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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-07-02 Daily Xml
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Bills

Appropriation Bill 2019

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading (resumed on motion).

The SPEAKER: The member for Mawson has seven minutes to go—seven of the best!

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:40): It seems like only moments ago that I sat down. I have changed clothes and everything, which will be nice when we splice the contribution together—but one thing that has not changed (although the outfit may have) is the anger and resentment towards this government and its budget. It has been absolutely caned by people far and wide in the electorate of Mawson, both on the mainland and on Kangaroo Island.

As I said at the beginning, having just arrived back from Kangaroo Island during proceedings this morning, people are very angry. People are heartbroken actually that the work they have put into building their tourism businesses has absolutely been blown apart by this government and that a visitor economy, which was worth $6.8 billion when we handed over the reins to the Marshall government, has now lost $100 million just in one quarter, so they are very fearful.

These businesses see what is happening to their books and to their future bookings, and unfortunately they are going down at a very fast rate. There is no visitor information centre on Kangaroo Island, which is an absolute disgrace given that Kangaroo Island is one of the jewels in the crown of South Australia's visitor economy. There is a lot of work for this government to do. I know that not many ministers have actually been over to visit Kangaroo Island.

The Premier was there. It was a fly-in fly-out official visit (he did not leave the airport), when he got to open the airport that we funded, the airport that we fought for when the Liberal local member of parliament did not want an airport upgrade. We did that. We put in $8 million and the federal government put in $8 million. Of course, the Premier flies in, opens the new terminal and gets on the plane and flies out again.

I have been speaking to people on the island and they do not know whether Rob Lucas has ever in his life been to Kangaroo Island. He has been in this place since I was in year 10; in 1982, he came into parliament. I put in a question over a month ago to ask whether he has ever been to Kangaroo Island. Up till now, we have not had a response, but I am guessing, by the look of this budget, that he has never been to Kangaroo Island.

He has just doubled everyone's rego on Kangaroo Island. He has taken away $500—this is how mean he is—that went to the road safety group on Kangaroo Island for administration charges, for expenses that volunteers should not be expected to have to pay. His leader, the Premier, actually has to be on the hook for this. He has got to take responsibility. He is the leader and he has to take responsibility for the cruel cuts that everyone on Kangaroo Island is suffering.

However, it is further than that. The hatred for this government is so widespread—for example, commuters we talk to are seeing services cut, and now we heard yesterday that they are going to privatise the tram and train network. I picked up the police journal. The police do an amazing job, and they are not known for being outspoken on political views. They are not known for picking sides when it comes to politics, but the front cover shows the Premier and the Deputy Premier, and it says, 'These two lawmakers refuse to protect law keepers'.

An honourable member: Shame!

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: It's terrible. If you read the president's message from Mark Carroll, this is his opening line:

Politicians who take their emergency-services workers for granted do so at their peril. That kind of disregard wins favour with no one. Not the police, not victims of crime, not the community. Not anyone.

Yet Premier Steven Marshall and his government have so far responded to the vulnerability of police with complete indifference.

On this side of the chamber, we think that the police and other emergency service workers deserve to be protected. They deserve to have rules in place so that people who attack them in some way will be punished and, as the Police Association says, sent to gaol. That is what needs to happen to people who pick on these emergency service workers and police who are always putting themselves in danger to go into fires, to go into situations where their lives are at peril. They do not need anything more to add to the danger of this job, and we need to protect them.

We have the police up in arms about this government. We had teachers here in South Australia striking yesterday because of the way they are being treated by this government. The Marshall government is being condemned from all quarters. I tell you, it usually takes a lot longer than a year and a bit to get people as angry as the Marshall government has made South Australians. People are angry. As someone who is out and about in my local community a lot, I cannot remember hearing so much anger, so much disbelief at the way a government are treating the people of our state. Before the election, they came out and said that they did not have a privatisation agenda, and then we see things pop up that come as a complete surprise, just like when a former Liberal government sold off ETSA.

We see that trains and trams will be privatised. We see that a remand centre will be privatised. All these things hit at the sorts of services that people expect governments to provide. The promise, as we have heard from the transport minister, is that this is going to be great, that it is going to bring about cheaper prices and better services for everyone. When did we hear that last? It was from John Olsen when he sold ETSA. In that first tranche after the privatisation of ETSA, we saw our electricity bills go up by 23.7 per cent. Did we see any improvement in service? No. We saw a 23.7 per cent cost increase to the consumer and not one skerrick of improvement in service. I can guarantee that the same thing will happen with our buses and trains.

I catch the train a lot on the Seaford line. How about the government of the day just providing a reliable service, one that works, one where you do not get threatened with violence by people because either there are no guards or they are right down the end of one carriage and not going up and down the train. If you provide a regular, clean, secure transport system—guess what—people will use it. You do not need a private operator to do that. Government should be doing that. That is what we pay our taxes for, and that is what we expect. If you cannot do it, just nick off, get out of there and give someone else a go.

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (15:48): This opportunity to speak on the state budget 2019-20 provides the chance for me to say that it is not all bad, but it reinforces my reasons for believing more than ever that there needs to be a new Australian constitution looking at the funding arrangements for all Australians. Since the federal election we have seen how decisions made in the Eastern States, where elections are decided, mean that smaller states are at a disadvantage and that an accident of birth means we do not all enjoy the same rights and access to services. Perhaps it is time to have a candid discussion on the expectations of the people of Australia, not the short-term marketing exercise election campaigns have turned into, and to have a true understanding that tax cuts may not be the answer to all our problems.

Day-to-day living costs remain the biggest concern for our constituents, and they expect us to look after this issue. In return, they are willing to give some leeway for the bigger decisions taken. They do not buy the 'we have a mandate' line for everything. Rather, they are resigned to accepting the least worst option in most cases. They applaud the efforts to keep election promises but do not like the reprioritisation of projects, especially in the north-east, where there were promises such as the reintroduction of level 1 ICU at Modbury Hospital and new O-Bahn car parking facilities, to name just two. I will expand more on these and other local issues later.

Each state is responsible for its own revenue but has limited ways of raising revenue. In truth, we rely on the federal government and its capacity to raise funds through taxes on things like wages and via the GST for basic services, such as health and education, the last of the services still not completely privatised or outsourced. As we have seen in this state budget, when expected amounts of revenue fail to materialise, things go pear-shaped pretty quickly. However, each state still has a choice about how it spends its money, and it is with these choices that I continue to struggle, as I have for many years in my time in this place.

The large number of people I have spoken with since the Treasurer delivered his speech in this chamber have told me that, while they may not agree with many of the big spending measures, it is the lack of honesty and the disguise and/or burying in the budget documents of smaller revenue-raising measures, now under another type of accounting—shifting the basis of budget reporting and making it harder to compare like with like—that really encourages lack of respect in government and the system in general.

The 2019-20 state budget provides a sobering reality check about the current situation in South Australia. As stated, we have already seen a significant shortfall in GST revenue from the federal budget that has influenced this entire budget. An increase in state debt comes at a time when interest rates are low and will fund future needed infrastructure upgrades, which will no doubt benefit all commuters. However, north-east residents are still waiting for significant improvements on North East Road and on feeder roads such as Melbourne Street and OG Road, which is now also congested and narrow, especially in the peaks, and in need of improvement.

Scotty's Corner is a difficult corner for people coming home from the city via North East Road, so a $19 million investment there to make it easier to turn right into Nottage Terrace will be welcome, as will $19 million for Main North and McIntyre roads for an upgrade for those who travel to Modbury and Golden Grove along that route.

On the border of the Florey, Enfield and Port Adelaide electorates, the $13 million earmarked for Briens and Grand Junction roads, where large numbers of articulated trucks and road trains are ever present, will improve flow at what has become a very busy intersection, especially since the completion of the Roma Mitchell Secondary College, another McDonald's and the soon to be commenced state centre for football in Gepps Cross.

The government is injecting much-needed funds into our training and vocational education system, as well as transferring assets from Renewal SA to TAFE SA, freeing up money TAFE previously used to pay rent. This must not distract from the fact that TAFE has endured many cutbacks in our area in recent years, with the slow decline of the Tea Tree Gully campus leading to its closure last year.

The community in the north-east has not forgotten that the culinary course, at Celia's, Tea Tree Gully TAFE was deemed surplus to requirements and relocated to Regency Park some years ago, yet this budget creates funding for a new food and hospitality school at Lot Fourteen in the city. Centralising services makes them harder for people in the suburbs to access, and when you factor in the added time and cost to drive and park in the city, it becomes more expensive too.

The rollout of the promised and long-awaited return of services and much-needed upgrades at Modbury Hospital finally have a time line. While not as soon as we had hoped or were led to believe, the often promised extended emergency care unit, which has endured nearly more announcements than there will be new beds, will be completed by the end of this financial year. That means the end of June 2020—two years after the election won on the promise of its arrival.

Meanwhile, a scoping study and procurement will occur for the rest of the many times promised $96 million worth of upgrades, including the level 1 ICU for patients with high dependency, although remarkably it still has no fixed place on the plan. The expected date for all works completion in 2021, just months out from the next state election, may prove a bridge too far for the patience of long-suffering patients in the north-east. The people of Florey will be wondering why the restoration of these services will take three years, when it took a previous Liberal government only three months to privatise the management of Modbury Hospital.

I want to speak a little more on emergency department problems being laid at the feet of emergency departments, an approach that unfortunately is not unique to South Australia. We cannot dismiss the evidence of ramping outside and inside hospitals as being just another day in the ED. It cannot be an accepted part of the environment at any hospital; rather, it is a symptom of trouble further up the line. Admittedly, we have to accept that there are sometimes peak times when ambulance personnel will need to wait for a bed to be ready, but there is room to believe official figures can be manipulated or just plain wrong.

While the people of the north await a major redevelopment at the ED at the Lyell McEwin Hospital, in the meantime, what affects acute services at the Lyell Mac affects Modbury Hospital because Modbury Hospital relies on the Lyell Mac to admit their ill patients. This is until the point where there is a level 1 ICU on site at Modbury, so now when inpatient beds at the Lyell McEwin are full, Modbury Hospital cannot transfer.

Between the Lyell Mac, Modbury, Flinders and the new RAH, we have the slowest EDs in Australia. This makes it a problem of overall and individual leadership in SA Health, notwithstanding the work being done by the KordaMentha contract, which might have been done in-house had the system not deteriorated to this point. One of the more staggering revelations in the budget papers is the number of patients overdue on elective surgery waiting lists. In NALHN alone, it has ballooned from one patient in 2018 to 209 in 2019. I am told that there are many more cases with worsening conditions more serious than currently assessed who are not even represented in the statistics.

Changes at Modbury Hospital were designed to ease the burden on patients with long waiting periods for surgery, yet changes are painfully slow to show significant effect. A mental health announcement about the replacement of ageing Woodleigh House infrastructure is good news until you realise that those beds will vanish until the new building appears. Being treated in the community where you have support is important when you face a mental illness. Rehab services at Modbury remain a bright spot for health in the north-east.

This brings me to the dark side of an increase in hospital parking fees, hitting people across the board at a time when they are particularly vulnerable. While impacts are not clear at every site, from 2020 it seems that the first two hours will no longer be free and a third hour will cost $8. It appears that this measure will raise $2 million, arguably the meanest way to save such an amount. In 2011, the then Labor government introduced paid parking at all metropolitan hospitals. At Modbury, we were told that this was to stop people using the O-Bahn from clogging up the hospital car parks while waiting for the park-and-ride car park that we had been promised would be built.

The public outcry then was sizeable. I tabled a petition with 4,332 signatures regarding the Lyell McEwin health service in conjunction with a petition of over 7,000 signatures for Modbury Hospital prepared by the local Messenger newspaper, which unfortunately could not be tabled. Parking costs at hospitals and safety at the car parks and around the hospitals remain big issues in the north-east. I have always felt this sort of user-pays, revenue-raising cost shifting deeply, and it was saddening at the time that no-one else at the ALP state convention that year chose to support the amended Florey sub-branch motion to make the first three hours of parking free and between 6pm and 8am also free.

Now we have come full circle, with the new government instituting their own increases while the opposition decries the measure. It is a heartless measure by both sides. The people paying the price are the patients, not the politicians they trust to represent their best interests. This measure will hurt sick people and the members of our community supporting them, and that is before we address staff parking rate increases, which will push more nurses into parking on poorly lit streets. We have seen an attack in recent days outside the Lyell McEwin Hospital on top of the ongoing issues in the North Adelaide Parklands adjacent to the current Women's and Children's Hospital.

Shift-working nurses and health professionals have a right to be safe when travelling to and from their workplace, and this move to increase the cost of secure, on-site parking will do the exact opposite. It is a pointless exercise. As we embark on the renegotiation of collective bargaining agreements for professionals such as public hospital nurses, the increased cost of parking will no doubt be factored in, so it will end up costing the government more anyway, and that is if the government comes to these negotiations showing good faith and respect for all our community public sector employees.

If these nurses were planning on taking the bus to travel to work, access to the new RAH remains a problem and the savage axe taken to public transport will make that option more expensive, too. Gone is the two-section Metrocard, increasing costs by as much as 85 per cent. Dawn bus routes have already been scrapped, so if they have an early shift the bus may not even be an option for them or any other shift worker.

The concept of putting out a tender to improve a service or make it more efficient needs to be called out for the blatant spin it is. Every government seeks to pay less for these services, and the next bus contract will be no different. By offering a price that is near unworkable, any private contractor will have no option but to cut wages while diminishing the quality of our valued public transport services. There was no mention in this budget of train services being managed differently, and lately we have seen that there will be similar detrimental changes in this area of public transport, too.

Efficiency dividends are also applied liberally in this budget. These are simply Public Service cuts by another name. Cuts to the Department of Human Services, for instance, have led to a $50 reduction from 1 October this year in the rebate given to elderly South Australians who have a monitored personal alert system. While $50 might not sound like a lot, it is a significant impost for pensioners living week to week and dollar to dollar.

While there is significant investment in education, it is not showing respect for the working conditions of teachers and the learning conditions of students, especially those students who need extra help. In crucial early intervention child protection programs, slashing already under-resourced departmental budgets risks forcing teachers, social workers or foster parents to do more with less when caring for our youngest and most vulnerable people.

The first real effect of the cut to the child protection department is the culling of 59 financial counsellors. This appears very short-sighted, given that family breakdowns often begin with a struggle to make ends meet, so no doubt many who would have benefited from this now diminished service could very well end up back in the system anyway.

I am also told that funding has been cut for the BreakAway program run by Anglicare, designed to give respite for one weekend a month to foster families with young girls. The program for boys has already gone, and the strain these extra duties place on foster families cannot be beneficial in ensuring positive outcomes as these children grow and develop. Children are, after all, our most precious resource.

Vulnerable victims of crime have also seen reduced funding to the Victim Support Service, totalling half their annual operating budget. The Victim Support Service provides vital counselling as well as advocacy, information and support. The fact that many in crisis will no longer be able to access these important services from 2020 is a cruel kick to a group in our community who do it very, very tough through no fault of their own.

This budget also sees a 40 per cent increase to the solid waste levy, a $24.9 million per annum hit to council budget bottom lines. This has come as a complete surprise, without warning or consultation with local government, and has come so late in the piece that it has not been factored into draft budgets that were already out for community consultation—a very disrespectful impost on ratepayers.

At the eleventh hour, councils across the state have held emergency meetings to account for this trash tax, some passing on parts of the increase in their council rates while also slashing grant funding that would have paid for sporting club and much-needed change room upgrades or community group initiatives. From a government that promised lower council rates through rate capping, one can only wonder about this measure, which will once again impact ordinary families.

It has also been revealed that Service SA administration costs are set to increase from $7 a transaction to $10 a transaction. This is at a time when we are being told more and more things can be done online at a far cheaper price. This is cold comfort for the thousands of people who already use Service SA centres. While many who can do not transact online, some without access or the capability to transact on a computer cannot. That these changes may be thrust upon them is causing untold worry for many. A reasonable transition period, maybe five to 10 years, needs to be in place to ensure that no-one is left behind, especially given the way our modern, seemingly cashless society is becoming more and more digital.

So this brave new online world seems to be the justification for exploring the closure of Service SA offices in Prospect, Mitcham and, of course, Modbury. This cannot be allowed to happen, given the overwhelming response to the Save Service SA petition. My constituents in Florey want to receive face-to-face service with the ability to have their questions answered and not to be charged extra for it. This government was elected on a platform of lower costs and better services. This can only be interpreted as a broken promise.

Last year's budget can be seen as addressing many of the pre-election pledges made in the March 2018 campaign. By comparison, this year's budget reveals a more tacit attempt to unwind our social fabric. All manner of everyday costs are rising, most at a greater rate than inflation. From the escapable fines to the inescapable driver's licences and registering vehicle fees, the cost of driving a car, in particular, is going up.

That is before we begin on the ever-increasing cost of petrol and the wild cycles that exploit consumers, leaving us with precious little purchasing power at the pump. The government and the RAA have reached an impasse on establishing a fuel price reporting mechanism so that drivers can be fully informed of their choice between competing petrol stations. The anything but competitive environment that exists currently needs ACCC attention.

If Perth can have weekly cheap days, when fuel companies must report their prices at 2pm the previous day and stick to them for 24 hours, one must ask the question what the delay is in making this a reality in our state, where a change could ease the growing cost-of-living pressures people face every day.

Another issue that concerns many constituents in increasing parts of Florey is that we have become part of the top 10 SA Water hotspots, meaning that mains bursting or failures along the ageing 27,000 kilometre pipe system are more commonplace. While I am told of the good work being undertaken within SA Water, this is cold comfort to those affected and I expect a soon to be scheduled public meeting to attract a large amount of interest.

Social housing remains an issue of grave concern, the cost of accommodation being a major factor in the ability of many families to exist. The continuing failure of building companies in this state remains a troubling and all too often occurrence, and today we hear that building surveyors in Victoria are no longer able to secure professional indemnity insurance. This will no doubt have a nationwide flow-on effect on an already struggling building industry without federal intervention, which is urgently needed for social housing too.

Private certification has been an uninspiring part of the new world of planning, cracking (pardon the pun) under the new order, where problems are addressed only after, not before, they happen. In a time when we see tight margins and high-rise apartments, not to mention roadworks, with major structural deficiencies, one has to ask: where are the authorities who could prevent disasters for all concerned?

Consumer rights continue to worry me. The abrogation of responsibility by states through a federal system does not work as well as Don Dunstan would have liked and must be addressed. States have a role to play and must, if the people are to be protected from all manner of avoidable outcomes and unscrupulous behaviour. Herein lies the problem with the status of our federation. It is a travesty in this country that the state in which you live determines whether you are protected, able to access affordable energy sources like gas, electricity and petrol and whether you are entitled to universal ambulance cover—which again receives no attention in this budget. These are basic rights that should benefit all Australians equally, regardless of which state they call home.

The transition from a state-based disability care model for the federally administered NDIS has caused incredible friction for all in that sector and mental health and domestic violence advocacy groups, too, such as Catherine House, with many seeing their future funding reduced or altered to now be derived from multiple sources. Parkinson's SA has lost group program coordinators and full-time support line staff as a result of federal funding changes, so those with Parkinson's are left to their own devices at a time when they need help the most.

Much the same can be said for aged care, with federally funded, state-run facilities lacking a uniform standard of care, allowing some mistreatment of patients. If facilities are passing all their accreditation assessments, it is clear there exists an accountability gap, where an ever-weary public is growing tired of the shameful blame game between tiers of government. This unacceptable situation must be righted once and for all by reapportioning the powers of federal and state governments to truly reflect the best interests of the population as a whole.

South Australia's diminishing influence in federal parliament is causing our state to fundamentally fall behind, whether through a GST squeeze or potentially losing out on vital defence contract work to other states. A conversation needs to start about how we want to function as a country in the 21st century, including recognition of the role of our Indigenous people within our democracy. It took 60 years to create our current constitution, drafted with a significant contribution from our own Charles Cameron Kingston, and we can take a leading role at COAG, seeking to improve our federation for the national good and benefit of all South Australians.

While acknowledging that we live in difficult financial times and have to make changes, it is the changes in across-the-board increases in fees and charges within this budget that impact almost every part of household budgets and underline the importance of making sure we leave no-one behind.

If every other measure in this budget stimulates employment, particularly in infrastructure, then wage growth and the weather remain problems. While we cannot control the weather and the fortunes of those working in agriculture and horticulture in the regions, we have to do all we can to stimulate small business, another engine of employment in this state. Payroll tax cuts are a start, but small business people tell me that there is not much else in the budget for them. In an economy that is flatlining, we have to hope we will survive this budget to get to the next two, which will no doubt look to provide the carrots to earn the votes to return this government.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Minister for Education) (16:08): I am advised there are no other speakers on the second reading, so it gives me great pleasure to stand on behalf of the Premier to close the debate and offer my own reflections on the 2019-20 state budget of the Treasurer, the Hon. Rob Lucas.

As the Minister for Education, it is an extraordinary pleasure to be able to do so, and I thank Treasurer Lucas, who in the 2019-20 state budget has provided more money for education in this budget than any previous treasurer in any year in South Australia's history, both in terms of the capital spend encapsulated for the South Australian public school system and an ongoing program of infrastructure grants to the non-government school system. That has been operating for a couple of years now and is indexed, so they too are at record levels although, in real terms, the same as they were last year.

There are also recurrent funding increases to the South Australian education system, significantly in anticipation that that system continues to grow, and it is growing to a size it has not been before. It requires and has required additional investment in infrastructure to ensure that every student in South Australia is able to be supported in their local classrooms, in their local schools.

This year, that has provided the government with some challenges because in previous years those opposite had failed to adequately prepare for the growing numbers—the significant growing numbers—coming into our public school system. It may well be that they did not anticipate the significant growing numbers coming into our public school system. Indeed, the demographic modelling that was provided by the Department for Education to the government late last year had some startling facts in it, and we need to create 10,000 extra places. Some of our schools in the city, the eastern suburbs, the northern suburbs and the southern suburbs have extraordinary capacity pressures, and some of those have been growing for a little while.

We are also moving year 7 into high school. There is a range of reasons why the state government is doing that in South Australia. Fundamentally, we believe the current situation is a 20th-century model of education, one that was designed at a time when children coming into school were younger than they are now. By and large, our year 7s are a year older than they were when people like the member for Lee and I were in school. Indeed, our year 7s are ready.

This has been shown in the three pilot sites that we have recently announced at Mitcham Girls High School, John Pirie Secondary School and Wirreanda Secondary School where, given the opportunity to have year 7 offered in those high school settings from next year, the families in those communities have flocked to that opportunity. We had more than 160 expressions of interest at Mitcham Girls High School, more than 110 at Wirreanda Secondary School and nearly 100 at John Pirie Secondary School.

Scores more families were interested than we needed to make those pilots successful and we are looking forward to them rolling out. The students in those pilots, as will all students in South Australia come 2022, will have the opportunity to have their year 7 subjects taught in the environment for which the curriculum was designed. Our Australian Curriculum, which all our schools offer in the primary and early secondary years, was designed for year 7/8. It is a year 7/8 curriculum to be taught in a specialist classroom setting with specialist teachers such as you find in a secondary school.

The opportunities for our students, we believe, to learn in these environments will be profound, but that creates some challenges for the system, and we are investing in infrastructure. So in order to meet the capacity needs of our growing education system in our public school network, to move year 7 into high school and also to meet some particular needs which were put to us in some particular schools, there was $185 million worth of new infrastructure funding announced this year on top of all the previously committed infrastructure projects which this government has confirmed, regarding some of which I was privileged to be involved in the decision-making process which went to cabinet.

We have three new schools being built that will be open for the 2022 school year. One of them will be in the southern suburbs—we have identified a site—in Aldinga. It will be a new B-12 school and a fantastic project when it is finished. There will be one in the northern suburbs in the Munno Para-Angle Vale area where the details are in the process of being finalised, as I understand it. There will be a new high school in Whyalla—a $100 million investment by this government in supporting the young people in that community to achieve all they can achieve. Those three new schools are progressing.

Across the rest of the capital program, investment in excess of $1.3 billion continues to be rolled out by this government to ensure our school infrastructure is all it can be. The fact is that, at the end of that investment, we will have some fantastic facilities across South Australia. But, importantly, we will be able to deliver on what people in our community expect, that if they are in an area that has a zoned school, we will be able to find a place for their child. When we came to government that could not be promised in too many communities. We are creating the infrastructure that will enable that to be the case.

Of course, our ambition is not just that certain schools be seen as the schools people want their students to go to and other schools are the schools left that students must go to if they cannot get into other schools. Our ambition is nothing less than every student in every one of those classrooms being supported to fulfil their potential. Every school in South Australia is on a school improvement trajectory supported by this government and invested in by this government, where teachers, principals and SSOs are in an environment where they are able to deliver the best for our students in solid environments, and that requires funding.

This is the government that signed the national school funding reforms late last year, an agreement that was profound. We were the first state to do it. Minister Dan Tehan and I got together at an eastern Adelaide school in the Premier's electorate to talk to students and sign that agreement. It was a terrific opportunity for South Australia for two funding-related reasons and, of course, for a range of other non-funding related reasons. I congratulate minister Tehan and his predecessor, minister Birmingham, on the work they have done on producing that national school funding reform set of agreements, which will provide such great opportunities for us in South Australia.

I also congratulate minister Tehan on his re-election, along with his colleagues in the Morrison Liberal government in Canberra. Minister Tehan has had, and continues to have, a positive impact in that portfolio. What that agreement means for South Australia is nothing less than billions of dollars extra coming into South Australian schools over the next decade. It is not just extra commonwealth money coming into those schools, although the commonwealth investment is significant, in the billions.

The South Australian government, in order to unlock that commonwealth revenue coming into South Australian schools, had to commit over the next decade to an additional $700 million of South Australian government money going into the South Australian public school system, over and above issues related to enrolment and capacity, which are the general parameters in which education is funded in South Australia and which see over the next four years an increase of $600 million-plus in revenue coming into South Australian schools.

Over and above the parameters left to us by those opposite when they were in government, an extra $700 million has been invested into the South Australian public school system over the next decade as a result of our signing up to the national school funding reform agreement. It was disappointing to see the shadow minister for education criticising us for making that agreement with the commonwealth, and I think it portrays potentially a lack of understanding, that it was not just about getting extra commonwealth funding; it was also an extra investment by the Marshall Liberal government in our students.

It was an end to the fake fights with Canberra and the beginning of a collaborative relationship, where we see our students as being the important and central people in the equation, not the political opportunities that can be provided by picking unnecessary fights with Canberra. At the end of the day, it is rare to see anyone win out of those fights, and the former government certainly never achieved anything for South Australia by them.

What I would also say about the national school funding reform agreements is that, in addition to the extra commonwealth money coming into our schools and in addition to the extra South Australian government money coming into our schools, we also saw the opportunity for an agreement at a national level by all jurisdictions, Labor and Liberal, National even in New South Wales, all ministers of all stripes, who have committed to a set of goals to improve our school system across Australia.

There are a range of those that the education ministerial council treats with every opportunity at every one of the meetings we have, the most recent one being last Friday in Melbourne. It is a great honour to be able to sit at that council and work with other ministers from around Australia to be able to progress those goals for the mutual betterment of all our students. At that ministerial council, we combined our resources towards those agreed goals. Some of those goals, such as the establishment of a national evidence institute and the work on formative assessments being undertaken, will better inform our teachers and our parents on not only what our children know but how they are growing in their education, which is critically important.

That work is profound. One of the things that I think will be especially important and will help us immensely to stop those students slipping through the cracks of our education system, as too many do at the moment and have done historically, is the universal student identifier. Work on that program proceeds apace.

One of the things that became clear last year when some data was released in relation to SACE completion rates was that for too long we have been looking at the apparent completion rates in our school system and patting ourselves on the back for a job well done because there were a similar number of students finishing year 12 as there were students starting year 8, or indeed starting the SACE when they do their PLP in year 10. What that measure failed to take into account was that it included a number of students coming into our system, people who have migrated into the system and people who might go to a public high school at year 12 after having gone to a non-government school beforehand—indeed, it turns out there are a number.

When we stopped looking at those apparent retention rates and instead looked at some of the data that became available last year on the number of students who start in our public school system at the beginning of high school but actually complete their SACE in year 12, it was a dramatically lower number. When we have two in five South Australian students not reaching that goal, having started in our public system, it is very concerning.

There were a number of reasons why that happened. Some of those students had moved from the government school system to the non-government school system. Some of those students had moved from South Australia to another jurisdiction, and that is fine. There is nothing wrong with that, but we did not have a track on it. Some of them may have even completed the International Baccalaureate at Glenunga International High School, but that was a number in the dozens and we are talking about thousands of students slipping through the system.

A universal student identifier, when it is up and running, will enable us to keep track of all the students as they go from a government school to the private system, to the Catholic system, to a different state, whether they are doing the International Baccalaureate, the SACE or the VCE or whatever else. That is going to be an enormous opportunity for us to better track the performance of our students, not just so that we can have data that we can talk about and measure systems, although that can be useful, but, critically, when there are students who drop out of all the school systems, we will be able to find out where they are and give them the support they need to re-engage in education or in enterprise or, indeed, in an apprenticeship or a traineeship. That leaves one other critically important thing that our government is doing in relation to vocational education, and I will get to that in due course.

First, I want to put on the record my appreciation to minister Tehan and all the other ministers from around Australia for the collaborative way that they have been working with the South Australian government across a wide range of issues, from the national school funding reforms to NAPLAN and everything in between, over the last 15 months. It is a real privilege and an honour that I have enjoyed as minister, particularly last year when South Australia was the host to those ministers.

One of the first things I was told I had to do in my new job was to chair that meeting for the course of last year, and I enjoyed doing so. I appreciated bringing them to Adelaide as much as possible so that we could spend New South Wales', Victorian, ACT and commonwealth government moneys in the South Australian economy. I do not know if they spent much time here, but I certainly made them come here for the meetings.

In addition to the capital program, the South Australian Marshall Liberal government continues to roll out our internet in schools with fibre-optic cables to every school in South Australia in the public system. There are four schools where that is not possible for logistical reasons. I was in Marree and Leigh Creek with the member for Stuart several weeks ago. I was looking for the Marree river, which the Leader of the Opposition told us all about at one point, but I could not find it. It was very dry at the time, which was of very great concern to the local landholders—the School of the Air families—we visited and spoke to.

In Marree, Leigh Creek and Oak Valley and on Kangaroo Island, we are looking forward to Telstra and the department coming up with solutions that will help rapidly increase their internet speeds in the near future. In the more than 510 other public school sites around South Australia, fibre-optic cable to the school is going to be an extraordinary opportunity for them to enhance their pedagogy, their professional development and the way that they can do SACE exams online as we move towards that. Indeed, NAPLAN Online is facilitated by that.

While there are problems that still need to be identified with the national server for the NAPLAN Online program, I am very pleased that South Australia's local school infrastructure was in a much better position to cope than we were a year ago or, indeed, 18 months ago, when we first came to power, when 25 per cent of our schools had fibre-optic cable. We are headed for 99 per cent of our schools having that connection—all but four across our 510 system—and that will be delivered by the end of next year.

It is an extraordinary thing that we are working on with Telstra. It is an $80 million investment for fibre to schools. The rollout continues apace, and I believe we are ahead of schedule with 111 schools already connected—six more today—and more than 50,000 students and more than 6,000 educators already connected. It is all part of the Marshall Liberal government's plan to give our schools the best opportunities to proceed.

Our workforce is tremendously important in delivering our school improvement model and delivering on our ambition to have South Australia deliver a world-class education for our students. It is well publicised that the government has put on the table in excess of $600 million worth of offer for the EB considerations that the AEU executive in recent times saw fit to reject. Indeed, the AEU executive encouraged the workforce to go on strike yesterday, and that took place.

Now, 28 per cent of our sites across South Australia—259 schools and preschools—closed due to that industrial action. At 15 per cent of sites, enough staff went on strike to ensure that the school or preschool could remain open only with a modified program. At both the schools that closed and the schools that remained open with a modified program, the staff are entitled obviously to take industrial action if that is what they consider the best thing to do. I respectfully disagree with them. What would have been better was for them not to take that industrial action and to reconsider the offer that was put.

Nevertheless, put that to one side for the moment. There were also staff of many of those schools who did not strike and who were there at the schools doing work for their students, and indeed 57 per cent of our sites—530 of our schools and preschools—remained open. This is significantly more than the equivalent figure in 2008 when the union went on strike, which is the equivalent one, of course, after an offer had been made.

I want to reflect briefly on what has happened since 2008 to now in the education system, because it plays in with what is in our budget this year and what is indeed in our offer. There is pay, there are conditions and there is support in the classroom that is available in the offer. The pay offer is 2.35 per cent and, over a series of four increases, that 2.35 per cent adds up to a nearly 10 per cent increase in pay. That is a very competitive offer by national standards.

There has been a discussion about whether it is a nationally appropriate offer and where it leaves our teachers in comparison to other systems. The fact is that, if you are looking at a graduate entering into the teaching workforce, or if you are looking at a band 9 teacher or somewhere in between, or if you are looking at a principal of a small school or a deputy principal or a principal of a big school, there is a range of different starting points for all those different positions depending on which position you are talking about.

In some of those positions, South Australia starts reasonably high on the league table in terms of where we are against other states and territories. With respect to some of them, it starts lower. It is no secret that the ACT pays some of its positions extremely well and higher than the other states and the Northern Territory lower. I think there is one band where the Northern Territory is the highest by a stretch and others are lower.

I do not think that South Australia is the highest or the lowest in any. I stand to be corrected but, as a result of our pay offer, we move up the rankings. There are other states that have had agreements that are two or three years in track so we can follow what they are doing. As a result of our offer we are becoming increasingly competitive, especially when you consider the advantages of living in South Australia.

I love living in South Australia. I know that many of our teachers and our principals love living in South Australia. I think it is a furphy to suggest that there is a line-up to move interstate for better pay when the pay interstate is not necessarily that much better, if it is better at all, and in many cases it is not. The cost of living is also a factor in many cases. Certainly, the cost of having a house in some of these places is a lot higher, plus you would not be living in South Australia, which is the best place in the world to live.

So, I do not think that is a real argument. I know that many people who have expressed points of view in favour of the industrial action on media and through correspondence have said that it is not about the pay. That is good, because the government does not have the capacity to offer any more than the 2.35 per cent, an offer which is well and truly above inflation.

We go to 3.35 per cent for principals and preschool directors because, of course, there is a need for us to better attract more people to go into those positions, and we felt that they had not gone as well as they should have in the previous rounds. We have offered a bit more for those levels, which is within the capacity to pay, and 2.35 per cent for the other staff. It is well and truly above inflation. It is an entirely reasonable offer and they deserve it, frankly. I think they do deserve 2.35 per cent, and it is a very good offer.

If the pay is not the issue—and many say that it is not—then hopefully the union will reflect on that, reflect on what teachers who support their actions are saying, that the pay is not the issue, and move on from arguing about the pay. The government has continued to say and has consistently said that we are happy to stay at the table with the union to talk about conditions, but the union set a time frame publicly.

They told their members they needed a letter of offer by a certain date, and the government duly complied. The union had previously booked the steps of Parliament House and decided to have their rally yesterday, which was a great inconvenience for many caregivers and parents and a disruption to the learning of the students in those schools. I respect that many of the people who were on the steps yesterday were doing so because they felt it was in the best interests of their students, and potentially it was not even for pay.

Let's have a look at complexity because the government has put on the table an offer in relation to complexity worth in the order of $40 million. That is geared to providing extra support in schools and classes where there is a great deal of complexity, where there are challenges and significant extra supports needed. I saw the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, the shadow minister for education, dancing on the steps of Parliament House, literally dancing with the union leadership yesterday during some of the songs, supporting this idea that students were being left behind as a result of our current circumstances.

But I make this point: she was the minister for education for two years at a time when the then government was providing less support for complexity than we already do and, indeed, than we would be after this offer. That $40 million is not the first money that is being spent on complexity in our schools. It is in addition to the hundreds of millions of dollars that has already been spent, that was spent when the Deputy Leader of the Opposition was the minister for education and slightly more than that was spent last year—I think in the order of $370 million for needs-based funding for schools through the department's needs-based funding model. That is extra support, and then we are looking at adding further support to that as part of our offer.

It is not unreasonable to have the conversation about what we can do to best support complexity, but it is more than disingenuous to say that we are not providing any support at the moment. For the Deputy Leader of the Opposition to be dancing on the steps of Parliament House saying that it is not good enough, without even reflecting on the fact that we are offering more and we are already giving more, doing more and investing more than they ever did when they were in government, is—well, there is a word for it that I will let members work out for themselves.

We are happy and remain happy to talk with the union and other staff representatives. I appreciate the support that a number of people have expressed for the agreement to the generous offer that is on the table. I hope that the union will reflect on that going forward. I think most of us, frankly probably all of us in our heart of hearts, and anyone who takes on the role of being a teacher, are driven by a desire to support our students. It is a job that you do because you want to help pass on knowledge, skills and capabilities to young people in your care because you have that as a calling. I have the greatest respect for it and I appreciate that role that is played in our system.

I think that the union would do well to reflect on some of the benefits in the offer and have a second think about what is in the best interests of our students and potentially reflect on the advice that they have given their members, which I do not think has necessarily fairly represented the offer put forward by the government. Be that as it will, there is a range of other things in the budget that are to the benefit of our education system.

The government continues to roll out our international education system, and I was pleased to be able to talk a little bit about that in the parliament today. I have received representations in the parliament today from the members for Florey, Newland, King, Elder and Kavel. Not that many days go by when I do not get a phone call from the member for Kavel wanting to do something for the people in his electorate. Certainly, members on the government benches, as well as some members of the opposition and the crossbenches, are regularly in touch, seeking to get the benefits out of programs such as the international education program and the music education program.


Currently, there is a call for nominations for the Music Innovation Fund, which is worth half a million dollars, and there are opportunities there. Across our school system, we are also investing heavily in supporting Aboriginal education, both in terms of the Clontarf academies and SAASTA (South Australian Aboriginal Secondary Training Academy), which provide great opportunities. We are also investing in a broad Aboriginal education program, focused not just on ensuring that Aboriginal students are prepared to be at school and get the best results but, as Peter Buckskin put it, that our schools are prepared for the students and that where there is a lack of cultural knowledge and understanding that we address that so that every student coming into our school can be best supported to fulfil their potential.

I spoke to a group of language teachers yesterday who came to a professional development conference at Adelaide Oval. They were extraordinarily excited about the work we are doing to enhance the offering of languages in our schools. We spoke about the opportunity for them to get more champions in their schools and to work with their principals to try to encourage more families and students to understand the benefits of doing a language subject in the higher secondary years and to ensure that the offerings they are doing are world class. The commitment of those teachers to offering their language programs in their schools was wonderful and sits alongside the government's focus on developing languages in schools.

We also have a substantial program in relation to vocational education. I encourage anyone who wants to make a contribution to do so on the YourSAy website. Until the middle of July, we are seeking people's reflections on vocational education schools and how we can better ensure that our young people understand not only the pathways that are available to them, to apprenticeships or traineeships or other forms of vocational education, but also how we can deliver a vocational education program for them that is world class and meets the needs of industry and the businesses that are going to be employing young people in these roles or that support them to be able to become an entrepreneur in their own right.

I was with the member for Heysen at Heathfield High School twice last week, and it was a great privilege to look at some of the work the department has funded through the budget in our entrepreneurial education program. Heathfield High School is very proud. I saw one of their parents, who is a noted columnist in our major newspaper in South Australia, proudly crowing about what was being done in that entrepreneurial stream at Heathfield High School. Two of the teams from Heathfield High School won in their categories at the Shark Tank last week, supported by MIE Lab, Sony and the University of Adelaide, and that was great to see.

We will continue to roll out that entrepreneurial education program, school infrastructure, the internet, international, Aboriginal, music, languages, vocational education and of course our literacy guarantee. The literacy guarantee is a key issue for this government. Supporting our students to be able to read and write and have strong literacy from the early years is absolutely foundational for their success in future education. It is a wonderful opportunity for our students in our schools to be able to enhance the offerings there.

Last week, literacy came up as the New South Wales government announced that they are going to be doing a trial of the year 1 phonics check. I commend Sarah Mitchell, the new Minister for Education in New South Wales, for that work. I think that the key thing when it comes to the phonics check is to understand that it is not a silver bullet designed to solve all the problems in one five to 10-minute session. It is not a high stakes test like NAPLAN because, of course, it is not independently assessed; it is delivered by the classroom teacher. I think that gave comfort to a lot of our teachers once they actually saw it in practice.

The research done by Anne Bayetto from Flinders University that was made public when we came to office was commissioned by the member for Port Adelaide as minister. There are no politics here, and I appreciate the bipartisan support the Labor Party gives to this. It demonstrated that students found it a positive experience, that staff doing it found it largely a positive experience, even if they had been sceptical about its potential benefits, and that it provided an opportunity for interventions for students who may otherwise slip through the cracks.

Carolyn Grantskalns and the Association of Independent Schools have taken the licence. I think that Catholic Education has as well, so those schools may also benefit from it. We have offered our experience to other states as well that may be interested in this area. As I said, it will not necessarily be a silver bullet, but it will help improve practice and it will help us pick up a number of students who would otherwise slip through the cracks and help them be all that they can be.

Across the education department, these things are doing well and will continue to do well. I reiterate where I started, which is that the education department in South Australia has been provided with more money in this budget by the Treasurer, Rob Lucas, than in any previous budget under any previous treasurer in South Australia's history. We thank Treasurer Lucas for that support. Indeed, I am proud to be part of a government that is investing in education.

Even in times when budgetary constraints are significant and the GST writedowns provide a significant challenge for our system to deal with, the Marshall Liberal government continues to invest in education not just in our school system and the things that are offered in the education department itself but also in TAFE SA. Last year, members would remember that there was a $109.8 million rescue package for TAFE SA.

By the way, I do not get a lot of questions about TAFE in question time in this chamber. I am looking forward to the opposition starting to ask me some questions about TAFE; apart from in estimates last year, I am not sure I have had a single one. We look forward to the Labor Party deciding to engage on the issue of TAFE and perhaps develop some questions and put them in the chamber.

In the absence of that, I will share with the chamber that, in addition to the $110 million of extra support provided by the Marshall Liberal government to TAFE SA last year, this budget also contains an extra $25 million of support, bringing our total support to help TAFE SA deliver a fresh start for its organisation to $135 million. That fresh start is necessary because there was a crisis of confidence in TAFE after those opposite oversaw the absolute chaos of an audit by the national regulator, where it underperformed in all 16 out of 16 courses tested.

Ultimately, they were able to fix two of them quickly, and four of them ceased to be offered. It was not until April or May 2018 that the others were brought back online. The quality improvement work to bring us to the level of the national training packages that were expected was done throughout 2018. It was an absolute privilege to work with the senior people at TAFE SA and the people on the ground at TAFE SA, so many of whom helped do the work to ensure that, when ASQA came back again at the end of last year; 16 out of the 16 courses audited were passed and TAFE SA was given a clean bill of health in terms of its quality.

We are delivering what the national training packages expect. We are working with TAFE to ensure that it delivers what businesses and industry need in South Australia. We are also working with them—this is part of our VET review as well—to ensure that they integrate well with our school system. When our schools seek the opportunity for more of their young people to go on these pathways to apprenticeships, traineeships or other vocational education, TAFE is an organisation that can deliver on what our school students need.

Delivering for students and delivering for business and industry—between meeting those two goals, we will better deliver for the people of South Australia. That is what Rob Lucas's budget, the Marshall Liberal government's second budget, is doing for TAFE. We are really enjoying working with Jacqui McGill and her board and the new CE, David Coltman, who has hit the ground running. I cannot wait to see the great steps forward we will be able to take with TAFE in the period going forward.

As the local MP for Morialta, I indicate my gratitude on behalf of our community for some of the projects that are particularly important in that area. The upgrade to Magill Road and Portrush Road will be transformational for many people's commutes every day and a productivity improvement for the eastern suburbs. The upgrade to Graves Street and Newton Road addresses a long-held safety issue and concern for people at the school, people at the church and people in the local community in Newton. While it is no longer in Morialta, a significant number of the people going to that church and school are Morialta residents, so we are very grateful.

The Paradise Interchange upgrade—we are looking forward to seeing some shovels in the ground very soon—is an enormous public transport benefit for people living in Rostrevor, Athelstone in particular and some in Highbury. I cannot tell you how well the upgrade of hundreds of extra spaces is going to be received. The upgrade to the Thorndon Park Primary School crossing will hopefully be completed this year. The money has been delivered, and we are working on that with the council.

At Highbury Primary School, students living on the river side of Lower North East Road benefit from the new crossing, which was promised before the election and which has been delivered; I drove past it the other day. I know that students from Highbury Primary School did a tour of Parliament House earlier today, and some of those students, living on the river side of Lower North East Road, can now walk to school much more safely than they could previously, and that is great news for them.

Traffic lights are being installed at the Dernancourt Village Shopping Centre entry and exit. When the member for Lee was the minister for transport, he and I spent a very awkward five minutes in my car waiting to turn right onto Lower North East Road. I appreciated the first steps that he, as the minister for transport, took in starting some improvements to that intersection. Now I appreciate the extra funding that has been provided by this new government to get the job done once and for all. I acknowledge that the member for Lee came out to the electorate to talk and engage in that way. It was a fun day, I thought. I thank the member for Lee for that time.

There is another range of projects that we are working on with the Adelaide Hills Council, where funding has been provided to improve local infrastructure. As the member for Morialta, this is a good budget for our electorate. We recently had the Minister for Emergency Services come to Morialta and provide the opportunity for the Norton Summit-Ashton CFS Brigade and the Summertown and Districts CFS Brigade to have support provided there to improve their stations, to improve public safety and to demonstrate respect and support for our local community.

There is a range of other things that will benefit the people of Morialta. The fact is the Marshall Liberal government is committed to delivering more jobs, lower costs and better services. This has been a difficult budget, this has been a difficult budget circumstance, but it is a grown-up government that is working very hard to deliver a fair budget to ensure that where we need to enhance revenues we do so in a fair way. It is a budget that still continues to deliver productive infrastructure, building South Australia both in our built infrastructure and the capabilities of our people through our education system. I commend the bill to the house.

Bill read a second time.

Estimates Committees

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Minister for Education) (16:46): I move:

That this bill be referred to estimates committees.

Motion carried.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Minister for Education) (16:46): By leave, I move:

That a message be sent to the Legislative Council requesting that the Treasurer (Hon. R.I. Lucas), the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment (Hon. D.W. Ridgway), the Minister for Human Services (Hon. J.M.A. Lensink) and the Minister for Health and Wellbeing (Hon. S.G. Wade), members of the Legislative Council, be permitted to attend and give evidence before the estimates committees of the House of Assembly on the Appropriation Bill.

Motion carried.

Appropriation Grievances

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Minister for Education) (16:47): I move:

That the house note grievances.

Ms MICHAELS (Enfield) (16:47): I note for the record that I am not the lead speaker on these grievances, that would be the member for Lee, but I am first on the list. I rise to speak about the Appropriation Bill and, in particular, the measures in the bill that negatively impact on the constituents in Enfield.

We all remember the promises made by the Liberal government in the lead-up to the state election. Just to remind those on the other side of the house, the Premier promised us more jobs, lower costs and better services. I say this to remind the Premier of the commitments he made to the people of South Australia because it appears he may have forgotten since he won the election.

I was not the member for Enfield when the government's first budget was handed down, but I heard all about it from the people of Enfield as I was campaigning and since the by-election. In particular, the closure of Service SA was a crucial issue in the campaign, such a crucial issue that every single candidate promised to oppose its closure. It was not just me as the Labor candidate or the Independents; it was the Independent candidate who was a member of the Liberal Party. It was the shadow Liberal Party candidate who retained her membership of the Liberal Party and received permission to use the Liberal name during the Enfield campaign.

So toxic was this government's decision to close Service SA that even those most closely aligned with the government opposed it. In fact, even the Minister for Child Protection wrote opposing it but did not seem to have the ability to do anything about it in cabinet. Call me naive, but I had been hoping that this government would have seen the error of its ways and reversed its decision to close Prospect Service SA in this budget. Along with many of my constituents with whom I have been speaking, I am sorry to see that the government is still blind to its mistakes.

I have previously spoken in this place about the importance of Prospect Service SA to my constituents. In particular, it provides vital services to those who have no internet access, to the elderly, those on low incomes and those with limited English skills. Service SA provides services to some of the most vulnerable people in our community. The Prospect Service SA is the third busiest centre in the state, and its use has been increasing year on year. I still go into the Northpark Shopping Centre and regularly see line-ups out the door.

Supported by facts, the waiting times at Prospect Service SA grew 20 per cent in the 2017-18 financial year. What I really want to know is where my constituents are expected to go once the Prospect Service SA centre is closed. I suspect the answer might be that they all drive to Mount Barker when that centre is opened. No measures have been put in place in this budget for the increased demand in the surrounding Service SA centres once Prospect is closed, not to mention the closure of the Modbury and Mitcham centres.

Over 27,000 South Australians have signed various petitions against the closure of the three Service SA centres and my community in Enfield, in particular, needs some certainty about this issue. I especially ask the minister responsible to urgently provide my community with some certainty about the future of our centre. So where are the better services the Premier promised?

I now want to move on to the domestic violence service. This government's attack on our state's most vulnerable people continues, with the government announcing that in this budget it will be cutting $780,000 to the Domestic Violence Court Assistance Service. This cruel cut puts victims of domestic violence at a significant risk. In one year alone the Domestic Violence Court Assistance Service helped more than 800 people to secure intervention orders against perpetrators of domestic violence.

It is inconceivable in this day and age that a government would consider reducing services that protect victims of domestic violence. We all know the frightening statistics about domestic violence in Australia and the number of women who are murdered by their partners each year. At this time, we should be ensuring that services and supports are increased for these vulnerable South Australians.

It also appears that, while the government is reducing funding to this service, the Attorney-General's own department has failed to award the contract to run the service to the most competitive service provider. The Women's Legal Service (South Australia) has been providing women with legal advice across a range of areas, including domestic violence, for more than 20 years. I understand that the Women's Legal Service tendered for the contract, offering to provide the required level of service for $200,000 less per year than the successful bidder.

In 2017-18, 62 per cent of Women's Legal Service clients were victims of domestic violence. This service knows the needs of its clients, and it knows how to provide the best assistance for these people in need. The Women's Legal Service has extensive experience in assisting victims of domestic violence; to award the contract to a provider that is apparently $200,000 more seems just reckless. That is an extra $200,000 per year that could have been spent on education and the prevention of domestic violence in our community.

Unfortunately, this budget does not provide any additional funding to prevent domestic violence or for support services in this area. Not only is that a huge blow for the Women's Legal Service and other providers in this sector, worse, it is a massive blow to the women who need our help. So, again, where are the better services the Premier promised?

Now to the bin tax. While this government continues to cut services for South Australia's most vulnerable, it is also attacking South Australian households through the imposition of the new bin tax. The Marshall government first claimed it was going to implement an ineffective council rate capping policy, which they failed to do, and now they are hypocritically pushing more costs onto councils through this new tax increase. Increasing the solid waste levy by 40 per cent—that is 40 per cent—means councils that worked hard to actually limit the increases to their rates are being forced to push their rates higher because of this tax.

We have seen nine councils increase their rates beyond what they had stated in their draft budgets and one more council add a levy to its rates. In my area, Prospect council rates were increased by 0.6 per cent because of this tax. Port Adelaide Enfield council is meeting tonight to decide on additional increases in its rates because of the bin tax. That is a cost that is passed on to every South Australian household and business. This is an attack on all South Australian households. So what happened to the Premier's promise of lower costs?

Before the budget was even handed down, we knew the government had no interest in providing lower costs. Massive increases to government fees on car registrations, driver's licence renewals and public transport fares are a pretty good indication of where this government's priorities lie. I represent an electorate filled with hardworking families and pensioners, an electorate where great care and consideration is taken when spending every dollar that is earned. This government's decision to increase fees so greatly will have a tremendous impact on household budgets in Enfield.

A 5 per cent increase to car registration makes it harder for families to get their kids to school. Increases in public transport fares make it harder for people to get to work. Increases in staff parking for our public hospitals makes it harder for nurses and cleaners to get to work. Let's not forget the Premier's obsession with reducing public transport services, as was further demonstrated by yesterday's privatisation announcement, which means that public transport is not even an option for nurses and shift workers and will be less so in the future. Again, what happened to the Premier's promise of lower costs?

Finally, on the introduction of land tax aggregation, I suggest that the $40 million extra in land tax that is predicted from this change per year is probably quite a conservative measure. This measure is going to hurt everyday mums and dads in a big way. Good policy or bad policy, introducing a change like this with no grandfathering of these rules, with no transition, is going to devastate people who have worked hard and invested their hard-earned money into building South Australia. In many cases, this could double the amount of land tax payable with no ability to increase rents. In fact, in some cases, almost the entire rent per year will go just to land tax. Doing that without any warning and no grandfathering of these rules is just cruel.

Many people before me have spoken about the crippling debt levels that we will be left with, as a result of not only this budget but also the unfunded and even uncosted projects that the government has committed to in the future. The sad state of this Marshall budget is the cruelness on everyday South Australians with no real vision and no real aspiration for our state. That, to me, is the saddest thing about this budget—the total lack of vision from the Premier and the Marshall Liberal government.

Mr DULUK (Waite) (16:57): I also rise to make a small contribution on the Appropriation Bill as it affects my community—or benefits my community, more importantly—and, more broadly, the people of South Australia. There are several key elements of this budget. If you just listened to the contributions of the members opposite, you would have thought that this is the worst budget ever handed down in South Australian history.

Mr McBride: It's not the worst.

Mr DULUK: Not the worst, the member for MacKillop said. I am sure that prize goes to the last 16 years of the state Labor government and their budgets that, year on year, hurt South Australia, did not invest in the future and failed to make any real benefit structurally for my community especially.

Some of the good things in this budget include road infrastructure. Across the state, we have committed to huge investment in road infrastructure in our rural and regional communities and across metropolitan South Australia as well. Busting congestion is certainly the theme of those road announcements and it is fantastic that the work on those congestion-busting projects is happening. Most important in my community is the Fullarton Road-Cross Road intersection upgrade at a cost of $61 million.

The completion of the project, which I believe is within the forward estimates, will link the whole upgrade of the Mitcham Hills Road corridor, working at the Blackwood roundabout through the main section of the corridor, where $16.5 million is allocated in the state budget, in last year's budget and across the forward estimates, an additional $20 million in the recent federal election campaign and then complemented by the $61 million investment at Cross Road-Fullarton Road intersection. The morning commute for my community will be improved by the Marshall Liberal government. They are improvements that never happened and were never planned by the former Labor government. I always like to remind people in my community of that very important investment.

There will also be an improved upgrade of the Glen Osmond Road-Fullarton Road intersection as commuters head down Fullarton Road, further benefiting commuters and bus congestion in my community. Of course, there is the alteration of the Springbank Road/Daws Road/Goodwood Road intersection, which is seeing additional funding from the state and federal governments to fix up that issue, which has been so important. I know there has been a lot of hot air from those opposite, but it has only happened because of the investment in this budget.

Another really important issue, which is no longer in my electorate but serves many communities in my electorate and certainly formed part of the electorate I represented before the boundary change, is the addition of a fourth lane to Flagstaff Road, which the community has been calling on for many years. Once again, it is only a Liberal government that is investing money in it. The former Labor government, in the past 16 years, could not allocate a single cent to that project, but it is this government that is committed to that project, and that is wonderful.

One of the important aspects in the budget for all South Australians and also for my community is the investment in health, in particular the Repat Hospital, where $69.1 million has been allocated to reactivate the site as a genuine health precinct. This will include new statewide specialised brain and spinal injury rehab facilities, a rehabilitation gym, a town square and an 18-bed specialised facility for patients experiencing the most extreme behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia. We continue to plan for surgical and procedural services at the site and, of course, we have already reopened about 40 beds and the hydrotherapy pool at the Repat site. This is on the back of our government's commitment to this site after the former Labor government closed the Repat.

There has been so much talk recently about so-called privatisation and our addiction to privatisation as a government, but of course it was the former Labor government that closed the Repat, sold the forests, sold the lands titles office and cut back Modbury Hospital. A whole range of services across South Australia were cut, slashed and sold by the former Labor government. There is also $550 million in this budget to invest in the first instalment of funding for a new Women's and Children's Hospital. This is the biggest single investment in our health system for many years.

A really important part of my electorate and the budget is around the environment and green initiatives. That is so important in my community. Following a decade of funding reductions to the state's parks, the 2019-20 budget includes $11.8 million of new funding for our beautiful parks. A $3.3 million parks restoration fund will be created to fast-track upgrades and improvements to activate nature and heritage-based tourism experiences across South Australia and improve accessibility. Of course, $2.5 million will be spent on infrastructure at the Glenthorne National Park.

Under the City Deal with the commonwealth government, which was signed earlier this year, we will see a $3 million upgrade to Carrick Hill visitor centre, an important state asset; $1.25 million for digital tools and wayfinding trails as well as nature play at Wittunga House and Wittunga Botanic Garden at Blackwood, which is one of three botanic gardens in South Australia; and additional funding allocation for Old Government House and Friends of Belair National Park, the second oldest national park in Australia.

Another important thing, and the Treasurer touched on it in his contribution, was this government's commitment to the Aboriginal art and cultures gallery at Lot Fourteen. I think this is a fantastic initiative, one that needs and will have a wow factor for this state as we look to create something that I would like to see: the continued creation of a cultural boulevard on North Terrace, starting at the Botanic Garden all the way to the Casino, where people can enjoy the cultural parts of South Australia and the City of Adelaide, including our universities, the Museum, the Library, the Art Gallery and this beautiful parliament precinct, which will soon be overshadowed by a very large building commissioned by those opposite.

Investment in an Indigenous Aboriginal art and cultures gallery will be a game changer in terms of bringing tourists to this state and creating something really different. I am very excited about that and glad that it is part of the City Deal that will see the development of Lot Fourteen as more than just residential apartments—which was the dream of those opposite for that site—and create a smart city and invest in that infrastructure that is so important. Other funding that I really appreciated, and I know the member for Heysen did as well, was the investment in the Cedars art gallery and the Heysen gallery in Hahndorf.

More importantly, one of the most important things that any government can do is to play its part in reducing the cost-of-living pressures of its constituents across South Australia. I am glad that once again in this budget there is our commitment to reducing the ESL levy on South Australian households, seeing a cut of $360 million over the forward estimates and, of course, changes in the CTP regime that will give money back to South Australian households. I have said quite often that government has a duty to its people and that anything we can do to save money and pass on savings through government efficiency is absolutely critical.

As I touched on, health is important, roads and infrastructure are important, as is supporting our volunteers. In the time I have left, I mention that there is money in this budget that goes to supporting our CFS and SES, and $16.5 million has been allocated over three years to upgrade the SAPOL emergency communication centre, with $5.5 million for vehicle maintenance and facility upgrades for the CFS and SES. In addition, $52 million has been invested into building South Australia's security through crime prevention strategies and initiatives. I will talk about that in a future opportunity in regard to my electorate.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee) (17:08): I rise to make a grievance contribution on the Appropriation Bill and, in doing so, indicate that I am the lead speaker for the opposition with regard to this debate. I want to pick up on a point particularly around infrastructure funding, as well as the portfolio of transport, given the news we have had in the last 36 hours that the government is now looking to privatise the train and tram services here in metropolitan Adelaide.

This is, of course, despite the extraordinary increase in debt that will occur over the next four years, an increase to a total government debt position of more than $21 billion with an annual interest bill by the end of the forward estimates of $1,075 million in one year, or nearly $3 million a day, despite that huge, extraordinary increase in debt, which of course we were promised by the now Premier, the then member for Dunstan and leader of the opposition, would not occur under a Liberal government, after railing against increases to debt in the state budget under the former Labor government, which did not come anywhere near the levels of debt this budget now foresees our state accruing.

You ask yourself, 'Well, for what?' We know that, according to the Premier's responses in the last sitting week, we have another $5.4 billion to spend upgrading the north-south corridor, at least $2.7 billion, or 50 per cent, of which will need to come from the state government. That is not provisioned for, certainly over the forward estimates, and is not provisioned for beyond that. So there is another $2.7 billion of debt to add to that $21 billion and again an extra $1 billion at least—at least—for the total cost of the Women's and Children's Hospital. So there we are: close to $25 billion.

I have been interested to hear some of the contributions both in the second reading debate and more recently in the grievance debate about some of the other infrastructure projects. It seems that here in South Australia, unfortunately, the South Australian Liberal Party has adopted the same deliberately misleading practice as their federal counterparts of talking about how terrific programs are going to be delivered over the next eight to 10 years under their government.

We had the announcement that the federal budget was back in black before the federal election. Of course, it was not. It was still in the red, and it was not going to be back in black, even projected for subsequent financial years. We see commitments about what, over the next 10 years, the Liberal government will spend. It is no different here with this state budget.

Essentially what the Premier and the government are asking us to believe is that if we are to vote them in as a state another two times, at the next two elections, then they might come good on the promises that are in this budget. That is just extraordinary. The insouciant arrogance of this government—that they think people should be required to elect them for 12 years in total so that commitments made at the 15-month mark of the government can be delivered—is quite extraordinary.

We also see that this situation has arisen because of the predilection of those opposite to completely kowtow to their federal counterparts. Those people opposite like nothing more than travelling to Canberra, rolling over onto their backs and having their tummies tickled by their federal counterparts. We have seen it with the Minister for Environment and Water, where South Australia once again is going to be dudded on water allocations down the River Murray.

We have seen it with the Premier, when he came back and trumpeted how wonderful his City Deal is for the city of Adelaide. We will receive less money over the next four years than Wollongong. We received less money than Townsville. These are not even capital cities in other states, yet the capital city of Adelaide could not receive a City Deal over the next four years as good as those two locations. This is a Premier who was played like a fiddle—but no more so than the infrastructure minister has been completely played by his federal counterparts when it comes to infrastructure funding.

On South Road, where we have just seen the Labor-initiated and funded projects of the Torrens to Torrens project, the Darlington project and the Northern Connector project, which were under construction simultaneously after two funding agreements were reached in less than 12 months to deliver those projects in total over less than five years, we now have a promise that at some stage towards the end of the forward estimates we might see some work commenced on the Pym Street to Regency Road upgrade, money for which was provisioned in the last budget of the former state Labor government.

But there will be no further progress than that, other than, apparently, $250 million of early works. No-one quite knows what those early works are; certainly people who live along those corridors, who look like they are going to have their properties compulsorily acquired by the government, do not know whether their properties are going to be consumed in the spending of this $252 million. That is all we have to show for this state government's commitment to reaching infrastructure funding agreements with the federal government.

That does sell those members opposite slightly short, of course, because they did manage to get some deals done in the lead-up to the federal election to support some federal marginal seats here in South Australia. One that they were particularly worried about was the federal electorate of Sturt where the former member, Christopher Pyne, was retiring. The Premier's chief of staff was parachuted into that seat, despite a field of candidates, including women, putting their hands up for preselection in the Liberal Party. We know how much of anathema it is for those opposite to have proportionate representation of women in parliament, let alone in their political party.

We did manage to get some infrastructure funding to pork-barrel some federal electorates that the Liberal Party was sensitive about in the lead-up to the federal election, but anything of greater importance? No, of course not, not really, not least because I do not think many people have much confidence in the ability of the transport department, and in particular the transport minister, to be carrying out much in the way of getting things done around South Australia.

A great example of that is the three major projects, which we have been told we can expect to see across regional South Australia that MPs representing regional electorates in this place have been trumpeting: the rural roads, the roads of strategic importance and the Princes Highway upgrades. They are welcome initiatives, no question about that, given nearly $900 million together. How much of that will be delivered over the next four years? Are any of those projects to be delivered over the next four years? The answer is no. Most of that funding occurs outside the forward estimates in five to 10 years' time.

That is not good news for people who live in regional South Australia. They have been promised that they are getting something, but the promise will not be delivered until well after the next state election and possibly after the state election after that one. That is just a government more obsessed with revelling in the spin of an announcement than the delivery of a project, and I have to say it is starting to become a characteristic of how we are treated by the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure. He likes to say that his achievements in securing funding from the federal government are the product of a grown-up relationship.

We just heard from the Minister for Education about the funding agreement signed for public schools in South Australia. It is like the Minister for Transport protests too much in using that term: a grown-up relationship. I would imagine a grown-up relationship would be something respectful, something where both parties are placed on an equal footing, where funding is able to be received when it is needed for these projects. Unfortunately, that is not what we have, and it is no surprise really when we look at some of the other achievements of the member for Schubert, the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure.

Remember the promise that we had at the last election that the tram was going to turn right? How many months of ignoring departmental advice did it take until he and the government could walk away from that commitment? It took six months, six months of ignoring the incoming government brief, six months of ignoring the departmental advice updates that he was receiving until he could finally admit that he was wrong. That project was cancelled. We had the tram delay, of course. As soon as the 2018 state election was over, basically, tools were put down on that project and we had time line after time line missed until eventually it was completed.

Flinders Link was a project initiated and funded by the former state Labor government out of savings from the Goodwood Junction upgrade project. It still has not commenced. We saw that state budget money was committed for a new train station down at Tonsley, and apparently there is a $40 million or 50 per cent budget blowout.

There has been no progress at all whatsoever with the Service SA centres that the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure was due to close, including one last financial year, to save the first $2 million of $6 million a year that eventually needs to be delivered. The landlords have no idea what is going on because the government apparently is not talking to them about what is going on with those Service SA centres, let alone the people we should actually be focused on, who are those South Australians who are just trying to do the right thing by their government and pay their government bills. They are trying to give some revenue to the minister and to the government, and they are still not told what the future arrangements will be.

In terms of public transport services, we have seen carriages removed from train lines, and then the minister has the gall to stand up here today and say, 'Our public transport network is too crowded. People are having to stand up too much on trains.' Well, a hint from somebody who was responsible in the portfolio for four years: do not take carriages off services that are overcrowded if you are that worried about it. The answer is not automatically privatising them.

In terms of bus service cuts, we have seen $3 million of $46 million of public transport cuts that need to be made, including, according to last year's budget papers, train services that need to be cut—$46 million. You can imagine where he is going to come after those, just like the first tranche of bus service cuts, which occurred almost exclusively in Labor electorates. You can imagine what the Labor electorates are in for for the next $43 million of bus and train service cuts.

In regard to the Footy Express service, an initiative of the former Labor government, we have been told by the minister that cannot happen anymore, at least not with government support. We had the Adelaide Oval hotel, itself a remarkable piece of behaviour by this government, allowing a president of the state Liberal Party to come in and negotiate a deal for a $42 million taxpayer-funded loan to go to the organisation that he was superintending—absolutely extraordinary. But the minister forgot to meet his legal obligation to consult with the Adelaide city council. We have legislation which requires the minister to consult with the Adelaide city council. You do not have to take my word for it: you can ask the Adelaide city council whether they were consulted before the announcement, and they were not.

We have the ridiculous situation about Springbank Road, the insistence to the public that two intersections are better than one. Anyone with a driver's licence, anyone who has ever navigated through there, knows that that is a farce. It took weeks and weeks and weeks until the minister realised no-one was listening to him and no-one would believe him that his two-intersection solution was worthwhile.

Then, of course, he was in charge of rate capping, and didn't that pan out well? He could not actually nominate what the rate cap was. He could not tell us how it would work, for months and months, and he wonders why the legislation was not passed through the parliament. Well, the proof is in the pudding is the saying, and the saying was shown to be true when councils were releasing their draft budgets to the community with increases of one point something per cent or two point something per cent lower than the piece of work that he had commissioned as minister, saying that the cap should be 2.9 per cent. So we would have seen increases in council rate bills from rate capping, not decreases.

But he did not stop there. He was part of a cabinet that sat around and increased the solid waste levy by 40 per cent and made sure that councils had no choice but to pass on the increased costs of that to their ratepayers—absolutely extraordinary. Gone was the promise of lower council rate bills and in was the delivery of higher council rate bills. We had his other agency, Renewal SA, that had not had a chief executive for months and in fact had the extraordinary situation of having in a two-week period three different chief executives. He must have had cramp from re-signing all the authorisation forms for the delegations.

That was not too dissimilar to what happened in DPTI, where they sacked the chief executive and the department rudderless for a month. We had projects where (pardon the pun) wheels were falling off, the tram extension was not completed for months and they continually missed the deadlines and then finally, in late 2018, we get some movement and we get a chief executive in there.

We had the park-and-ride projects at Tea Tree Plaza and Klemzig, funded and committed to by the former Labor government, cancelled for no good reason except that the car parks were overflowing with cars, and he wonders why public transport patronage does not continue to increase on the key routes like the O-Bahn. It is pretty hard for people to catch public transport if they cannot get to it to get on the vehicle that is meant to take them into town.

We had the announcement only a couple months ago about the privatisation of regional road maintenance. This completed the work of former Liberal minister Diana Laidlaw, who privatised the road maintenance here in metropolitan Adelaide. Now it is to be privatised out in rural South Australia. We had the extraordinary situation where the minister refused to meet with people who were concerned about the number of dolphins that were being killed in the Port River and around Torrens Island—extraordinary.

This went on for months and months and months, until the Messenger ran a community campaign to try to get him to intervene. After those months, finally—Lord knows how many dolphins were killed in the meantime—speed limits were reduced. It was an absolute no-brainer solution which could have been implemented by directing the department to erect a couple of signs in those waterways.

We had the farce about the Port Adelaide office accommodation. From releases under FOI, we know now of advice to the minister that the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure was pleading with him for a decision about whether the departments, which had previously been approved to move down to Port Adelaide under the former Labor government, were still going to move down there. Of course, no, someone gave the great idea that private companies instead should go down and take up the floor space in this building. How did that go? The building was empty for months and the floor space, which was previously to be tenanted by public servants, lay dormant for months and months. All those businesses down there, all those new restaurants and hotel and bar upgrades, expecting the boost of 500 public servants from May 2018, in the meantime only got a trickle of new people going into that building.

We had the farce of the commitment to increase regional road speed limits. This was something that was committed to. Again, a mere changing of the signs is all that is required by the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure, and every time the member for Mount Gambier asks the minister what is going on with that it is laughed off as, 'Oh, we'll get to it.' Either it is happening or it is not happening. It was an election commitment. Is it happening or not? I suspect what has happened is that the minister has received the same advice that the former Labor government got, which is that it would risk poor road safety outcomes to continue those roads at a 110 km/h speed limit.

We have also had, unfortunately for the member for Reynell, the campaign to do something about the Wicked Campers to try to take those obscene slogans that we see on those rented vehicles off our streets in exactly the same way that we legislate and regulate numberplates to make sure that people do not have obscene words on numberplates. But, again, nothing.

Perhaps the most galling of all, certainly for me—and I cannot imagine how it affects you, Deputy Speaker—is losing regional rail services on Eyre Peninsula. I must have raised this issue three or four times, even when I was minister in this place. I cannot remember how many times I raised it with the federal government, about reaching a funding agreement where we could both fund those rail lines to be upgraded to make sure that those trains could continue to deliver grain through to Port Lincoln.

In fact, Genesee & Wyoming was even good enough to commit to doing a business case to give to the state government and the federal government to ask for that money. The member for West Torrens, the former treasurer, and I as the transport minister made the commitment clear to Genesee & Wyoming that, if there is federal money on the table, we will be there as a state government to keep these train services going. What has happened? Nothing. Those rail lines are closing, the services are not continuing and the road upgrades that have been promised by the federal government and by the minister do not get rolled out over the next four years. Some of it starts, but not all of it gets delivered. That is a terrible result for Eyre Peninsula.

After all that success by the minister in this portfolio, the minister now expects South Australians to get in behind him and his quest to privatise train and tram services here in metropolitan Adelaide. You have got to be joking, particularly when the first justification is, 'Oh, look at the London Underground. That's been a fabulous success.' Of course it has not. That is why it is back in public hands. That is why it is not being operated by the private sector operators.

What happened in Melbourne? That was the other example cited by the minister and by the Premier. What was the experience in Melbourne? No less than a research fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs, that last harbinger of 1990s economic rationalist, neoliberal public policy here in South Australia, says it did not even deliver the benefits that were promised to Victorians. Those are two examples. We have not got off to a good start with the sale job of the privatisation of these services.

The other justification, of course, from the minister is, 'Well, patronage growth was low in 2016, 2017 and 2018, and that's because Labor was rubbish, but the Liberal government are fantastic.' It is just because of their fabulousness and their presence in government that patronage is suddenly booming. Of course, it would not have anything to do with the fact that the 2018-19 financial year was the first year without major disruptions caused by major projects being delivered affecting the public transport network, would it?

I am talking here about the interruptions to the O-Bahn service for the O-Bahn City Access Project. I am talking about the interruptions to the Outer Harbor line and to the Grange line caused by the Torrens Rail Junction works to grade separate passenger and freight rail lines. I am also talking about the interruptions to tram services for the tram extension down the remainder of North Terrace. But that is all inconvenient truth; that is all inconvenient fact. We will just ignore that and continue saying, 'Labor bad and Liberal good.'

What justifies this continual overreach? It was again borne out on ABC radio this morning, when journalist David Bevan asked the minister, 'Is the London tube back in public hands after an outsourcing deal?' The minister said, 'What specific train is in what hands is not really the point we're making.' Well, it is the point. It is exactly the point because that was one of the two examples that was held up to be the justification for privatising the operation of train and tram services here in South Australia. When pressed on it, he said, 'I don't have details that specific in front of me.' How convenient. If that is the key justification for why we should privatise and it suddenly turns out to be a bogus reason, suddenly the details are elsewhere.

The nub of the issue for the government is what savings are to be realised. Then they say, 'It's not about savings. We don't have a savings figure in mind.' That was the quote. 'There isn't a specific figure in mind,' said the minister: it is not about the savings, it is about the vibe, it is about how good the private sector is. I think South Australians have a bit of an understanding that when it comes to the private sector and public services, particularly as a result of decisions made by Liberal governments in this state, it does not work out too well.

For example, it did not work out too well for the Thevenard wharf a couple of years ago, did it? It was one of the seven ports, I think, that were privatised in the 1990s by the former Liberal government when they privatised Ports Corp in South Australia. It has not worked out too well for prison management, it has not worked out too well for buses and, for a lot of people, it also has not worked out too well for facilities management.

These were all the examples that were given by the minister in question time today: 'It was Labor's fault for not renationalising the services that we privatised when we were last in government.' Is that really the level of argument we are at now—that we should have renationalised what they privatised back in the 1990s? Most people who turn their mind to these things know that it is nigh on impossible to unscramble the egg once it is scrambled. Do you know the best example of this?

The Hon. S.K. Knoll interjecting:

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I know—

The Hon. S.K. Knoll: Don't let the truth get in the way of a story.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: —the minister is sensitive about this.

The Hon. S.K. Knoll interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: He loves to be loved, and there is not much love at the moment. I can imagine he is sensitive. The example he gave in question time today was the exact reason when it comes to public transport services—that is, the buses in 2011. After setting up TransAdelaide, after privatising the buses, after seeing buses not running at all, after seeing drivers without jobs and after seeing fares going up, how did the then Liberal government respond? They had to actually spend more on public transport. They had to subsidise these private corporations more to improve bus services to try to cover up for the failings in the privatisation.

Then, when it came to renewing those contracts—yes, that is right—there was a new tenderer who put in and won those contracts. You could not get a better salutary example of why this does not work—because that contractor, who did not have a workforce, who did not have the corporate knowledge, who did not have the experience, who did not understand how to run rostering and who did not understand how to run a bus depot properly, took control of those services.

What happened? What happened when Transfield took over those services under Light City Buses? Buses did not turn up; they did not have enough drivers. The government was running around having to put taxis on, and that is why. This minister, with his history and his litany of failures—

The Hon. S.K. Knoll interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Member for Lee, could you take a seat for a minute, please. I am going to interrupt here. The Minister for Transport is taking a bit of stick during this half hour, I concede that, but he will, in due course, have an opportunity to respond if he chooses to do that, so we will continue to listen to the member for Lee in silence. He has five minutes left. You have the call.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker, for your protection. I can understand that this would come as sour medicine for the minister, but it is after this 16 months of performance that he is now asking South Australians to trust his ability to deliver and to trust his judgement that this is going to be in their best interests.

I can tell you that I was at the Grange train station this morning and I did not even have to say a word or even ask people to come and sign the petition against this privatisation. People saw the sign and they walked up and signed it. People are furious about this, absolutely furious. They are even more angry now than when they found out that security guards were being removed from the evening services on the Grange train—another Labor initiative to try to convince more people to use public transport by making them feel safe, particularly at this time of year when it gets dark around 6 o'clock.

They have taken the security guards off, so how do vulnerable people feel? How do women feel about catching public transport? They feel less safe, so are they likely to catch it? Probably not and that is why patronage is at risk here. It is because this government continues to make decisions that are against the interests of those people who rely on public transport the most.

Public transport is not an option for a lot of people: it is all they have. They cannot afford to run a car. They catch public transport because they need to get in on the early service to start their shiftwork or because they are students or because they are school students and their parents cannot get them to school because they have their own commitments trying to get to work on time. This is not optional. This is not some special luxury that a government affords its community. This is an essential service and they make it more expensive and reduce services and now they want to privatise it.

Why do they want to privatise it? Where is the full scope of savings achieved? They are achieved by going after the workers who deliver it, by going after the train drivers, the tram drivers and the passenger service assistants as if they were highly paid executives—fat cats—who deserve this sort of punishment. Well, they are not. They are not at all.

They deserve support from this government. They deserve more resources for more services. They deserve better working conditions. They do not deserve privatisation and being thrown at the mercy of a private operator, and that is exactly what this government proposes. There will be fewer people employed, their pay and working conditions will be reduced and that is where the savings get made. This is a direct attack on public transport workers, as well as a direct attack on the public transport commuters.

I cannot understand what motivates this government. It is cruel. It is completely uncaring for the people in our community we should be supporting the most. It is a cavalier attitude of the government and the minister thinking that it has happened elsewhere and that this is what we have been hearing from our conservative neoliberal economists since the 1990s, hence it must work here.

We know it does not work. It has not worked. It did not work for ETSA when we had people reeling under the highest electricity prices in the country. In fact, those opposite used to like telling us they were the highest electricity prices in the world. Thank you, John Olsen, and thank you, Rob Lucas, but we do not want that for our trains and we do not want that for our trams. I would encourage this government and this minister to think a little more carefully about how they choose to treat the people of this community because they are not here for their own gratification: they are here to serve the public.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. S.K. Knoll.

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