HANSARD
SITTING CALENDAR
SEARCH
LIVE BROADCAST
Hansard Dynamic Member Index
House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-11-12 Daily Xml
Contents
Pdf Xml

Appropriation Bill 2020

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 11 November 2020.)

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (12:02): I would like to indicate that I will be the lead speaker in regard to the bill. I would like to start my budget reply by acknowledging the often stated but nonetheless important fact that we do indeed live in the best state in the country in the best country anywhere in the world. We say that confidently today, particularly in the context of South Australia's truly extraordinary health response to COVID-19.

On behalf of the state parliamentary Labor Party and the broader Labor movement, I again would like to put on the record our gratitude for the amazing leadership shown by the State Coordinator, Mr Grant Stevens, and Professor Nicola Spurrier and, indeed, the contribution of cabinet ministers and the Premier for their continued hard work and exquisite decision-making to protect us from COVID-19.

We also know that behind every great leadership team there are also those who execute, so most importantly we continue to pay a huge amount of kudos to those on the frontline keeping us safe: our hospital staff; those in the health bureaucracy, often unrecognised; our police; our emergency service workers; and those from the ADF who provided assistance—we thank you too.

Recently, I had the opportunity at an event to chat to a member of SAPOL, who explained to me the recent work she had been undertaking in the cross-border region in the South-East of our state. That particular task meant that this police officer had to spend an extended period of time away from her home, away from her husband and her young children. I asked the officer what that meant for her, and she said it was tough. However, as quickly as she recognised the difficulty associated with that she was also quick to point out to me that she saw herself as one of the lucky ones because she still had a job—and indeed she was right.

All of us in South Australia who are still in work are the lucky ones. No greater sacrifice has been made to keep South Australia safe than by those who have lost their businesses, lost their jobs lost their livelihoods. Those of us who give thanks for retaining our health and our jobs should remember that many of our brothers and sisters have willingly paid a terrible toll for that privilege.

Our focus must be on those people, the good men and women who have willingly complied with all the requests and restrictions placed upon them in the full knowledge that this would compromise their standard of living for the benefit of others. They are the true heroes of this unprecedented health and economic crisis. Our task is to repay this altruism not just with a promise for today but with a bold policy for tomorrow.

On this score, this latest state budget has succeeded in some areas but completely missed the mark in others, and this represents a massive missed opportunity for the people of our state. The elephant in the room with this state budget, of course, is the debt, the biggest debt our state has ever seen, an astonishing $33 billion that the Treasurer, the Hon. Rob Lucas, has aptly described as 'eyewatering'.

The easy thing to do, the politically expedient thing for an opposition to do when faced with such a daunting set of numbers, is to scream, wail and cry foul about how such a decision is totally reckless. Indeed, we know this is precisely how the member for Dunstan would act because that is how he did act when he was opposition leader. However, we on this side of the house have been consistent when it comes to debt: we believe you pay it down when times are good, as Labor did for an extended period under the leadership of Mike Rann and Kevin Foley—but, when times are bad, we believe you use debt productively to drive jobs.

The problem is that those opposite have been consistently inconsistent on the question of debt and, worse, on how and when debt has been deployed. Almost immediately upon being elected this Premier was telling us that life in South Australia was now good, despite his government presiding over a total collapse in jobs growth. During the first two years of this government only 1.3 per cent—1.3 per cent—of all jobs created in Australia were in South Australia, well down on the 6.2 per cent achieved in the last two years of the Labor government.

These truly horrific numbers, often reflected by having the highest unemployment rate in the nation, were particularly shocking considering that this Premier was already increasing the state's debt in the order of $10 billion—long before COVID even existed. And here we are, most three years into the life of this government, and what infrastructure projects are there to show for it? Virtually nothing, only a massive ribbon-cutting exercise on Labor-designed and funded projects.

There remains no sign of The QEH redevelopment, no sign of the Main South Road duplication, no sign of the park-and-rides at TTP or Klemzig, no sign of the mooted O-Bahn to Golden Grove. The level crossings at Hove and Ovingham continue to be delayed, and who can forget this Premier's last central infrastructure vision, replete with a glossy, a fly-through, and a cheesy video? Yes, Mr Speaker, GlobeLink—'globlink'—was quickly consigned to the dustbin of history by the Premier himself, along with the right-hand turn of the tram. So, while the Labor Party and I do not begrudge the use of debt in these truly extraordinary times, we desperately hope this next debt hike actually delivers the jobs and the infrastructure that have been promised.

There is no bigger promise than the completion of the north-south corridor. This is the project that Labor started and actually delivered on. The Northern Connector, the Superway, Torrens to Torrens, Darlington, Regency to Pym—all these projects have the stamp of Labor getting things done written all over them, and thus far this government has not actually delivered anything on South Road, only a promise. We welcome this promise, we back this promise and we say to the government, 'Don't take our bipartisan support for granted. Our expectation, the South Australian community's expectation, is that you finally get on with the job.'

The fact that this project remains not fully funded, there is no design and major construction is not scheduled to start until 2023—five years after this government took office—does not bode well for the job creation our state so desperately needs now, and it is jobs that our state so desperately needs. Never before has this state had such a daunting task to provide so many South Australians the dignity of work they are now being denied.

There are currently 165,000 people, 165,000 souls, actively looking for work. One can only imagine how they must feel that, according to this state budget, there is zero jobs growth for the financial year despite the record debt and despite a $2.6 billion deficit. Couple this with other challenges on the horizon and we know that things are going to get tough. We know that thousands upon thousands of South Australians are currently enjoying the relative security of JobSeeker and JobKeeper. Combined, these two expenditure measures represent an unprecedented injection of cash into our economy.

When we reflect upon the stimulus delivered by the Rudd government during the course of the GFC, it is often the so-called 'Rudd cheque' that comes to mind. The one-off $900 cheque pales into complete insignificance in comparison with the $1,500 every fortnight that thousands upon thousands of workers get on JobKeeper. We should not underestimate the positive yet distortionary impact this is having on parts of our economy.

Inevitably, the JobKeeper program must come to an end and, as it currently stands, that is scheduled to occur in March next year—a mere four months away. When that bell rings, those thousands of workers who have relied on these payments, and the businesses who have benefited from the stimulus of these payments, will not be in a position to wait for years for distant stimulus to arrive. They cannot afford a repeat of the insipid rollout of the stimulus we have seen thus far from this state government, as demonstrated in the recent figures from the Auditor-General.

Furthermore, if we are going to borrow against the wealth of future generations, we have a profound obligation to ensure that every dollar spent is spent where it is either needed most now or where we are setting up jobs for the future, and herein lies the missed opportunity. It is alarming what a budget with a $33 billion debt and a $2.6 billion deficit does not deliver.

This opposition does not want to see opportunities slip by us, which is why today, as promised, I offer a constructive response to this year's state budget. I offer proposals to ensure that no stone is left unturned in the pursuit of a better South Australia. Frequently, since the commencement of this pandemic and the obvious success of South Australia's health response, many have cited the opportunity this success brings to our future economy.

Many have hoped that COVID-19 would reframe the perception of South Australia to those ignorant of our exceptional way of life, ignorant of our competitiveness, ignorant of the opportunity of doing business here. This, combined with business increasingly looking for ways to reduce their cost base and COVID-19 resetting the way we view work, must represent our best opportunity yet to actively pursue and attract new businesses and new jobs to South Australia.

Our federation is competitive in its design. It is not enough to expect businesses to just come here. We must go out and find them. Now is the time to seize on our success and establish an active policy of investment attraction. Labor believes a well resourced but highly accountable investment attraction agency should be established, with a $50 billion bid fund aimed at attracting new businesses to our state.

This policy is a No Regrets proposition. Bid funds by their nature are only expended if they are successful. We know through the likes of Boeing and VeroGuard, this policy can deliver well-paid jobs of the future to our state. On top of bringing new businesses to our state, we have to support existing businesses to assist their growth which is why we want to bring back Brand SA.

Since the pandemic began, there is anecdotal evidence that consumers are asking where products are made as the public recognises the essential value of a local supply chain. The successful I Choose SA campaign was downgraded last year when this government axed Brand SA in a $1.6 million funding cut. Labor believes the government should bring back Brand SA and fund an $8 million new 'Buy South Australian' campaign to urge South Australians to buy South Australian made products in their local supermarkets.

This investment, spread over two years, would fund a broad intensive advertising and promotion campaign across media and in our supermarkets to encourage South Australian shoppers to buy local and shift a proportion of their regular supermarket spend away from imported products to SA made products and produce.

According to the ABS, each month South Australians spend just over $700 million in supermarkets and grocery stores. Over the 12 months to February 2020, just prior to the COVID-19 hoarding, $9.047 billion was spent in supermarkets and grocery stores. A mere 5 per cent shift in spending from imported products to SA made products would mean an extra $450 million spent directly into South Australian made products.

Deloitte Access Economics forecasts that South Australia's gross state product will contract by 6.9 per cent to $100 billion in the 2020-21 financial year. The $450 million increase in purchasing would represent 0.45 per cent of the state's economy for a minimal outlay from the state government. Establishing the investment attraction agency and Brand SA come at a cost that could easily be accommodated within the existing unallocated funds of this budget's Economic and Business Growth Fund. This investment has the power to deliver a real return at a very modest cost.

The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the importance of local manufacturing and has given rise to questions about Australia's sovereign manufacturing capability. Shopping aisles empty of basic essentials from toilet paper to pasta and hospital storerooms bare of medicines, hand sanitiser and face masks have brought home the importance of a capable domestic manufacturing sector. A strong manufacturing capability is critical to Australia's self-reliance. If there is anything COVID-19 has taught us, it is that we need a self-sufficient country, particularly in a time of crisis.

Manufacturing still employs 64,000 South Australians according to the ABS which is why I find it truly astounding that this government's budget delivers nothing for our manufacturing base in this state. Manufacturing in South Australia has transitioned and evolved to be competitive in a global marketplace. Whether it is forestry, food, defence or steel, we still make things and we make them well. Labor wants our manufacturing base to expand once again and create more jobs which is why we propose the introduction of a $20 million 'Made in South Australia' grant program to support small and medium manufacturers to innovate and grow.

There are other sectors of our economy that deserve specific attention, particularly those that have been hardest hit by the pandemic, which, unfortunately, has had a disproportionate impact on female workers. We know that in the early months of the pandemic the number of women employed fell by 5.3 per cent; this is in comparison to 3.9 per cent for men. One such critical industry is tourism.

Last week, I had cause to go to Sydney. It was nice to catch a plane again, sort of, but I did get the opportunity to talk to workers at the airport. It was good chatting to people who were clearly enjoying starting to see people floating around the airport a little bit more. In one conversation I had with an air hostess on the way back, we were just chatting about her routine and how much she had been at work, and she was lamenting the amount of time that she was not at work, notwithstanding the fact that she acknowledged she was on the JobKeeper program and that was allowing her to pay the bills and make ends meet.

But it was the work that she missed—the dignity of that work, the human interaction associated with that work. Her current status in regard to work is that it is highly infrequent and she does not know what is happening from one day to the next, let alone one week to the next. She said that she just wants to be at work properly. Well, we want her back at work, too, which is why in July Labor proposed a $200 SA tourism voucher program to encourage South Australians to holiday here and help kickstart the local tourism industry. The dollar-for-dollar scheme would have provided a voucher of up to $200 if South Australians spent at least the same amount of their own money purchasing a bookable tourism product.

The Marshall Liberal government did belatedly respond to Labor's initiative—and that is a pattern we have become used to over here—with a short-lived program that provided $100 against a hotel room booking in the city or $50 in the regions, with restrictions on when it could be used. The flaws in the Premier's scheme were exposed when it was revealed that, although 50,000 vouchers were snapped up quickly when they became available, fewer than half were actually redeemed, meaning that the millions of dollars promised by the government for the industry never actually arrived at the time they needed it the most.

Labor's plan is not only more generous but also provides redemption against a range of tourism products and services, not just accommodation in the CBD. We do not just want money circulating in our economy; we need new tourist dollars coming in, driving private sector activity and private sector jobs, which is why the state government should introduce an SA great holiday voucher scheme to attract interstate visitors, similar to the scheme introduced by the Northern Territory government.

A $5 million campaign could partner with travel retailers and provide interstate residents the opportunity to save up to a thousand bucks on a South Australian holiday. Interstate visitors who book flights, accommodation, tours and attractions or hire a vehicle would be entitled to a $200 discount for every $1,000 spent, up to a maximum of $1,000. This would make South Australia an attractive destination for interstate visitors, as competition for interstate travellers really starts to heat up. We want those planes full again, which goes to why I caught a plane in the first place last week.

I caught a plane to Sydney to sign a deal committing Labor to bring back our car race, not just because this race is an icon on the national sporting calendar, not just because people love it and not just because we believe Mad March belongs to the many rather than the few, but because this race creates jobs—over 400 full-time jobs last year, according to the government. Well, I hope the Premier knows that 400 jobs created from the Clipsal last year—in excess of 400—equates to 20 times as many people who work at the Space Agency.

What makes me angry is the way the Premier seems to dismiss these jobs—the idea that somehow these jobs are less important than others. Well, tell that to the worker building the grandstands, or the worker cooking the food, or the worker cleaning the hotels. If you are going to take their jobs away, you had better have a plan to replace them. So far, you have not announced one single new event since your decree to ditch the V8s. I say to those workers in the tourism and hospitality sectors, from airlines to travel agents to the hospitality staff: Labor wants you back at work as much as you want to be at work and we will always fight for your jobs.

In Labor, we believe health and education are central to any budget, and ordinarily one might expect that a budget with a debt and deficit as large as this budget has would deliver for these critical areas of service delivery. But, unfortunately, again there appears to be only wasted opportunity. Never has the health system been more important, or our hardworking doctors, nurses and health staff been more valuable, yet the response of the Liberal government has been to cut health services and penalise our health workers.

There is a stark difference between the COVID public health response run by Professor Spurrier and the public hospital services run by the Premier and the Hon. Stephen Wade. Ramping at our hospitals has almost doubled under the Liberals. Last week, 93 calls to 000 went unanswered, yet the Liberals have sided with their interstate corporate liquidators, KordaMentha, to cut nurses. Now we have 112 fewer in our public hospitals than we did a year ago.

Over 200 doctors at the Women's and Children's have written publicly about their serious concerns about the state of services and have been flatly ignored. ICAC raised serious questions and concerns about maladministration and corruption in the administration, yet the resources for investigation were refused. Experts have described the increasing number of mental health patients in emergency departments, stuck waiting for days on end, as a human rights abuse, yet the government's mental health COVID package is the smallest per capita of any mainland state.

Upgrades to our hospitals have been put in the slow lane. There are continued delays to projects like at The QEH and the Lyell McEwin, and over the past two years we have had the lowest spending on upgrading hospitals for a decade. And, as a slap in the face to our hardworking nurses, allied health workers and hospital orderlies and cleaners, the Liberals have hiked the cost of their car parking by 129 per cent—$725 a year. These are fees they must pay to get to work and these hikes are set to restart in a few months' time.

There is no question that the situation in our hospitals is getting worse, not better, and patients, doctors, nurses and paramedics are losing confidence. It is time to listen to our clinicians, to stop the cuts to frontline public hospital services, to invest in overstretched mental health care services and put health prevention at the forefront rather than an afterthought. Our clinicians have shown how they can deliver during COVID; we need to give them the tools to do their job and get the corporate liquidators off their back.

Insofar as education is concerned, this is a budget still very much running on the fumes of the previous Labor government's record investment in school infrastructure.

Members interjecting:

Mr MALINAUSKAS: That's right. When the government says it is 'building, building, building', what it really means is that it has simply decided not to cut a swathe of projects that have already been announced before it came to government. But it makes for an impressive headline figure and takes attention away from the deep cuts this government is making to the education department.

In theory, it makes sense to ring-fence efficiency measures to the department itself as a way of protecting individual schools from the brunt of those cuts, but this can only be done to a point, and after $11 million of savings announced in the government's first budget, $48 million of savings last year and $30 million announced in this budget, that point appears to have passed.

Make no mistake: these cuts will hurt schools, they will hurt staff, they will hurt students. Do not be fooled by the government's rhetoric that somehow, magically, an additional $30 million of savings can be wrung from the department without it having a material impact on learning and classroom support.

There is essentially nothing new in this budget for public schools, and that is a truly remarkable thing to say of such a significant area of government spending. Overwhelmingly, the infrastructure projects accounted for in this budget were committed to by the previous Labor government. In fact, almost $1 billion of the $1.3 billion regularly touted by the Premier were Labor projects.

Any increase in education spending is largely due to increased enrolments. It is breathtaking that this government would pat themselves on the back for carrying out the most basic and fundamental task in the education portfolio: funding new enrolments. In the absence of any genuine new spending in public education, that is what they are doing. We should not forget the dirty deal this government made with their federal mates on school funding, which guarantees public schools will never reach 100 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard, and allowed them to count transport and infrastructure spending in the calculations. This is something that had been never been done before.

Furthermore, this government's assault on TAFE—our public training provider—is now in top gear. In this government's first budget, we saw the closure of three metropolitan TAFE campuses, and last year we saw TAFE facilities provided to private RTOs to conduct their own training. This year, we have seen important high-demand courses in areas such as ageing, disability and early childhood education cancelled in metropolitan Adelaide. This budget lays bare for the first time the magnitude of those cuts. There have been $33 million in cuts to TAFE alone in the past financial year, and this comes at a time when 165,000 South Australians are either out of work or underemployed.

These cuts come at a time when this government should be investing in public training, not writing it off and selling it off for parts. I am pleased to report to the house that education is a policy priority for Labor under my leadership, starting with not squibbing the tough decisions and tough discussions to be had around the structure of our higher education sector in South Australia. This Premier has squibbed it but I will not because South Australia needs and deserves a top 100 university and I will explore every opportunity to give our kids the best chance to fulfil their potential.

If it was not enough for the Premier to get rid of the V8s, he has now decreed that a brand-spanking new tax on electric cars is a good idea. The more we learn about this policy, the crazier it gets. While other countries around the world are now taxing polluting the earth, this Premier is taxing not polluting the earth. While other countries around the world are investing in electric vehicles, this Premier is actively disincentivising the purchase of electric vehicles.

Imagine how the 3,000-odd owners of electric vehicles in South Australia feel today. Only last week, they saw the news that the Premier was committed to electric vehicles. He said that they were good for the environment, good for the state and good for jobs. Those owners, as did we, thought, 'Absolutely. This is a worthwhile investment and something that speaks to the future. We want to incentivise this transition.' This is because we and all South Australians know that progress in the area of climate and climate change is inevitable and must be embraced in order to capitalise on the extraordinary opportunity we have.

We supported that decision. Those 3,000 owners of electric vehicles supported that decision. Fast-forward a few days and guess what? They turn on their television sets and see that the Premier has now gone from supporting the electric car industry to taxing it in a way that no-one else around the country has. It truly beggars belief that this Premier has decided to embark on a policy of actively disincentivising the take-up of electric cars just as that transition was about to begin.

Why on earth would we be disincentivising good behaviour? The equivalent would be to tax smokers for giving up smokes. It is an absurd proposition, which is why I can report to this house and to the people of South Australia that we will block this tax measure. We will not allow this Premier to sabotage South Australia's good standing in the world or our world-recognised position as being a leader on tackling climate change. That is a brand and that is a position worthy of preservation and enhancement, not destroying it, which this government seems intent on doing.

Yesterday was Remembrance Day, an occasion when we reflect on those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our country. When we reflect on that sacrifice, we normally think of it as being for our freedom, for our sovereignty and for our democratic way of life, but we also know those soldiers made that sacrifice in the hope that future generations would one day enjoy the opportunity of a better life with a brighter future.

Post World War I, the Roaring Twenties, with mass production and new technologies such as electricity and automobiles, saw unprecedented economic growth which delivered new jobs and real wage growth to an expanding middle class. Similarly, post World War II, the forties and fifties delivered yet more economic growth on the back of a golden age of capitalism, which was combined with mass postwar migration and Keynesian economic policies. This postwar economic boom delivered yet an even bigger middle class with even higher wages and, indeed, full employment.

Obviously, the debt owed to those men and women who did pay the ultimate sacrifice in World War I and II can never truly be repaid, but hopefully their souls can rest easier in the knowledge that they did leave behind a more prosperous future and a fairer country. Although it is hard to draw any equivalence between world wars and this pandemic, particular in the Australian context, the post-crisis ambition should be the same: an ambition to not just return to the life we had before COVID-19 but have a better and fairer future for future generations.

In South Australia, unlike any place in the world, we have the opportunity to seize that moment, to capitalise on our strengths like never before. On this side of the chamber, we have that ambition. We owe it to those who have given up so much this year to not just build back but build back better.

We need to provide jobs for the future, where secure work is not just provided to one gender at the expense of another. We need to deliver education that brings South Australia's relative performance back on par with leading nations around the world. We need to ensure that when a loved one gets into the back of a hospital, they are going to have access to the treatment they need when they need it. We need to honour our commitment as custodians of this planet to leave a better environment than the one we inherited.

One budget alone cannot address all these problems, but at this moment in our history there has never been a better time to start. As we approach an election year, on this side of the house we cannot be more excited about the opportunity to present to the people of this state a policy for a bigger, bolder and fairer future for the place that we call home. South Australians deserve absolutely nothing less.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee) (12:38): I rise to make my contribution on this year's state budget. I want to echo the comments that just about every other contributor in this place has made on this budget, and that has been to reflect on what an absolutely shocking year this has been, particularly here in South Australia—of course, not just here in South Australia but around the rest of the country and, indeed, around the rest of the world.

But we started the year with the continuation of what were horrific bushfires which gripped parts of our state. It was extraordinary to watch—literally firsthand as the power of social media now allows us to—the efforts of our emergency services workers as they were battling these bushfires. I will never forget that vision of those firefighters in that emergency truck trying to break their way through the fire front on Kangaroo Island to try to escape with their lives.

Then, of course, after the horror of the bushfires we were confronted with a pandemic, with the coronavirus. It quickly became clear, as we grappled with what this meant for our daily lives, that it was not just the emergency workers keeping us safe from those bushfires. We were now seeing our healthcare workers keeping us safe from the pandemic and we were also seeing public transport workers keeping us moving around our communities.

We were seeing retail workers put up with what were at times some of the worst behaviour we would expect to see in our community with people unfortunately being abusive, hoarding goods, and so on, but they showed up for work and they battled through. The same has to be said for our schoolteachers and our childcare workers turning up each day to educate our children, not knowing whether or not they were going to be safe doing so.

As the leader has said, many lost their jobs and many have also not regained work since losing their jobs. Yes, all of us have been inconvenienced, but that pales in comparison with the impacts on those people who have lost their jobs, and, of course, that in turn pales in comparison with the impacts on those families and loved ones who lost their lives from the virus itself.

I am also pleased to add my contribution to the statewide recognition about how good the health response has been in this state to the coronavirus. It has been absolutely exceptional. The leadership of the State Coordinator, the Commissioner of Police, Grant Stevens, and, of course, the Chief Public Health Officer, Nicola Spurrier, through this period has been exemplary. You do not need me to say that. Indeed, you do not need any of us to say that in this place. You need only to look at the reaction of the community to their leadership.

We had a complete acceptance of the directives and the leadership they were providing. There was none of this rubbish that we saw interstate or overseas where people were reacting angrily to the restrictions that were being imposed on the community, and I think that speaks volumes not only about our community but also about those two individuals and the leadership that they demonstrated.

While the health response has been good, we also need to acknowledge that the Premier made the decision that that health response and the restrictions that would have been put in place and the management of those restrictions was to be left up to the those leaders in the Public Service—again, the Commissioner of Police and the Chief Public Health Officer. I think that we should also be proud of the quality not just of their leadership but of the remainder of the Public Service in carrying out those directives and ushering us and guiding us through these difficult times. It is great to be able to say that we have a Public Service here in South Australia that is capable of delivering such extraordinary results.

In separating himself from being responsible for the health response for the pandemic, the Premier, and by extension the Treasurer, became front and centre of the state's economic response to the coronavirus pandemic. Just as soon as those restrictions were imposed, businesses were necessarily shut down and restrictions were put on their operations and their capacities to trade and to employ people to generate a livelihood. Questions emerged about how the state government was going to support them.

I take my hat off, I have to say, to the decisions that the federal government took very, very swiftly; in fact, I think it was only about 36 or 48 hours after the national media started asking questions about whether our country needed to follow the lead of other western democracies around the world and institute some sort of wage subsidy scheme. If we cast our minds back 10 years, we never could have expected a conservative government at the national level to have gone down that path, and I think it speaks volumes of Josh Frydenberg and his decisions that he has taken to implement not only the JobKeeper scheme but also the JobSeeker scheme, as well as some of the other schemes that have been put in place to support Australians, small businesses and their workers.

Here in South Australia, though, the calls were not so readily heeded. While the Premier was quick to announce a stimulus package and then two weeks later a further stimulus package, it was disappointing to learn that less than a quarter of that had been spent, according to the Auditor-General, more than three months later. We were promised by the Premier it would be spent very quickly, that it would be spent over the next six months in the period between March and September, but here we are in November and still less than half of that money has been spent. That is a massive disappointment, and that is to say the least. To say the most, what it has cost is people their jobs and many people their livelihoods.

I want to make it clear that Labor supports and has always supported aggressive economic stimulus to combat an economic crisis. You only need to cast your mind back a period of 10 years or so to think about the response we had from the federal Labor government and the state Labor government at the time to respond to the economic crisis confronting us with the global financial crisis. Debt and deficits were recorded as the state budget in 2009 contained $4 billion of combined new operating and investing spending measures, but we entered that period from a position of strength.

In the years leading up to the GFC, the state Labor government had paid down all the general government sector's debt. We were accruing financial assets, such was the strength of the budget position. There was plenty of capacity to combat the global financial crisis and its economic impacts. What was the response from the opposition at the time, the Liberal politicians, led by Rob Lucas? They consistently criticised the debt. They consistently criticised the deficits. Of course, the Liberal lines around debt and deficits were 'debt crisis', 'debt emergency' and 'bankrupting the state'.

Fast-forward to now as we enter this current economic crisis, and we do so on the back of two years of a Liberal state government, again led in the Treasury capacity by Rob Lucas. They have spent those two years desperately trying to mirror Labor's strong record of infrastructure delivery, as the leader said, running around cutting ribbons on Labor-delivered projects. In those two years, they radically increased state government debt by $10 billion, and that is before the pandemic hit our shores. They have made all sorts of promises about infrastructure projects in the future, announcing infrastructure spending and then largely not spending it.

We get to this budget, this week's announcement, and make no bones about it: this is a desperate, last-gasp attempt of the government to rebrand itself. The Premier and the Treasurer are doing all they can to look like a competent government despite the scandals that have also accompanied this past year. The Premier has lost a backbencher, three cabinet ministers, a Government Whip and a President of the Legislative Council to scandal. To this day, we still have a criminal case on foot before the courts and ICAC investigations. This budget desperately needs to distract from the shambles of a government led by the Premier.

The Premier and the Treasurer are asking South Australians in this budget to forget the last 2½ years. They are asking us also to forget their rhetoric in the past on debt and deficit. They are asking us to forget the chaos, the dysfunction and the disunity of the past 2½ years, and they are asking us to forget they have spent 2½ years delivering nothing in terms of infrastructure. They are asking us to forget they have already added $10 billion of debt to the books and delivered nothing to show for it.

As I said, Labor supports using debt and deficits to combat an economic crisis. We did it, and we support this government doing it again now that they are in power. But if we look at what they are promising to use this economic stimulus on, they are asking us to trust that they will not behave like they have in the last 2½ years and that, for the first time, they will actually start making good on the promises to South Australians.

After the budget came out this week, I took the most recent budget papers and I compared them with the first set of budget papers released under this government, six months after the state election in March 2018. I looked at the major projects the government has continued to talk about over the last 2½ years as being those that would deliver economic activity and jobs across South Australia. I looked at how they were going with those jobs as they are described in this budget compared with how they were described in the first budget.

The Joy Baluch Bridge duplication at Port Augusta was placed into the budget and money set aside by the former Labor government. In the first budget it was due for completion in June 2021. In this year's budget it is now due for completion in June 2024, three years late.

Regarding the Festival Plaza project, once again funded by the former Labor government, the car park was due to be completed five months ago in June 2020 according to the Liberal's first budget. That has blown out by two years. The plaza upgrade itself was due to be completed, according to their first budget, in June 2021; it is now due two years later.

The Tonsley rail junction—again, funded by the former Labor government—is due two years late. The Springbank Road intersection upgrade is now due two years late. The Golden Grove Road upgrade is now due a year late, in June 2021. The Gawler East Link Road, which was meant to open in June 2019, is now finally due for completion, despite a partial opening, in June 2023—four years late. The Port Road/West Lakes Boulevard/Cheltenham Parade intersection—which the member for Cheltenham and I know the importance of, as it services our two electorates—is two years late.

The Main South Road Seaford to Aldinga upgrade is a year late. The Dublin saleyard access project for the heavy vehicle industry is three years late. The Darlington upgrade project will not be finally completed for another two years. The train operation centre blew out by $3 million. The North Terrace right-hand turn, of course, was axed. The Port rail spur, of course, was axed. GlobeLink, of course, was axed, as the leader said.

The city tram extension was described in their first budget, six months after the last state election after they complained about how the project was carried out, as being a $80 million project. It is now described, in the latest budget ,as being a $121 million project—a more than 50 per cent blowout. The Port Wakefield overpass project—your will remember this, Mr Speaker; this was one the Premier and Rod Hook told us would cost $24 million, seemingly forgetting that trucks also like to use regional roads—is not $24 million anymore but $90 million. Not a bad effort, a 250 per cent blowout in budget.

Aside from all the delays in those projects, the real impact on the South Australian economy is thousands and thousands of construction workers missing the opportunity of working on those jobs, thousands and thousands of wages being paid, thousands and thousands of opportunities for small businesses to be supported so that they can, in turn, employ people.

I wish it were just the delay that was the worst of these projects, but the fact is that nearly all those examples have blown out in cost. The Festival Plaza project has blown out by more than $30 million, the Tonsley rail project has blown out by nearly $60 million, the Springbank Road project has blown out by $35 million, and the Gawler East Link Road has blown out by $13 million. Main South Road is perhaps one bright spot—unless it actually means what it alludes to, and that is a budget cut—and is now $283 million rather than $305 million.

The Darlington project is the most fascinating to me. When the government first released a budget six months after the state election, six months of all the briefings that the transport department was able to provide the new minister and the Treasurer, they said it would cost $620 million. In their second budget they said it would be $667 million, and now it is $754 million. Not bad, taking a fully-funded, on-track Labor infrastructure project and blowing it out twice. It is absolutely extraordinary.

So, when we are asked to believe that they can deliver a $33 billion debt-funded economic stimulus package you would be forgiven, would you not, for expecting that South Australians might be at least raising an eyebrow about this government's capacity to deliver. We are being asked to forget the delays and the blowouts in the infrastructure program that they have so badly managed, and we are now being asked to trust them that finally, in the last 18 months, they are going to get their act together and start delivering jobs for South Australians. Of course, unfortunately, the $33 billion is not the last of it.

I asked the Premier repeated questions yesterday in question time why the north-south corridor project did not find all of its project funding in that $33 billion, and how much more debt beyond the $33 billion would be needed to fund it. He could not answer that question. We know it is at least another $4.5 billion. Or why only $685 million of the Women's and Children's Hospital had been funded.

There is more debt beyond $33 billion that needs to be accrued. It is the same with the Hahndorf traffic improvements project, the Main South Road duplication project and the Victor Harbor Road duplication project. It does not stop at $33 billion; it is just where it starts, and it will be long in the rear view—the idiom that the government likes to use at the moment—of the Treasurer who, of course, will be long gone. It will be for the rest of the state to have to work out how we are going to manage this.

As I said, Labor supports deficits and Labor supports going into further debt if it means that we can support our economy to get out of a crisis. What we cannot support is a government that has removed a debt ceiling or a fiscal target relating to debt from the budget papers. According to the Premier and the Treasurer, it is a blank cheque to continue spending and bugger the impacts. Well, I am sorry but that is not good enough.

Interest rates are low and, yes, this debt might be cheap, and even cheaper today than it was last year, but are we not hoping for an economic recovery? Are we not hoping for strong economic growth? Are we not hoping that conditions will improve, that demand will increase and that, at some point perhaps, interest rates will increase to reflect that we have strong economic activity in our national and state economy? Do we not think that those interest rates might bring with them a higher interest cost burden to the state budget? What does that mean?

It means that there is less money to spend on our hospitals, which are already under pressure; it means that there is less money to spend on our schools, which still are not getting their full entitlement under the original Gonski reforms; and it means there is less money to spend on all those other important areas of government that the public expects. We are willing to give the government some slack with this budget, to give them the authority that they need in this parliament to get on with delivering some economic stimulus but we say to the government that they have to break the last 2½ years of failure to deliver, failure to stimulate and failure to support South Australians, and actually get on with the job.

You might think, Mr Speaker, that this is just a shadow treasurer trying to undermine the outcomes that this budget is trying to deliver. You do not have to take my word for it. You can take Treasury's word for it because, if you look at chapter 7 of Budget Paper 3, they lay out their verdict of this budget and tell South Australians in that chapter that they expect that this budget—the increase in debt and the $2.6 billion deficit that we are going to go into this financial year—will deliver zero jobs growth. If Treasury do not have any confidence in this Premier and this Treasurer to deliver economic growth and jobs to the South Australian economy, how can South Australians have any confidence in this government?

What we need to see in addition to this budget is a government that can actually deliver, that the government can actually put to work the money that they are seeking the parliament's approval for, to get out and spend in the economy and support jobs. I am asking them to park their disunity, their dysfunction and their inability to deliver and actually get on with the job of governing. It would make a nice change for South Australia's future.

Debate adjourned on motion of Dr Harvey.

Sitting suspended from 12:59 to 14:00.

PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS
MEMBERS
GET INVOLVED
ABOUT PARLIAMENT
VISIT
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
CONTACT