench find out? It was not through a caucus seminar or some debate in a caucus meeting; it was because I asked a question of the minister and he would not rule it out.

That is how the Liberal Party found out that their cabinet was privatising the public transport system. Welcome to the new reality. 'Run for parliament,' they said. 'Make a difference,' they said. All the backbench is really doing is keeping the Premier in the lifestyle to which he is accustomed. Until they start speaking up for themselves, all they will keep on doing is incurring the wrath of the people who are impacted by the Premier's decision while members on the backbench watch and applaud.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (16:40): The Premier and the tourism minister of South Australia owe the tourism industry and the 40,000 people who work in it an apology. Before last year's election, they were going around with all sorts of promises about what they were going to deliver for the visitor economy in South Australia. A few months later, in their first budget they delivered an $11 million hit to the tourism budget here in South Australia.

That is pretty devastating for an industry that is made up largely of micro, small and medium-sized businesses, people who are based all around South Australia, because we know that 42 per cent of the tourism spend in South Australia is in regional South Australia. It is a massive hit for those people, and I am hearing nothing but complaints about how minister Ridgway is meant to be helping people in the visitor economy here in South Australia.

In the five years from 2013 through to the 2018 election, we grew the visitor economy, from $4.9 billion a year to $6.7 billion a year, so we increased it by almost $2 billion in five years. What have we seen since the new government has come to power? We have seen it dropping for the first time in five years. That figure is down more than $70 million in the last quarter alone, and everyone in the visitor economy is bracing themselves for further falls. They know that, if you withdraw $11 million of marketing money to tell people around the world and around Australia, and indeed around South Australia, about the attributes of South Australia and the great events we have here, you are going to get fewer visitors coming to South Australia.

The best money that we can have in the economy here in South Australia is the money out of the wallets, pockets and purses of people from interstate and overseas. When it comes to South Australians making a choice on where they are going to spend their leisure dollars, we want to make sure that they spend them on Kangaroo Island, in Port Lincoln, up in the Riverland, down in the South-East, in the great Flinders Ranges or in the Outback, so we have to be out there selling South Australia to everyone. You cannot do that if you take $11 million out of the budget.

What is concerning to people at the South Australian Tourism Commission right now is that they have been told that they have to cut their budgets even further. They are pulling their hair out, wondering how they can possibly carry on doing the job they were once able to do when they were funded by our government. I want to thank the former treasurer, the member for West Torrens, for all the money that he gave to us to make sure that we could expand the visitor economy in South Australia.

We built the Adelaide Oval—$535 million. That rebuild was a game changer. It has now been recognised as the best cricket ground in the world and the best sporting stadium in Australia. We were given money to start up a bid fund for conventions and then a separate bid fund for major events so that we could fill Adelaide Oval because we were drawing great events to it. We spent $400 million building stages 2 and 3 of the Adelaide Convention Centre so that we could host more delegates because we know that convention delegates spend six times more than a normal visitor to South Australia. That was a really important investment, in terms of a capital investment, but it was the investment that we put into the bid fund that made all the difference.

All I am hearing from people in this sector are criticisms about David Ridgway and the way he is going about it. He does not have a clue about the visitor economy. He does not have a clue how to sit around the cabinet table and annoy his colleagues to get more and more funding. He must just sit there and be happy to have had $11 million ripped off him last year and have more money ripped off him this year. He is out of touch. He has no idea how to fight for the sector he is meant to represent and he is meant to lead as the Minister for Tourism.

I want to congratulate our leader (member for Croydon) and the member for Ramsay for the wonderful initiative they launched just a few weeks ago, Tourism Equals Jobs. They have been out there listening to tourism operators and people who are employed in the visitor economy. They know that they are scared, that they are fearful for their jobs and for their businesses because of the huge cuts inflicted on their sector by the Premier of this state and the Minister for Tourism

It is a great campaign and we can only hope that by putting pressure on the Premier and on the Minister for Tourism that some of these cuts can be reversed. They need to be reversed very quickly indeed because when we put that extra money in it took a while to get the momentum going. As I said, we saw that growth of almost $2 billion over five years, but as soon as you take that money away the effect is immediate, and it takes a long time to get the momentum back once you have taken away the funding. Even if you start putting more money in, in a year's time or in two years' time, it will take 18 months to two years to repair the damage and get back to the stage we were at.

When we were in government, we secured Emirates airlines to come here, we secured China Southern Airlines to come here and we secured Qatar Airways to come to South Australia. Last week, I met with Akbar Al Baker, the CEO of Qatar Airways, to maintain the relationship we have had for the past three years. I want to thank Mr Al Baker for his friendship not just to me but to South Australia, and I hope that he can get back here again one day soon. He wants to come and visit us on Kangaroo Island. It really is important that we have these airlines bringing people in from all sorts of places around the world. Qatar Airways flies from 160 cities around the world and flies through Doha directly into Adelaide. None of this happens by accident. You have to work really hard and you have to have good relationships with people.

On my trip, I also caught up with David Lappartient, president of the UCI, the international cycling union. We had a good meeting in his home region of Brittany in France where he is a local mayor. He and I started working on a project in January last year when I drove him around the white roads of McLaren Vale, Willunga and Myponga beach. It was great to catch up with him in France a couple of weeks ago when he said, 'Why don't we have a race on the Sunday before the Tour Down Under that is for world tour points on these white roads?'

It is one of the new fast-growing sectors of cycling. When the cyclists come to Australia for three weeks, there are more points they can win in additional races. So we want to get another race up on the Sunday before the Tour Down Under proper starts on the following Tuesday, and then on the Wednesday after the Tour Down Under finishes let's have another race either on Kangaroo Island or down in Mount Gambier around the Blue Lake or on another circuit that goes out to Glencoe and a few places down there that are popular with cyclists. We need to get more events into South Australia.

While I was on the trip, I also caught up for four days with Christian Prudhomme, the head of the Tour de France and a good friend of mine and a good friend of South Australia,. We did the Tour de Yorkshire together. We were in a car, not on bikes because neither of us was in great nick at the time, but Christian is happy to get behind this and really back it in as well. But what about David Ridgway, our tourism minister? None of these people know him. He turned up for 10 years, while he was the opposition spokesman on tourism. He turned up to the Tour Down Under every year, ate all the pies, drank all the wine and did not bother to go and say g'day to any of these people and form a relationship.

I gave him a warning in 2014 in the lead-up to the 2014 election. When Christian Prudhomme was here and Brian Cookson, who was then the head of the UCI was here, I asked them, 'Did the opposition have a meeting with you?' They were two months away from possibly being in charge of this place and they did not have a meeting with him. I gave him notice four years ago that you have to have these relationships. When Christian Prudhomme comes here, he stays at my house. When the head of the Tour de Yorkshire comes to Adelaide, he stays at my house. These are the sorts of relationships you have to have with people, where you can pick up the phone and get things done.

David Ridgway says, 'I think I met with someone from the UCI during the Tour Down Under.' He does not know who it was. There is no relationship there. The president of the UCI does not know David Ridgway and the former one does not know him. He has never met with any of them. Christian Prudhomme has been to Adelaide four times and David Ridgway has never taken the opportunity to catch up with him.

I have a plan for two new races that I have worked out for UCI WorldTour and ProTour points, and I will put that to the Premier of South Australia. I hope he gets behind them and backs them because if he does not they will sure as hell go to Victoria, New South Wales or Queensland. I fought hard for five years as the tourism minister of South Australia. I do not want to see those states taking victories over us. We need to get on board. This new government has let down the visitor economy. Get behind these two races.

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (16:50): I take this opportunity to speak to the chamber about a matter that I started to canvass in my second reading speech on supply yesterday evening but was not able to complete due to a lack of time. It is something that has been rather topical in this state over the course of the last 36 hours: who runs, controls, owns and operates our state public transport system.

This is a fundamentally important question for our community. I think it is important just to put it in a bit of context because there have been a few myths allowed to perpetuate from the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure over recent weeks. The first thing is there are approximately 14.4 million trips that occur in our passenger network at the moment in South Australia. In the last financial year, in the figures that we have available to us—I believe from the annual report—14.4 million trips are taken during the course of a financial year.

To give a comparison, back in 2004-05, 11.1 million passenger trips occurred in South Australia. Over that period, what we have seen is very substantial growth in patronage of our public transport network. They are not the shadow minister's figures, they are not my figures and they are not the figures of the Premier. They are the figures, we understand, from the department in its own annual report. That is sustained, long-term, consistent growth in patronage of our public transport network.

If we take a most recent snapshot, when we look at the most recent financial year's figures for the year prior, there is a growth of around 100,000 trips over the course of a 12-month period. Again, that is crystal clear, ironclad, indisputable factual evidence of the fact that we have seen growth in patronage of our public transport network.

We on this side are going to constantly call to account the Premier and the Minister for Transport when they try to perpetuate a myth that somehow we are seeing patronage go backwards. It is simply not an accurate reflection of the facts and it needs to be called out because it seems to be the only argument this government is using as some sort of smokescreen, some sort of veil or some sort of fig leaf for their justification for pursuing a neoliberal agenda to pursue the privatisation of public transport in South Australia.

We know that the Premier himself is on the record, I believe from an AFR interview or article some months ago, identifying that Jeff Kennett is a source of advice for him in the way he conducts himself. That is starting to come through, because the only other example that we have in the commonwealth of privatisation of a metropolitan train network is in Melbourne. Who was it done under? None other than Jeff Kennett.

Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide are the other key cities with major train systems in place, all owned and operated by the people of that state through their respective governments. It is only in Melbourne where we have seen the privatisation of the train network put into place by none other than Jeff Kennett. There is a reason why only one city has done it: it does not make sense. It is bad public policy. The overwhelming majority of South Australians and indeed Australians understand that key public services that a lot of people rely on day in and day out are best managed in the hands of the public.

Retaining control is something we have heard the minister refer to over the last couple of days. If you want to retain control, why would you hand over the asset or the operation of that asset to the private sector? You want to maintain control? Keep the control in your hands. That is why you are empowered to be a minister of the Crown: to take responsibility and use your decision-making prowess with the powers that are vested in you to exercise control. Handing it over to the private sector completely undermines that concept and that principle. Yet that is what we hear this government is seriously considering doing.

Not once before the state election, despite numerous opportunities, despite sustained questioning from the media and the Labor Party, did we ever hear the now Premier or the former shadow minister articulate a case that they were contemplating privatising the train or tram network—not once. Not once did the member for Newland go to his constituents telling them that he likes the idea of an active consideration of the train or tram network.

Not once did the member for King go to Golden Grove in her constituency or other areas within her electorate and say, 'Hey, just want to let you know that, if you vote Liberal, we are going to have a little look at privatising the train or tram network.' I know that the member for Colton did not do that. He did not run around Colton saying, 'I want to be open and transparent with the people of Henley Beach. I want to let you know that the train and tram network in metropolitan Adelaide could be privatised.'

If they did that, let them stand up and say it, but you will not hear them say it because they never said that to their constituents. That is why they will be held to account. They will be held to account because their constituents voted for them under the premise that this government did not have a privatisation agenda. It turns out they do. Trams and trains, SA Pathology, prisons, you name it, this is a government that is abandoning its promises to its own constituents. We will hold them to account on that fact.

Aside from the breaking promises component, aside from them undermining any credibility that they may have when it comes to keeping promises, there is a core public policy question here and that is: what do we do about public transport? Almost every other jurisdiction around the world that is serious about getting people from A to B, serious about reducing congestion, serious about doing something for climate change, is investing more in public transport—not less, not cutting.

Here we have an arbitrary $46 million cut. Here we have the revelation during the course of question time—only a few days out from a federal election, mind you—as a result of questioning from the shadow minister for transport and infrastructure, that the active consideration of privatising the train and tram network is underway. It just does not make sense.

On this side of the house, there is unanimity of opinion that climate change is real. In Labor, we believe that climate change is real and we believe that it is human induced. We take the next step and believe that there is a moral obligation upon the policymakers and decision-makers to take action to mitigate the risks of climate change and to mitigate the onset of climate change. Public transport is a key part of that equation.

We know that transport emissions account for somewhere in the order of 30 per cent of all carbon emissions in Australia. That is a very big chunk. If you want to do something about reducing that very significant component that contributes towards carbon emissions in this nation, public transport has to be key. If you reduce the number of people getting around in motor vehicles, which are far higher emitters of carbon compared with public transport, you are doing something that is making a positive impact on climate change.

The other variable is congestion. We have heard those opposite often talk about congestion on our roads and we have heard them talk about infrastructure, but now they are ripping away $46 million and looking at privatising a network, putting the profit motive at the heart of decision-making on public transport, which could only result in less services. They already had made decisions that have resulted in less services, which will contribute to congestion.

We are going to have more congestion and we are going to have more carbon emissions going into the atmosphere. That is bad public policy. I know that there are some opposite who do not believe that climate change is real. That is a view they are entitled to have but is not one that I share. I can understand how they can rationalise the idea of privatising the trains and trams and cutting public transport, but on this side we simply do not agree.

The final point I make on this is the extraordinary political timing. Three is the number of train lines that go through the seat of Boothby, and there is one tramline. A lot of people use these services. I think that the constituents of Boothby, when they go on Saturday to cast their ballot, would do well to think about the fact that it is only the Liberal Party that have a now not-so-secret plan to privatise our train and tram network. I am confident that the majority of those constituents will not agree with that, and they should think about that when they cast their ballot on Saturday.

Time expired.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay) (17:00): I rise to speak in the grievance debate on the Supply Bill. Many constituents in my electorate rely on public transport. They use it every day to go to work and to school, to educate themselves through post secondary education, to visit friends and family, to attend medical appointments and to go shopping. The electorate of Ramsay incorporates the Salisbury city centre, including the Salisbury Interchange. It is a very well-used facility. It coordinates bus transport and the train, which is the northern line from Gawler through to the City of Adelaide.

Labor understood the importance of public transport. In fact, the previous Labor government invested in many improvements that benefited the broader community and my electorate. We saw the electrification of the Seaford line and the expansion of the tram network. We delivered the O-Bahn underpass and we lowered fares. We concentrated on the fact that we knew that people would buy a 28-day pass, and we made sure that it was the best price it could be.

In my community, we commenced the electrification of the Gawler train line. We replaced the station at Elizabeth. We improved safety at the Salisbury rail station and we extended car parks at Parafield, Smithfield and Chidda. But what has the Marshall Liberal government done? In their first year of government they started wielding the axe towards public transport. They have started their campaign of cuts, closures and privatisation.

At the last budget, we had an announcement about some efficiencies—$46 million worth of cuts. We have only just seen the start of it, but now we know that those cuts are really going to come from a decision that has crept or slipped out, namely, the privatisation of trains and trams.

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

A quorum having being formed:

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON: In their first budget, the Liberal government started their campaign of cuts, closures and privatisations, and I saw that they had decided to cut and reduce bus routes in my electorate. Let me read you an email that I received from a constituent that captures the type of grief these cuts have created. Aaliyah emailed me to say:

I'm [a] mom with children using the bus for going everywhere, going to TAFE, going to visit friends…and a lot of my friends in TAFE [are] using the bus [rather] than [using the] car.

This constituent takes the 224 bus route, but she has a friend with four children and another with two, and they both use the 411, 404, 405 and 401 buses. In her family, they have one car between them. In this case, a true life example, all five bus routes mentioned have been affected by these cuts. These cuts make it more difficult for my constituents to get out and live their lives, to study, work and meet their loved ones. Without any warning, without any knowledge, this cut impacted greatly on their lives.

Every day, I see how this impacts older South Australians, students and people relying on public transport to commute to work. Often the rationale that is given is, 'Hardly anyone is on this train. Hardly anyone is on this bus,' but if you have to start work early in the morning, you have to catch the bus to get there. You might be starting at 6am but, if you do not have that bus, you might not be able to take up that role and take up that option. Public transport should be about people, not profit.

We should be talking about how we make public transport more accessible and more available. When the Minister for Transport talks about wanting to trial different things, at the heart of this should be how we can make public transport more available for more South Australians. Not every family has a car and not every family drives. Families who are not financially well off often depend on public transport to get around. It is a core role of the state government to make sure it runs efficiently. Not only is it a core role, it is something that should put at the forefront as being important in the future.

We talk about climate change, but I would like to focus on livable cities. We know that Adelaide ranks very highly as a livable city. We know it is an attractive place in which to live and we love living here but, as we go into the future with a focus on increasing our population, at the heart of it should be the ease of access to get around. We should have a diversity of transport options, whether it be the train, tram or bus. The messaging we are giving out at the moment—the $46 million cut—is the complete opposite of what a livable city is about.

A livable city is an inclusive city. It means that you can come in and out, across, go north and south of that city. We know that it is important because when we enabled seniors to have free public transport after 9am and before 3pm, we knew that it would lower the barrier to them volunteering and getting out and about. Many times during my previous role, seniors would tell me how much it helps them that they do not have to pay for public transport during those daylight hours. So I feel that this is a retrograde step. I feel that we are failing the people of South Australia.

There was no conversation about this prior to the election. In fact, the conversation was about no privatisation, but that is simply not what is happening here. We should be finding ways of improving the system and not selling it off. My constituents value public transport. What we want to see is more investment and more of an understanding of how people can best use it, making it a valuable resource for all South Australians.

Motion carried.

Third Reading

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Minister for Education) (17:10): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time and passed.

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