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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-07-01 Daily Xml
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Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Planning

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens) (14:56): My question is to the Premier. How many mistakes, failures, missed deadlines and backflips will he tolerate from his Minister for Transport and Infrastructure before he removes him from the ministry? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Since the last election, the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, the member for Schubert, has overseen (it is a long list) the scrapping of the promised right-hand turn of the tram to North Terrace that the Premier promised to deliver before the last election, missing the 'set in stone' deadline for the North Terrace tram extension; privatising the trams and trains despite promising no privatisation at the last election; a failure to implement a promise to return all regional speed limits to 110 km/h; scrapping a plan to close three Service SA offices; scrapping the Liberal's signature infrastructure project GlobeLink; and now scrapping his plan to cut more than 1,000 bus stops and services in Adelaide. When is enough enough?

The SPEAKER: I am going to allow the question. I am not going to allow points of order for debate unless they are mighty, mighty in nature. I have made a list of those comments. The Premier has the call.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:57): What a question from a member of this parliament who has been investigated by the ICAC on multiple occasions when caught with his conversational swearing directly at public servants and failure to pay dozens and dozens and dozens of speeding fines. So excuse me, sir, for not taking this criticism very seriously whatsoever. Let me tell you what we have been doing since we have come to government—

Mr Szakacs interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Cheltenham!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —and that is to clean up your filthy, stinking mess. What a hopeless government they were.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: I commend the work of the minister—

The SPEAKER: Premier, there is a point of order.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: To refer to you as having created a filthy, stinking mess, sir, that is beyond the pale.

The SPEAKER: The Premier should not have done that. I will listen to the Premier carefully. He should not have done that.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: Thank you very much, sir. The Minister for Transport and Infrastructure in this place has worked tirelessly since he came to government to fix up the mess that we inherited when we came to government. A classic example, and one that every single South Australian should always be thankful for is fixing the broken promise for the Gawler line electrification, the multimillion dollar bungle that cost the taxpayers of South Australia $50 million, which we had to write off because of the incompetence of those opposite.

Rather than complain about it, our minister has got on and he is fixing it. He is also presiding over the largest infrastructure build in the history of South Australia—$12.9 billion. I would like to personally congratulate the minister on the outstanding work that he has done negotiating with the federal government to bring forward projects, to bring forward money to create jobs in South Australia.

We know what those opposite did over a long period of time: their ongoing faked fights with Canberra all designed to look after their own jobs. By contrast, what we have done on this side of the house is to work very hard with the people of South Australia to clean up the mess that we inherited—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —put this state back on an appropriate trajectory, deal with a coronavirus pandemic and now switch our focus to creating more jobs in South Australia.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: The minister is working hand in glove with his colleagues in the cabinet to do everything that we can to get as many South Australians back to work as we possibly can. That is our focus: more jobs, lower costs, better services. Our focus is to come out of this pandemic stronger than before.

The SPEAKER: The Minister for Primary Industries and the member for Cheltenham can leave for the remainder of question time for repeated interjections during the Premier's answer. You have both been doing it all day.

The honourable members for Chaffey and Cheltenham having withdrawn from the chamber:

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