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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-05-04 Daily Xml
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Bills

Supply Bill 2021

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading (resumed on motion).

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee) (17:12): Before I paused my remarks, I was making a contribution about some of the substantial impacts on the state's budget likely to hit South Australia in the coming years, particularly the combination of an increase of debt servicing costs from the record debt that this state government is in the process of racking up and also the threat to our ongoing GST revenues.

More immediately, it is worth reflecting on some of the difficulties that the small business community continues to encounter here in South Australia. Many in the small business community have still not recovered from the impacts of the pandemic, and when I say the 'impacts of the pandemic' specifically what I mean is the requirements on them is either to close their businesses, to cease their operations temporarily, or, when they are able to reopen, to severely limit their capacity to operate. As we now well know, this is best exemplified by the hospitality industry.

Most in the hospitality industry have a liquor licence, and a liquor licence usually is granted on a basis of how many people can be present in a premises at the one time. That is usually granted on the square metreage of the usable premises. If you have 100 square metres, it is not unusual to get a licence for 100 people.

When the restrictions have been imposed on businesses, it is worth bearing in mind that the government initially only allowed licensed premises to operate at 25 per cent capacity—that is one person per four square metres. For us to think about it in terms of one person per four square metres, we think that means we will be sitting spatially apart at tables that are further apart from each other, for example, than we are used to.

What it means for the small business operator is that when they have worked at how they are going to run their business, when they have worked out how they need to operate in order to turn a profit, in order to put food on their own tables and employ other South Australians, they now have a new ceiling of only being able to trade at a maximum capacity of 25 per cent. That is a massive limitation, a crippling limitation on just about any business.

It is worth bearing in mind that as time went on, yes, restrictions did improve for some of these businesses. We did move from one person per four square metres to one person per two square metres. We went from 25 per cent capacity to 50 per cent capacity, bearing in mind, though, there were also many other restrictions that were imposed in addition to those person per square metre requirements.

There were restrictors on how people could consume alcohol on premises—whether it could be consumed outside, whether people could be seated or standing, whether food or alcohol could be consumed at a service bar setting, bearing in mind that many businesses, particularly some of the new small bars and small restaurants, have been established where people are seated at the service bar for meals. When chefs are preparing meals or when service staff are preparing drinks just on the other side of that bar, that area can no longer be used.

For a small premises that might have been licensed if not for 100 people, given the example I used before, but for, say, 50 people, to first be reduced to only 12 or 13 people and then be told that they can have up to 25 people and that there are restrictions on that—people cannot sit outside, or people cannot stand up outside, or people cannot sit in an area that had previously been designated as a bar service area—you could see why many small businesses were crying out for one of two things: either they wanted an easing of restrictions or, if those restrictions were not going to be eased, then they needed more financial support to help them maintain their livelihoods through these difficult times.

As the Leader of the Opposition has said on many occasions, and as other members of the Labor opposition have continued to repeat since March of last year, we have provided, will provide and will continue to provide bipartisan support for the government's health response to the pandemic. If the government, the Chief Public Health Officer, the police commissioner and others make determinations that restrictions have to be imposed on the community in order to safeguard public health, then we will lend our support to those restrictions.

The last thing any community needs in the middle of a global pandemic is political nitpicking about how the pandemic and the health response should be managed. I am really proud to say that in South Australia we have not seen that at all. There has not been any distance between the government and the opposition on the health response to the pandemic. I am pleased to say—and I think in no small part this is as a result of that overt bipartisanship and public support the Labor opposition has lent to the government and to the health response—that South Australia, I think in many of our views, including my own, has had the best health response to COVID in the nation.

We have had a response where the restrictions on the community have been backed in and there have been large levels of community compliance with those restrictions. That is not to say that we have supported everything the government has done over the last 14 months. We have continued to raise issues with the level and nature of the support that the government has been providing the community in order to deal with those restrictions, the financial support to small businesses being one example.

However, it is worth bearing in mind that right now, today, we are here on the Tuesday of what we have come to know for nearly 25 years here in South Australia as Showdown Week, and there was much excitement across many quarters of the community, including from the government itself, with the announcement that Adelaide Oval will be back to full capacity. More than 50,000 people will be able to attend the Showdown at Adelaide Oval this weekend—great news for footy fans, in particular for the Port fans, of course. It is a home game for them, and of course we know how the result is going to go on the weekend.

It was great news for the football fans and great news for those people who are employed in all the services responsible for bringing that football game to reality. However, you can imagine the frustration for the tens of thousands of small businesses across South Australia that still find themselves subject to restrictions. Why is it okay for 50,000 people to gather together in a relatively close-packed environment, like a football stadium, like Adelaide Oval, but it is not okay for one person per square metre in a hospitality business? That is a common refrain from people who operate restaurants, cafes, hotels, bars, clubs, and so on.

It is worth remembering that that sector of the economy usually employs in the order of 30,000 people. That sector of the economy, along with the tourism industry, has been impacted the hardest by the pandemic and the restrictions that have resulted. The continuation of those restrictions even now at three people per four square metres—or basically 75 per cent of regular capacity in these hospitality venues—is making it very difficult for venues to operate profitably.

It is making it very difficult for businesses to maintain their livelihoods, and it is important to remember that during the course of last year when these businesses did not have three people per four square metres; they had one person per four square metres for an extended period of time, and then they had two people per four square metres for another extended period of time. It was also during the quieter months of the year, during the winter period.

In order for these businesses to stay afloat, in order for them to meet their ongoing rental obligations and to meet their other obligations to their suppliers, and so on, many of them took on tens—if not hundreds—of thousands of dollars of additional debt just to make sure that finally when our state emerged through the other side of the pandemic they still had their small business, they still had their livelihoods.

Some business owners took on that extra debt because perhaps they had not quite qualified for JobKeeper. They took on extra debt so that they could continue paying their staff for whom they were not getting support from the federal government. These are very, very significant financial imposts on people, and, yes, perhaps in those circumstances we might make the same reflection, like it is for the government, that borrowing money is relatively cheap at the moment, but it still comes at a cost. That money still needs to be paid back.

One of the concerns that many people contacted me about after the federal government announced its business short-term loans scheme—and you will probably recall this, Deputy Speaker—was the fact that the federal government was making money available to the banks so that the banks could then make loans of up to $250,000 to small businesses. That money had to be paid back over a three-year period.

Paying back $250,000 over a three-year period is no mean feat. That is a significant additional monthly repayment over a 36-month period to pay that sum back on top of the ongoing obligations of that business, on top of a restricted capacity to operate in the first place, and, again, on top of trading conditions during a time of year that is naturally quieter.

So small business has done it extremely tough in South Australia and, while the state government can say that, yes, they have committed $4 billion allegedly of financial stimulus to the South Australian community, there still remains a need for many small businesses to receive support. The Deputy Premier has advised the house that she will be introducing a bill to extend some of the temporary COVID legislative arrangements first imposed early last year, including a moratorium against rental increases on tenants.

Of course, that makes sense. Why would we want to see rent increases? While we are in the environment where there is a very hot housing market at the moment and many people who have the capacity to are seeking to take advantage of that, you can see the temptation from some landlords to increase rents in that context. But there is something else going on at the same time which will be pushing landlords to consider quite significant rental increases. That is, over the last few weeks and continuing through this week and coming weeks, the government finally—months behind schedule—has got around to sending out its land tax bills to individual property owners.

You might recall, Deputy Speaker, that it is this cycle of land tax bills going out to property owners which contains the beginnings of the $87 million per year increase in land tax for thousands of private individual property owners as well as companies owning property. Nearly all of them are landlords, nearly all of them with commercial tenants or residential tenants. We understand from the very little information that this government is willing to make available to the community about these land tax increases that there are something in the order of nearly 10,000 people who will be paying this $87 million of land tax extra per year thanks to the changes that this government introduced to change aggregation and land held in trust arrangements.

On average, that is a very significant tax increase for a property. On average, that equates to a tax increase of many thousands of dollars per land tax payee. Let's assume it goes to something in the order of 10,000 properties. I think their figure is actually 7,800, but you can see how the average increase in land tax bills is going to be something in the order of $5,000 to $10,000 a year. Spread across the 52 weeks of the year to a tenant, that is a significant increase, particularly in the current context when many of these tenants may be those South Australians who have either lost work completely, because of our shocking record at the moment in our labour market, or businesses that have lost custom or are struggling to operate under the continuation of these restrictions.

We welcome a plan from the government to continue its moratorium on rent increases, but how can the government possibly impose a moratorium on rent increases on landlords while at the same time sending these same landlords thousands of dollars in high land tax bills? Is somebody in the government thinking this through? Has somebody considered the impact on these landlords who are going to be hit with these higher land tax bills?

Even today, tabled in this place, I got an answer from the Premier, in his role representing the Treasurer who resides in the other place, about how many people are going to be impacted by these land tax increases. Once again, the government refuses to release this information. The government laughably says, 'We do not know how many people are going to be paying more land tax and we do not know how much more money is going to be collected in land tax until people pay their bills.' I would have thought in order to send a bill out a government would need to have a reasonable idea of what that land tax liability should be and how many people would be getting a land tax bill with a higher liability than last year.

If RevenueSA cannot furnish that information to a minister so that they can provide that information to the house, either RevenueSA continues its record on this matter of seeming to be—I do not want to use the term 'incompetent' in managing this scheme of land tax increases—perhaps completely detached from the reality of how the imposition of this new regime is going to impact South Australians. First of all, it was RevenueSA and the Treasury that held up a licked thumb to the wind-type estimate about how much more revenue was going to come in from this land tax aggregation model and they said $40 million a year. That is no small beer across the land tax base. Of course, that turned out to be wrong by a factor of more than 100 per cent.

So it is clear that RevenueSA and Treasury had bowled up a revenue estimate to the government without actually doing any homework. They just came up with a tax increase to fold into the 2019-20 budget without actually knowing how many people it was going to impact and how much it was going to impact them by. They had done no modelling. Indeed, it took the government some months—until September, I think, after the June release of the budget in 2019—to finally admit to the community how much more money was going to be raised from these changes, and that figure was $87 million.

You can imagine how landlords and property owners felt having been misled by the government, unknowingly I must say. They were not to know that the information given to them by RevenueSA and Treasury was so wildly inaccurate, but you would have thought they would have asked. You would have thought that a treasurer or a cabinet minister sitting around the table would have perhaps asked, '$40 million seems an awfully round figure. Are you sure that's the amount? How many people are we hitting? Are they businesses? Are they commercial landlords? Are they residential landlords? How many businesses is this going to impact? How many residential tenants is this going to impact?'

Perhaps even a politically savvy minister might have asked, 'Do we know where these tenants are? Are they in metropolitan South Australia? Are they in regional South Australia? If they are in regional South Australia, where are they? If they are in metropolitan South Australia, where are they?' None of these questions were asked. Still to this day—fast-forward from June 2019 to May 2021, nearly 24 months later—the Premier provides a response to the house that he still does not know how many people are going to be impacted by higher land tax bills and what the increases are likely to be for them. It is just extraordinary. These bills are months late going out to property owners.

Remember that in an effort to try to work out how many people were going to be affected, and even in an effort to try to find out who owned what property, we had for the first time since just before Christ's birth a broadscale census of property owners here in South Australia the likes of which we had not seen since Emperor Augustus apparently. A census we had from RevenueSA because apparently there was not the wit to go over and look through the titling information to see who owned what property.

It makes you wonder how they send out all the other bills, does it not, such as the emergency services levy. They sent out these letters of demand—and they were letters of demand. I still have copies of the ones sent to me by my constituents: 'You must fill in this information. Information must be provided by.' All these people were ringing up and saying, 'Why do I have to do this? I have never had to do this before. What's the penalty if I don't do this?' It was all this extraordinary effort of belatedly trying to find out who was going to be impacted by this extraordinary tax increase.

So now we have as its latest measure in March 2021—nearly two years later from the announcement of these land tax increases—the announcement that the government continues the moratorium on rent increases. I can say the opposition supports that. That is a good thing. What we do not support is at the same time the government sending out an extra $87 million in land tax bills to South Australians. Many of those people are going to be constricted by this moratorium and that needs to be resolved by this government.

I have made comments before in this place about the extraordinary efforts that business owners not just in hospitality but across the board have made in an effort to continue their operations. They were told that in a world first, let alone in an Australian first, that all business owners would have to become COVID marshals, that they would have to be trained and become expert and capable of enforcing the government's coronavirus restrictions on the community.

Once again, I am pleased to say that, in many cases through gritted teeth, the community in South Australia complied. People signed up for the COVID online training, which I recall was only made available on the same day as the requirement to be a COVID marshal was introduced, but nonetheless we all complied and we all became COVID marshals.

It is not much fun if you are a young entrepreneur, you have started your own cafe, you have started your own restaurant, you might have started a small bar or maybe a brewery or a distillery, and you invite people into your premises, you encourage them to buy coffees, to buy food, to buy beer, gin or spirits or whatever else is the main selling point of that business, and you have to wear a bright yellow vest with COVID Marshal written on it and run around for the entire time your guests are there reminding them not to talk in such close proximity to their friends or not to stand up while they are drinking or not to sit at that table but instead get up and sit over there and just yell a bit louder so they can talk to their friends.

That is the position that South Australian business owners were placed in. They did it because they felt they had a shared responsibility with the rest of the state to try to keep us safe and they did it because not only did they feel that shared responsibility but, of course, they wanted to continue to operate. They did that, and they did that on top of having to massively reconfigure their businesses so that they could operate under some of those restrictions, whether at 25 per cent capacity, 50 per cent capacity or 75 per cent capacity.

If you were a larger venue owner that could, in the normal course of things, accommodate perhaps several hundred people and you had to impose those restrictions, that quite often meant closing or completely restructuring some parts of your business at quite significant expense, so spending more money of scarce financial resources in the middle of a pandemic in order to be able to stay open and trade at a restricted capacity. That has been a very significant financial impact on many thousands of South Australian businesses.

Many of those businesses were able to receive the federal government's JobKeeper support, which for many of them made all the difference in the world. It was the difference between being able to keep their heads above water and maintaining their businesses or simply having to close and basically hand back the keys. Also, perhaps some of them received the state government's Small Business Grant. Both JobKeeper and the state's Small Business Grant scheme have now finished and businesses are still subject to these restrictions.

Some of these businesses are not only subject to these restrictions but also now subject to what has been a fundamental change in consumer behaviour. The proportion of people shopping for retail goods online has increased from below or about 6 per cent, I think, to more than 12 per cent, a doubling of retail sales. That, of course, comes directly off those retail sales that were otherwise being done in person in a store.

It does not take too much to understand why a group of friends, deciding that they want to get together for some drinks, rather than go down to whatever the current status of restrictions are at the local pub, club, small bar or other venue, will just think, 'You know what? We might just go to Dan Murphy's, pick up a bottle of something and just sit around and have some drinks at home.' That has been a fundamental shift over the last 12 months, and it has been a real challenge for many venue operators to try to encourage people to come back into the venues.

There have been very significant structural changes in consumer behaviour, but there have not been commensurate structural changes in how these businesses have to manage their own finances. Yes, there has been some temporary relief from landlords and there has been some temporary relief for those landlords for some of their land tax liabilities going back many months, but that is largely over now as well. Their cost base is basically back to normal, their revenue base is still heavily restricted and their customer base is now possibly permanently changed as well. These are really, really significant shifts that our state and other states around the country are going to have to grapple with in the coming months—hopefully not years but in the coming months.

I saw a report in today's media about the concern of a really significant drop-off in the number of people coming into the CBD each day for work. There are still many people working from home, and many probably will not go back to working in the workplace. My wife, who works at a bank, is one of them. She has been working from home since March last year. I could count on one hand how many days she has been into the office. She is one of 900 staff in that bank who was previously working in the CBD, and the vast majority of them continue to work at home. That is just one corporate in a CBD which usually accommodates up to 200,000 workers on a normal working day. Structurally, that is likely to not come back to pre-COVID trends.

Remarkably, just as an aside, those people who are required to commute into the city in the morning might have noticed that, despite fewer people coming into the city to work or for other purposes, despite a really significant drop-off, traffic is actually worse, and that is because another structural shift has occurred, and that is that people do not feel confident using public transport anymore. I will not digress to the fact that there are lots of public transport services not being run at the moment for various reasons but, even when those services are operating, there is a proportion of the community that previously caught public transport that just do not feel comfortable catching it anymore. These are all really significant issues which we as a community will need to grapple with.

There are some nice perhaps unforeseen or unintended consequences of COVID, like those people who have managed to make their way back to South Australia to be with the broader families away from whatever they were doing interstate or overseas. That is wonderful for those people and their families. Of course, you do not have to look too far to hear stories about people who are still stuck overseas. It is nice that there are nice economic silver linings in some areas like the housing construction industry, but we are confronted with very significant challenges in this state in order to try to return our economy, our labour market and our way of maintaining small businesses' viability here in South Australia on an ongoing basis. That requires some leadership.

Industries that are organised and have leadership voices have a responsibility to provide not only some insight into what their industries are going through but also some suggestions about how best we can address these problems. It is not good enough for the Property Council in South Australia to say, 'Every employer must send all their employees back to work in the city because it's good for my members and it's good for those commercial landlords.' Well, sorry, breaking news: that ain't going to happen. If there is any expectation that that is suddenly going to flip back to what it was like in February 2020, or even times earlier, that is just simply not the case.

Why would a large corporate that has spent the last 12 to 14 months successfully dealing with all the challenges of migrating a large proportion of its workforce to be able to successfully work from home and maintain their productivity seek to upend that and try to bring everyone back into the city? Why would they not try to take advantage of perhaps the reduced rents that might come with the lower need for floor space? That challenge, along with the others I spoke of, will need to be addressed by this government. There will need to be some leadership shown by this government to support it.

I have mentioned a couple of times now the HomeBuilder scheme, which has seen a terrific boost in the number of people who are looking at building a new home or who are looking at extending their home. The state government here were first to tout that it was signing up to the HomeBuilder scheme. Of course they would. This is a scheme which enables the state government to disburse funds which have exclusively come from the federal government and try to take some ownership of them.

It is worth bearing in mind that South Australia is one of the only states not to have provided any additional support to its housing construction industry at the same time as the HomeBuilder scheme. Other states have provided support, for example, for first-home buyers for stamp duty relief and so on. This state government have done none of that. All they have done is continue the First Home Owner Grant which was put in place by the former Labor government and which gives a first-home buyer up to $15,000 if they are building a new home or purchasing a new home off the plan and so on. There has been no additional effort and I think that it is regrettable.

I suspect what we will see is that the first-home buyers who have taken up that $25,000 grant from the HomeBuilder scheme is a very small proportion. I suspect that, even though that money has been on the table, it has meant that the vast majority of people are people who already own a home—people already in a financial position of owning a home who are able to build another one or very significantly renovate or extend their existing home. That is terrific for the economy, it is good for tradies, it is great for those home owners, but it is not great for what we see confronting young South Australians, and that is the dream of home ownership increasingly becoming more and more difficult.

Last month, property prices increased in South Australia. Last month—not last quarter or last year but last month—they increased by 2 per cent. Over the last 10 years, South Australia usually has been lucky to record an annual increase in property values of 2 per cent, and now that is occurring in a month. You can imagine just how much harder it is getting if you are a young South Australian or a young couple saving up for a home deposit.

The median house price is knocking on the door of half a million dollars, and that means that most banks will require a deposit of at least 20 per cent, now $100,000. It is not easy in the current day and age to save up $100,000, particularly since the global financial crisis where wage growth in real terms has basically been flat for the best part of 10 years. It is not easy to save up these funds.

It is worth bearing in mind, though, that the state government has been doing very nicely out of this HomeBuilder scheme, and the state government has been doing very nicely out of the current boom in the housing market. In the six months to December 2020, so the first six months of this financial year, stamp duty receipts into the state government were up $115 million above budget—in just six months. That is before the last three or four months of frantic activity in the housing market, with houses selling for record prices after only being listed for days. So you can imagine after 12 months how much stamp duty receipts are likely to increase in this current financial year. If it has gone up $115 million in six months—and, yes, activity was pretty warm in the first six months of this year—it does not take much to guess that it is likely to be up something like $200 million over the course of 12 months.

At the same time, when we have had such a bounce-back in retail spending across the country, particularly from those people who would have otherwise been spending money overseas through overseas travel, for example, retail sales have continued their strong growth across the country. Retail sales across the country are great for South Australia because under our current GST arrangement it means that we get a big boost in GST revenues. GST revenues for South Australia, according to the latest budget figures released by the federal Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, this financial year are up $300 million so far.

Together, stamp duty and GST were up more than $400 million already. There have also been some increases, perhaps in more discrete parts of the economy. Of course, anyone who has tried to buy a new car in recent times or even a used car would have noticed not only the extraordinary demand in turnover occurring in the car market but also the very strong prices being demanded, particularly for used cars and for some new cars as well. This is leading to increased stamp duty receipts for vehicles purchased here in South Australia as well.

The government is hundreds of millions of dollars ahead of budget this year. That deficit of $2.49 billion, which was estimated in the state budget papers in November last year, is more likely going to look like something under $2 billion because of that influx of revenue. It depends on your perspective, I guess, but you might think that that is sweet relief from what was otherwise looking like very, very dire budget outcomes. You might think that the best thing to do with that money is just to pocket it, to take that money to the budget bottom line, to not borrow so much money in the current financial year and to improve the state's finances now and in the future commensurately.

You might also take the view that the community is facing a lot of pressures at the moment. Small business in South Australia is calling out for a lot more support and you might take the view that it is worthy of providing some support to those small businesses or actually investing some money very quickly in order to combat the extraordinary ramping that we are seeing throughout the community.

It is worth perhaps reflecting on the fact that, even though you might think that Catherine House and the Hutt St Centre are no longer appropriate bodies to receive government funding for the provision of important services they provide, you might just continue with that anyway because we have an extra $500 million in the Treasury coffers and we think now is not the time to be starving those organisations of important government funding that allows them to literally take people off the streets and care for them when they are in their direst need.

Of course, it may not end there. There may be a lot more money that is available in the state budget when we see it released on 22 June. This government's record on the delivery of infrastructure projects is appalling. I am expecting to see a very large carryover of capital funds which were allocated against projects and which continue to remain unspent. You only need to come down to the western suburbs and look at how slow—glacial even—the progress has been on the stage 3 development of The Queen Elizabeth Hospital upgrade, which was funded by the former Labor government, with construction due to start in the 2018-19 financial year.

It is now more than two years after construction was due to commence on the upgrade of The Queen Elizabeth Hospital and still not a sod has been turned. Perhaps I should get half a ute-load of soil, dump it in an alleyway in the CBD, get a golden shovel and some high-vis vests and invite the Premier. Maybe that will motivate him to get this project underway. It seems to be the only way we can draw the Premier's attention towards the benefits of infrastructure investment.

The government has little to show for their first, and hopefully only, term in government when it comes to infrastructure spending. The Regency to Pym Street project, as I mentioned previously, was budgeted for and committed to by the former Labor government, as was the duplication of the Joy Baluch Bridge. Also, the contract was signed, let alone the funding made available, for the electrification of the Gawler line.

The electrification of the Gawler line is a project that I have to say—yes, with its long chequered history—is one that for a few reasons continues to cause an extraordinary amount of frustration for commuters along the whole length of that line. One is that the project is late. It has been delayed. The project is being delivered in a way that it seems has been designed to create the greatest amount of impact on commuters. It is absolutely extraordinary that the government and its contractor would not devise a way in order to minimise the closure of these rail services.

A great comparison is the grade separation of the Outer Harbor line underneath both Park Terrace and the ARTC freight line, which was delivered in the years 2016 and 2017 under the former Labor government. By making sure that people were on site and literally working around the clock, the closure of that line was minimised to a maximum in total of several closures of only four months. We have closures extending on the Gawler line until November of this year, a further seven months away, after we have already had months of closures.

When we imposed those closures on Outer Harbor line commuters, we provided them with free substitute bus services in recognition of the inconvenience that they would suffer from having to catch a bus that stopped at proxy train stations along the way into the city. No such provision was made with this project. Commuters still have to pay full tote odds for their public transport services for a vastly inferior service. That is not the way you treat commuters when you are delivering a project like this. It goes to show that nobody really is paying close attention to the infrastructure program of this government.

There are lots of announcements and lots of claims about how big the infrastructure spend is in total, but when it comes to the actual management of a project that is when the wheels fall off. Look at what is happening with the rail crossing at Brighton Road, Hove. We have a minister who refuses to engage with the community that he himself as a member of parliament is responsible for representing in this place. He will not speak to his own constituents about a project. It may be difficult, but it is necessary.

I had to do this for the O-Bahn City Access Project. Believe me, nobody liked the idea of carving a 400-metre-long tunnel through the eastern Parklands of this city, but if you are going to come up with a plan like that you should at least have the courage to go and front it, to go and talk to those people who are concerned about it, and to be honest about what the impacts are going to be and how the project is going to be delivered.

This government is paralysed on this project. It cannot seem to make a decision about what the solution is going to be, let alone front up and own this project and the decisions necessary to deliver it, and go and speak to people out there about the impacts of it. It is emblematic of a range of other projects, which perhaps I can speak at some length about after the coming break.

Sitting suspended from 17:59 to 19:30.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I was talking about the delivery of infrastructure under this government, and one of the things that remains a concern about the current budget settings is the burden that will fall on the state balance sheet, after the end of the forward estimates, for those large infrastructure projects that have been committed to by this government but not yet funded.

Of the two most obvious examples, the first I will start with is the upgrade to the north-south corridor, the delivery of tunnels promised by this government. A presentation drafted for cabinet and leaked to the opposition outlined the total cost of tunnelling the remaining sections of the north-south corridor at $8.9 billion. That is an extraordinary figure by any stretch. It would comfortably, by some margin, by some order of magnitude in fact, exceed the most expensive infrastructure project that has previously been delivered in South Australia and would make it one of the most expensive infrastructure projects to be contemplated nationally.

Before the release of the 2018-19 state budget, the government caused a story to be placed in the Adelaide Advertiser claiming that there would be $1.4 billion for the next stages of South Road, for that section of South Road between the River Torrens and the nearly complete Darlington upgrade project. As a matter of fact, the state budget papers revealed a little later that only $144 million was included in the state budget, only a tenth of what had been promised. In the next year's budget, the 2019-20 budget, again a story was placed in the Adelaide Advertiser claiming that a further $1.5 billion would be included in the state budget. In fact, only $250 million was included in the state budget.

Now what we have in total, we are told, is funding that has been allocated over the forward estimates from the 2020-21 federal budget of $2.4 billion—half of that from the federal government and half of that from the state government, all of it sitting unallocated towards a specific part of the north-south corridor and sitting within the contingencies line of the capital program outlined in Budget Paper 3 of the budget papers. That, of course, leaves the remainder, the balance of nearly $6½ billion, yet to be found for the remainder of the north-south corridor.

On the basis that it is to be funded on a fifty-fifty basis between the federal government and the state government, it means that not only does the federal government have to find a further $3 billion in order to deliver the Liberal government's claimed $9 billion tunnelling program but the state government has to find that money as well. The total government debt figure of $33 billion, across both the general government sector and the non-financial public sector, by the end of the forward estimates will further increase by at least a further $3 billion in order to accommodate the remainder of the north-south corridor project.

It does not end there. We know that the state government has maintained its commitment to a new Women's and Children's Hospital, despite having had a business case for this new hospital provided to the government nearly two full years ago. The government will not release either that business case or, more to the point, the estimated costs of a new Women's and Children's Hospital. A document released to the opposition under freedom of information indicated that the likely cost was to be $1.9 billion. That was $1.9 billion in 2018 costs.

The response from the government is, 'We are pretty confident we can deliver a hospital for less than what that quoted figure was.' I do not claim to be the most experienced person in government, but I do have some experience in government, and there are two projects that you can absolutely bank on will never reduce in cost but will always increase. One is an ICT project and the other is a hospital project.

For the government to be sitting on a project that we know will cost at least $1.9 billion, for which it has only allocated $685 million across the forward estimates, means that at least another $1.2 billion—at least—will be required from taxpayers beyond the forward estimates to provide for this project. Of course, once you factor in that the forward estimates end in a little over three years' time or when we get the new budget in four years' time, with the cost escalation that we see in infrastructure projects on a year-on-year basis, changes in scope, latent conditions in the site, etc., it is easy to see how that figure will easily exceed $2 billion.

On top of that, we were told, remarkably, that the Premier's vision to complete the Riverbank Precinct is a new basketball stadium. Apparently the case is so persuasive for the Adelaide 36ers that it justifies $700 million being spent on a basketball stadium. We are told as well that this is not just a basketball stadium. This will be used for all those international conferences that South Australia is currently missing out on that require more floor space.

I agree that there is a case to be made for public investment in conference facilities to attract major conferences. They do provide a very substantial economic boost, a very substantial boost in tourism visitation and, of course, the spend that comes with each of those conference delegates while they are here in Adelaide. It was a robust business case prepared by Ernst and Young which informed the commitment for the 2010 election for the former Labor government to commit $394 million to the next two stages of extension to the Adelaide Convention Centre facilities.

You might remember that Adelaide had the first convention centre in Australia, built and opened, I think, in 1987, and then extended by the Olsen government. I think Joan Hall, if I remember rightly, was the tourism minister at the time. It gave us the first stage of the Convention Centre expansion, the one that many of us would recognise as having the large glass facade overlooking the River Torrens.

That business case that was used to inform the 2010 election commitment for the next two stages, alongside the Morphett Street bridge and then also at the end of the new footbridge, was based on South Australia having the capacity to attract conferences with up to 3,500 delegates able to sit together in a plenary style seating forum and the idea that such an investment of $394 million would pay back taxpayers and then some as an investment.

The problem with this $700 million basketball stadium-cum-conference facility is that there is no business case. No formal document has been provided or even drafted by the government that sets out what justifies this investment. Without that business case, South Australians will continue to scratch their heads and think, 'Why on earth would the government commit a further $700 million to a project without a basis while there are other areas of public expenditure so direly needed, such as additional investment in the health system to try to ease hospital ramping and the pressures on our emergency departments, the mental health crisis, homelessness funding and so on?'

When you think that a further $3 billion, at least, is required from the state government for the north-south corridor, a further $1.2 billion, at least, is needed for the new Women's and Children's Hospital and now a further $700 million is required for this new basketball stadium, South Australians rightly would ask, 'If we already have an amount of debt on the state balance sheet that has rapidly escalated towards $33 billion by the end of the current forward estimates, why would we consider a further $5 billion worth of projects, particularly when those projects do not have robust business cases that have been provided to the community?' These are all very salient questions which the government cannot answer.

In the meantime, its management of existing infrastructure projects continues—pardon the pun—to go off the rails. The more than two-year delay of The Queen Elizabeth Hospital has led to a budget blowout again caused by that delay and the escalation in construction costs over time of $50 million, the government again unable to articulate that there is additional resources or additional spaces or additional facilities provided for this funding, because they cannot articulate that. We know it is a budget blowout.

There has also been a blowout in the costs of the Gawler electrification project and a blowout in the costs of the delayed Festival Plaza redevelopment. As to the Festival Plaza redevelopment, finally after years of wrangling and negotiation between Walker Corporation and the former Labor government an agreement is in place, a design is in place, a scope of works is in place. Construction can commence, with the demolition of the old car park, the construction of the new car park and the new plaza to go on top of it, eventually linking up towards the new footbridge and the new opening to the recently redeveloped Adelaide Casino precinct. Yet it was delayed for 18 months, between April 2018 and nearly the beginning of 2020, because the developer thought, 'Here's a new government. Here's a new minister. I might just try it on one more time to see if I can convince them to put more multistorey buildings on the plaza precinct than had been agreed with the former government.'

It took 18 months of navel-gazing, of fingernail chewing, of delay and indecision before this government was embarrassed into saying no when the media found out not only about the delay but about what the request was from Walker Corporation, and finally we have some progress some 18 months—nearly two years—late on the Festival Plaza project because the former minister for infrastructure, the member for Schubert, could not get on with the project.

The Main South Road project—the duplication of Main South Road—was due to start in 2019; well, here we are in 2021, two years later. Again a project that has been delayed. Why can the government not just tell the community what its design will be for this road duplication and what the treatment of intersections will be?

If the Minister for Transport likes to stand in here and mock intersections that have previously been installed in the form of roundabouts, well, it is simple: he can make his commitment to the communities of the outer southern suburbs that he will grade-separate Main South Road. If he is not prepared to do that, then he should tell them, finally, what the final design will be for this road duplication. But most importantly he should just get on and start building it—award the contract, get people employed and start battling South Australia's unwanted mantle of having the worst unemployment rate in the nation.

The Hove crossing is another example of how a transport department is leading a minister by the nose into what is going to be a disastrous outcome for that community. The community is well aware what the options are. The community is well aware of what those impacts will be, but what they are not aware of is what the minister is going to decide as the outcome. In my view I think building bridges in the middle of residential areas to take either road traffic or rail traffic over intersections is a disastrous outcome. If that is the solution which is pursued by this government, if that is what this transport minister is going to impose on his own constituents in his own electorate, well, then I think his own electorate will treat him very harshly and rightly so.

These large bridges, these large overpasses, may be suitable solutions for non-residential and industrial areas such as where the South Road Superway has been built around Wingfield, but they are not suitable for residential areas. As somebody who uses either Port Road or Torrens Road to come into the city in the morning, I think the prospect of an enormous road bridge over the suburbs of Ovingham and Brompton will be a blight on that landscape for decades to come and, even worse, a completely avoidable blight as well.

I agree in one respect with the minister in that it is not easy dealing with that rail corridor where you have shared passenger rail and freight rail and delivering major infrastructure projects around it. I know what it is like. The Torrens Junction project, which took the Outer Harbor line underneath Park Terrace at Bowden and also underneath that freight line in the western Parklands, was a very difficult project to deliver. It was expensive.

It not only required the closure of the Outer Harbor line but it required the temporary and nightly closure of the freight line every day for months, and doing so dealing with the Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC), who were deliberately difficult to deal with in those negotiations because their only concern, of course, was to continue their freight services. They are not beholden to the wishes of the South Australian community, let alone the South Australian government, and they will make terms as difficult as possible for the state government. That was certainly my experience in delivering that Torrens Junction project.

As difficult as it may be, whether it is a few months of inconvenience or whether it is some pointed negotiations with a difficult to deal with institution like ARTC, that is a much more preferable outcome than elevating a road traffic bridge through the suburbs of Ovingham and Brompton, heading down towards Renown Park, that will stay there for decades. That will be an eyesore, and that is also the solution that the transport minister is proposing for his own constituents in Hove when it comes to the Brighton Road crossing.

I think it is terrific that the Liberal government has picked up a proposal from the former Labor government to proceed with rail crossing grade separations. It is a very good initiative. It is not only good for transport times, both for passenger rail and for road transport, but it is great for safety. Rail crossings are the most dangerous intersections that we have on our road network, and the more we can eliminate by grade separation the better. However, I reiterate that there are good ways of doing this and there are ways which create a blight on the landscape, and I am very concerned that this minister is certainly providing us with the latter.

Of course, it is not easy to fund major infrastructure projects. They are expensive by their nature, hundreds of millions of dollars and sometimes in the billions of dollars, but that should not be a licence for this government to continue its form of remorselessly increasing taxes on the South Australian community.

We had a big promise from the Premier, the then member for Dunstan, leading into the last state election that he would deliver more jobs, lower costs and better services. Of course, what we have seen is that South Australia is the only state to have lost jobs since the pandemic. As far as the better services promise goes, we only have to watch the news to see how ramping is spiralling out of control or that other government services are being privatised, and when it comes to lower costs, that promise has been completely blown out of the water.

Whatever relief this government tells you is being delivered to South Australians is absolutely washed away in the tsunami of higher taxes, fees and charges that are continually being jacked up by this government. It was remarkable that the Liberal Party went to the last state election with clear commitments about reducing the ESL, for example, but actually had no way of funding it.

They were blessed that in the lead-up to the release of the 2018-19 budget the state budget enjoyed a revenue boom of more than $300 million a year, providing them the capacity to deliver all of their unfunded unbudgeted election commitments, including that tax reduction. But of course what happened in the lead-up to the next year's budget, to the 2019-20 budget, was that the tide started to run out on the government again.

Economic activity slowed, no doubt partially in response to this government's withdrawal of support for the state's economy and those job creation and support programs, and the government faced the choice between trying to maintain relief to households and businesses or they could increase taxes. This government chose the latter. In the 2019-20 budget, released in June 2019, we had a $500 million assault on the hip pockets of households and businesses in South Australia. Virtually no area of tax was left alone when it came to increasing the burden on South Australians.

Motorists were hit particularly hard. Driver's licence fees were increased, registration costs were increased by 10 per cent or $48 million over four years. The administration fee—that fee that everybody asks, 'What on earth am I paying this for?' when they get their car registration renewal notice—was increased by 30 per cent. You might think the increase of a $7 fee to a $10 fee or a $21 fee to a $30 fee or a $30 fee to a $40 fee is small beer. That increase alone raised the government $90 million extra in revenue.

Those motorists who had their residences in Coober Pedy, Roxby Downs or Kangaroo Island had their out-of-areas motor vehicle registration concession removed, so their registration costs doubled. That was an extra $10 million raised by the government over four years. Speeding fines were increased, mobile phone fines increased by $200 or 60 per cent. But unbelievably, regarding fines to small businesses running car fleets with vans, utes, light trucks and so on, the corporate fee payable by a business whose vehicle is caught committing a traffic infringement suffered a 500 per cent increase to a $1,800 fee—just extraordinary. It was all designed to raise nearly an extra $100 million over four years.

Perhaps the most egregious activity by this government was to introduce the Premier's bin tax—a 40 per cent increase to the solid waste levy. Who pays the solid waste levy? It is perhaps a levy most South Australians have not heard of before. The main payer of the solid waste levy is councils, which pick up the rubbish each week from South Australian households. A 40 per cent increase in the solid waste levy raises an extra $25 million a year. Who pays that extra $25 million a year? People who pay council rates.

As a result, you saw council after council across metropolitan and regional South Australia have to redo their budgets at the last minute to increase council rates to South Australians. This government said that they would cut council rates. Not only did they abandon their attempts to cut council rates through their rate capping legislation—they dumped that—in the next breath they increased council rates by increasing the solid waste levy.

Government businesses themselves were slugged, including HomeStart, the government lending agency designed to help those people who cannot get finance for a house within the traditional banking sector. They slugged businesses like HomeStart, businesses like SA Water, an extra $25 million a year. Every dollar they make in net profit each year is now retained by Treasury, rather than the previous policy of allowing these businesses to retain some of their earned profits to reinvest in their operations.

Public transport fares were up, including the removal of the two-section fare, perhaps the most small-minded, short-sighted public transport fee increase. The last thing we want to do is encourage those people who live in the inner suburbs surrounding metropolitan Adelaide to choose not to take public transport anymore because their fares have gone up and to drive themselves in and increase inner-city congestion, but that has been the result of removing the two-section fare, and charging people $5 once more to even buy a public transport ticket—$5 for a Metrocard. Egregiously, in the context of a pandemic, hospital car parking fees are up with $2 million a year raised from visitors and $8 million a year being raised from cleaners, nurses, orderlies and other staff working in our hospitals.

I spoke at length about the land tax increases introduced by the Premier and his Treasurer, but the remarkable thing about the budget handed down last year was the introduction of an electric vehicle tax. Once again, just like the proposed aggregation and land surcharge for land owned in trusts in the 2019-20 budget, last year's budget introduced a new tax for electric vehicles. The government could not and to this day still cannot even articulate how that tax is to be implemented. They do not even know what activity they will be taxing. All they have seen is something that is capable of moving without the government's input—an electric vehicle—and thought, 'We had better tax that.'

It was dressed up in the most egregious lie to the people of South Australia, the most bogus rhetoric, about why electric vehicles should be taxed in a way that vehicles powered by internal combustion engines are taxed. The assertion was made that electric vehicles do not pay their fair share of fuel excise, which funds the maintenance of the road network. That is just a lie. It is not a mistake, and it is not a minor indiscretion or something that is the result of an oversight; it is a carefully designed lie about the rationale of a new tax.

People who run electric vehicles pay two things: they pay their driver's licence fee and they pay the same level of registration as the owner of a four-cylinder vehicle pays. There are two sources of revenue that the government can raise that are by law hypothecated into the upkeep of our roads: driver's licence fees and motor vehicle registration costs. Electric vehicle owners pay that and electric vehicles, in order to be registered, are subject to those registration costs—tick and tick.

Do you know what revenue a level of government receives that is not hypothecated into the upkeep of the road network? Fuel excise. There is no link whatsoever, in any way, shape or form, between the amount of fuel excise that is raised by the commonwealth government and how much the commonwealth government spends on the roads—no link whatsoever. It is a completely bogus argument.

Having worked with many of them over many years, I like to think that the good people who work in the Treasury department would be aware of that, and I also like to think that they would have advised their minister of that. This cannot have been based on advice coming from the Public Service. This can only be some short-sighted, ill-informed, deliberately misleading spin that has been provided by ministers to this place and to the people of South Australia.

As soon as they were caught out by this, as soon as people who actually know how roads are funded and how taxes are levied on motorists and their vehicles made their voices heard, as soon as this all came out, where is the tax? Where is the legislation? It was not in the budget bill. We were promised it would be placed before this house before the delivery of this coming budget and we are still yet to see it.

That is because this, just like the land tax aggregation measures, was all designed to raise revenue. This was not designed to deliver a public policy outcome. This was not designed to right some wrong currently occurring throughout the community of South Australia. This was merely to fleece South Australians in a new way.

Could we be thinking of anything worse when it comes to the greening of our motor vehicle fleet? South Australia already has the oldest car fleet in the nation currently on our roads. An old fleet, of course, means a relatively unsafe fleet. It also means a fleet that uses more petrol per capita than a newer fleet. Rather than fostering ways to encourage South Australians to buy new vehicles, whether they are hybrids, plug-in hybrids or fully electric vehicles, this government sets about creating new ways to disincentivise the take-up of these cars—a truly remarkable effort. I bet we will see this government walk away from this very, very quickly.

It is also fair to say that the land tax increase, the handling of the electric vehicle tax and its purported introduction find their stewardship in the hands of the Treasurer, the Hon. Rob Lucas of the other place. The Hon. Mr Lucas has his hands full at the moment not just with the preparation of the next state budget but with a series of disputes of his own making. One is with the Ambulance Employees Association, who, quite rightly, are defending their members' rights and the members' wishes about employment conditions in their line of work, and also one is with those hospital staff who are employed to make sure that our hospitals are kept clean and, in the current context of a global pandemic, kept safe.

They both have been in dispute with the government in excess of 12 months, so prior to a pandemic. This Treasurer, unlike any other Treasurer before him, has pursued a policy where not only will enterprise bargaining negotiations be delayed for as long as possible and we will not reach agreements with various enterprise groups but, when agreements are finally reached, any pay increase in the subject of that new agreement is not backdated to the expiry of the former agreement. That is absolutely outrageous.

It is a tactic designed not only to frustrate public sector workers but to prop up the state budget. That might be desirable if you are a bean counter, but it is a figurative slap in the face for those public sector staff, who in many cases are charged with keeping South Australians safe. I cannot believe that once again we have the Treasurer embarking on yet another political frolic like the land tax, like the electric vehicles tax and now the dispute with the Ambulance Employees Association and the dispute with hospital cleaners. We do not have a Premier who is pulling on the reins, calling him to heel, making sure that these employees who work so hard to protect the people of South Australia, to respond to their needs when they are at their greatest, are being looked after. I just find that absolutely extraordinary.

The results speak for themselves. Every time we hear the Minister for Health or the Treasurer go on radio and make a claim about how, in their view, these ambulance employees have never had it so good, that the government have added so many more new crews, that there are so many more ambulances, what do the ambulance employees themselves say? They call in talkback radio and say that is completely wrong. That is absolutely wrong.

Even today, the Premier in question time was trying to take credit for additional ambulance crews that were funded and committed to by the former Labor government in the previous enterprise bargaining negotiations, which were concluded before the last state election. That is all they have to lean on. They have not done anything themselves. They are trying to take credit for things that the former Labor government was responsible for.

What is the end result of this? It is not, 'Who is at fault? Is it Labor? Is it Liberal? Is the Treasurer being outrageous? Is the Premier not calling him to heel?' In the midst of all this, the people are missing out on a decent ambulance service. The member for Kaurna in question time today revealed case after case of South Australians in absolute dire need of paramedic services not getting them because of the crisis that is enveloping the Ambulance Service because of its dispute with the government and, more broadly, the health crisis.

It was telling today to watch the performance of the Premier and the performance of the member for Morialta grasping at straws, trying to read into Hansard excerpts from a former health minister's memoirs—the health minister four ministers ago, maybe five—claiming that that was the source of all their problems. How many more years will the Premier, his Treasurer and his health minister lean on the political excuse of, 'Don't blame us, we're only a new government. It was all the former government's fault.'?

That does not wash with the 93 year old left on an ambulance gurney for more than six hours. That does not wash with the children who are having cardiac issues who are not being attended to by ambulance responders. It does not wash for their parents. It does not wash for the tens of thousands of people who are watching these incidents unfold on the nightly news or, of course, the hundreds of thousands of South Australians who will be casting their ballots accordingly in less than a year's time. I have to say it is emblematic of this government's approach to providing what they claimed was going to be better services for South Australians.

The approach by this government has been to identify crucial public services and immediately decide to privatise them. One of the first decisions this government made was, 'Unless SA Pathology can save over $100 million, we are going to privatise it.' South Australians were aghast. Pretty much anyone who has had a blood test or a similar test in the state would have ended up using the services of SA Pathology. Why on earth would you put that in private hands? It took the emergence of a global pandemic and the crucial role that SA Pathology played in providing timely accurate testing services for the government to be badgered while on morning talkback radio into backing down from that threat to privatise SA Pathology.

But, of course, it does not end with SA Pathology. We have the remarkable performance of the transport department under its new chief executive who, upon assuming the role, seems to have convinced his ministers—first, the member for Schubert and now the member for Gibson—that it is in their best interests to divest themselves of any responsibility of providing any transport services directly, or any related transport infrastructure services while they are in government.

Of course, the former Liberal government under the former transport minister, Diana Laidlaw, outsourced the buses. What an absolute debacle that was at not only outsourcing them, but having to massively increase the amount of funding going to the private companies so that they could at least match the previously existing level of bus services. They thought, 'We will have another couple of doses of that. We'll do the trams and we'll do the trains.' The trains is perhaps the most egregious. It went to a company that had never run a train service in the country before.

They claimed they ran a tram service. It is a little bit different running a train service. Trams do not get the benefit of running red lights. Trams do not get the benefit of crossing over a busy arterial road with an unfettered right of way. Trams are a far different beast entirely from running a train network. This is a company that did not even get its train accreditation from the Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator until less than two weeks before they were meant to start running services.

What was the first thing they did? They identified a couple of infrastructure projects, which as I have previously mentioned were running behind time and over budget and used those as an excuse to stop providing as many services as possible, particularly on the Gawler line and also on the Outer Harbor line, ostensibly to save both the contractor and the state government as much money in the current context as possible.

They privatised regional road maintenance. Those road gangs based at Port Augusta, Murray Bridge and in other regional locations, who would literally spend their days driving around the state's arterial road network in trucks with equipment, looking for problems, and could immediately respond to them are gone. They are gone now.

Now we have a private provider out in regional South Australia, so that when somebody has the wherewithal to contact the transport department because they noticed a pothole, a crumbling shoulder, a fallen road sign or perhaps something even more serious out on the road network, they can raise it as an issue with the new private contractor, who they will try to summon a crew and that crew will go out and attend to it. How is that as efficient or as timely as having state government employed, directly employed, road crews going out and traversing the roads on a continual basis looking for these faults so that they can be immediately repaired?

They are the actions of a transport department clearly not interested in being directly involved in the maintenance of our road network. It is not only regional road maintenance, because of course the metropolitan road maintenance was outsourced by the previous Liberal government in the 1990s as well but it is field services, a division of the transport department so euphemistically named that nobody would be able to accurately pinpoint what it does.

I can tell you what it does: it maintains all our traffic lights throughout metropolitan Adelaide. It maintains all our traffic cameras and it maintains all our ITC systems, which connect all the travel advisory signs and information-gathering systems together and makes them available to both the Traffic Management Centre and road users on time travel signs, which were erected in 2015 and 2016 under the former Labor government. That has been outsourced as well.

Loath as some of us might be to talk about the statewide blackout, but what was one of the major findings about it? That the traffic lights did not work at the end of the working day on a weekday, so people could not get home safely in their cars. Now what does this government do? Outsource it! Do not take responsibility for making sure that it is going to be run effectively, do not make sure that you have your own people on it—outsource it, save a buck wherever you can.

The Walkley Heights facility, which housed the field services division of the transport department, has been wound down and is now being sold. This government is completely disinterested in providing not just better services but any services. They want to get rid of Service SA. Not only did they try to get rid of it from three key locations around metropolitan Adelaide—out near the member for King's electorate, out at the Northfield Shopping Centre and out at Mitcham—and it was only after a sustained community campaign that they were forced to backtrack on it, but it did not stop them getting rid of the Adelaide Metro information centre on the corner of Currie Street and King William Street.

We have a government here that complains about falling transport patronage, so what do they do? They remove one of the two major sources of public transport information available to South Australians—just shut it down. They did not replace it, did not move it, did not scale it down. They just shut it completely. The only place that somebody who is using the tram or a bus service can go to get information in person is to the train station. It is almost like they are setting out to stop people using our transport networks.

Then we hear revealed in the media only last week that the BASS ticketing service at the festival theatre is now to be privatised. Presumably, the reason it is to be privatised is that, unlike Ticketek, it actually provided a personal service. It actually helped people in real time with the issues they were having. It perhaps provided some recognition that some people who buy tickets through BASS—perhaps to the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, the opera, the theatre or musicals being staged at the festival theatre or in the recently refurbished Her Majesty's Theatre—may be in need of a more personal service than a purely online service can provide, which Ticketek provides. It is absolutely extraordinary.

If all this was being done because there was an outcome in mind, because the government was telling us, 'There's a reason behind this. We need to save a certain amount of money. We need to drag the budget back into a particular position that we committed to. We have a fiscal target that we are committed to meeting. This is what the target is and all these measures are going to help us meet it,' perhaps you could conceivably understand that there is a method to this madness.

But there is no fiscal target. There is no fiscal discipline in all this. With all the privatisations, all the tax increases, all the additional pain on South Australian taxpayers or South Australian commuters or other South Australian service users in our health system and so on, there is no rationale for this. The Auditor-General himself explains that the government does not have a fiscal target. It does not have a fiscal target when it comes to debt.

It talks about debt as a sustainable level of debt, but no-one in Treasury, no-one in government is able to provide the Auditor-General with a definition of what a sustainable level of debt is. A sustainable level of debt, apparently, is a figure that is capable of being published in the budget papers. As long as it is in a font small enough and short enough to be published on a roughly A4-sized budget paper, then it is small enough for this government.

The last thing I want to talk about is the fact that this government has spent more than $200 million in two years paying 2½ thousand public sector workers to leave the Public Service through its targeted voluntary separation scheme. TVSPs, as they are known, are not new. Targeted voluntary separation packages have been used in the past, including by the former Labor government. Indeed, in the 2017-18 financial year, just over $33 million was paid in TVSPs to several hundred staff, but that is entirely different from spending $200 million in two years to separate 2½ thousand people.

We were paying public servants tens of thousands of dollars to leave the Department for Child Protection while the Department for Child Protection was out in the market trying to recruit workers. How does that make sense? The Department of Human Services spent tens of millions of dollars paying 480 public servants to leave over the course of those two years. The numbers in the health and education departments are similarly frightening.

Perhaps if it were designed to reduce the overall size of the public sector you might forgive that. You might think, 'Well, we are better off paying up-front that $200 million so that we can reduce the size of the public sector and that will generate savings over the remainder of the forward estimates and into the future.' But at the same time as the $200 million was being spent to separate 2½ thousand public servants, the government had blown its own FTE recruitment targets by 3½ thousand people. So they paid 2½ thousand people to go and they have recruited 3½ thousand people over budget. How is that solid public management?

How can the Treasurer as minister responsible for the public sector, let alone as Treasurer, show his face when these figures are revealed? This is just sloppy, poor budget management. This is money that is being wasted. Why would you spend tens of millions of dollars paying people to leave a department when that same department is desperately trying to hire new workers? It beggars belief. But that is the record of this government.

I will conclude my remarks on the second reading of the Supply Bill here and indicate that I look forward to making a brief grievance contribution on matters more relevant to my electorate.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (20:19): I rise to make a few comments in regard to the Supply Bill 2021 and note that the amount of money we are authorising so we can write the cheques for the Public Service and others is $6,161,000,000. That gives assent for enough finance to get us through until we have the Appropriation Bill debate and all the debate around it. We have based this figure on the actual appropriations that were required for the first four months of the 2020-21 financial year. The passage of the bill is essential to enable the operations of government to be paid for the period 1 July 2021 until the Appropriation Bill is approved.

I am really proud to be part of the Marshall Liberal government, looking at the funding we are spending right across the state, right throughout our regions and also through the urban areas. What makes me really proud is that we are spending money in areas that those on the other side absolutely neglect, and that is the regions. Some would say that in some ways we are not particularly tactical, I guess, but I think it is tactical because we spend it whether it is in a Liberal electorate, whether it is in a Labor electorate, whether it is in a marginal electorate, whether it is in a crossbencher's seat or whether it is in a safe electorate, and it is all up to perception whether you think a seat is safe or not. I never take that view.

I reflect on the $1.3 billion we are spending on the year 7 upgrade into secondary school, coming into next year, and I look at where we are spending $100 million on a new school in Whyalla—a seat we will probably never win, to be frank, but the new school is needed there. I also want to acknowledge the $20 million we are spending at Murray Bridge High School, a great boon for doing major upgrades to some of the tech facilities, upgrading the gym and getting in those extra classrooms in so that we can have year 7 come in for secondary classes.

We will soon be spending $5 million at the Murray Bridge North primary school, and when I went to Meningie on Sunday for a meeting it was good to see the work that has been done in previous years to the Meningie school. With the member for MacKillop, I assisted in getting the funding to get that project finished; it was about $700,000 short.

One project in education and I am really proud of, one that took a lot of work, because the Mallee has swung in and out of Hammond and into Chaffey in the past, was the at least six-year battle to get a swimming pool built for the Karoonda school—and not just for the school but for the community. That was a long, drawn-out process, and I want to acknowledge the work the member for Chaffey, Tim Whetstone, did in this regard as well in lobbying for that new four-lane swimming pool. There were swimming lessons conducted at the pool, and they are just fixing up some of the fencing around it. Hopefully, we can have the official launch of that very soon.

I want to acknowledge the work we have been doing in health, spending money on health. We have the proposed Women's and Children's Hospital, the new build that will come, but in the meantime we are spending $50 million on the current Women's and Children's Hospital to keep it up to speed for the years we need to keep it in really good working order to look after the women and children of this state.

I also want to talk about something else we have done in health that I am really proud of, and that is reactivating the Repatriation Hospital at Daw Park. Labor made a decision to close that hospital. What a faux pas that was. It was gifted to the state by the commonwealth, and that is exactly what it was: a repatriation hospital for returned service men and women.

My brother is a returned serviceman. He served for 23 years in Rwanda, which is a difficult action. He was peacekeeping with the Hutus and Tutsis and he witnessed some terrible massacres. He was peacekeeping and was upgraded to war service 13 years later, and then he served in Iraq in 2005 and 2006. So I feel it keenly, along with many of my family, including uncles and a great uncle who served in World War I and World War II. My father served home here in the Citizens Military Forces. With regard to reactivating the Repat, some of the things we have done include:

step-down transitional accommodation to support people with brain injury and spinal cord injury transition from acute rehabilitation back into the community;

a dementia care village in partnership with HammondCare;

an 18-bed neurobehavioural unit for people whose behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia mean their needs cannot be met in mainstream residential care;

a 12-bed specialist advanced dementia unit for people living with advanced dementia;

a 26-bed care transition facility for people transitioning to home or an aged-care facility following acute care treatment;

a 24-bed brain injury rehabilitation and a 24-bed spinal cord injury rehabilitation facility;

a veterans' wellbeing centre to provide services and support for veterans and their families;

a town square community hub and an open outdoor flexible space, including a new wheelchair sports stadium;

a new home for the Southern Older Persons Community Mental Health Service;

a new facility for the Statewide Eating Disorder Service, including a residential facility;

reopened the hydrotherapy pool; and

the securing of 40 beds already operating—20 beds in the rehabilitation building (to be relocated to a new 26-bed transition care facility) and 20 beds in the ViTA precinct.

We are also making sure that the chapel, the remembrance gardens, the museum and the SPF Hall will be protected and preserved as community assets for future generations. I think that is a real win for the people of South Australia and certainly for the veterans of South Australia and the community.

We are also doing things in health. I was really proud to team up with the health minister before Christmas to open the new emergency department in Murray Bridge. This is a $7 million promise we took to the election. It has opened up a whole new way to deal with emergency in Murray Bridge, where the old facilities had not been updated for about 40 years. There were beds with just a curtain between them. Of course, the real issue was security if patients were having some sort of psychological episode. We have many more treatment rooms. We have rooms for families and rooms for doctors to meet with patients and families. There are also resuscitation rooms.

This is a great bonus not just for Murray Bridge but also for the surrounding area right out to the Victorian border and down into the South-East and north of Murray Bridge and even towards the Hills and Mount Barker. I am really proud of that. Alongside that, $3 million was spent on new X-ray facilities at the Murray Bridge Soldiers' Memorial Hospital.

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to see the upgrades at the aged-care facility in Strathalbyn. With the redistribution, Strathalbyn is coming into Hammond. I looked after Strathalbyn in the 2006-2010 period when I was first elected. I am very much hoping that I get the privilege to look after Strathalbyn again after the next election on 19 March next year. It is fantastic to see close on $20 million being spent there on aged-care work, where there will be 12 new dementia beds.

Certainly in the planning it was really good to see that the new catering, kitchen and dining facility could be factored in because that needed to go in underneath the upstairs rooms. It would have been more than a problem to try and backfill that space and that build would have cost a lot more, so it was good to see that happening.

I note the Kalimna Hostel site—which is on land that was donated by the community and the building was donated by the community—is going out for expressions of interest soon to ensure that we get the best use for the community. Toward the end of its previous life, it was used for aged care and sadly the former Labor government decided to shut it down and farm people out all over the Hills and Fleurieu. These were people in their homes, in the last months and days of their lives and their lives were totally disrupted. It was shameful what happened, so we will see a great outcome there in the Strathalbyn area.

In other work that we are doing with the $16.7 billion infrastructure build right across the state, there are the South Road roadworks that are going on, with billions of dollars being spent there, and as we get towards the really sticky bit of that with the combination of a couple of tunnels and aboveground works to help complete that.

I acknowledge Bow Hill Engineering for the work they keep doing with overpasses. They built half the overpasses at Darlington. They are a little company that employs up to 40 people out there at Bow Hill and they keep expanding their working area so they can build these great sections up over 60 metres long to transport through to Adelaide, or anywhere else for that matter, for those projects.

A couple of roads that link my electorate through to Chaffey and MacKillop, the Browns Well Highway which goes from Pinnaroo to Loxton, and the Ngarkat Highway which goes from Pinnaroo down to Bordertown were two of the eight roads we promised to bring back to 110 km/h at the last election. As was pointed out earlier today, as the surfaces got worse or road widening needed to be done, the previous Labor government decided that it was easier just to pull the signs back to 100 km/h and not worry about it.

I am so proud to see that out of the $72 million for those eight roads, $37 million was attributed to those two roads. They are each about 100 kilometres long, and shoulder sealing was done each side all the way. There were certainly sections of pavement rehabilitation which meant the road was obviously ripped up and relaid over several kilometres on each road. Some barrier work was done with safety barriers put in as well. It is a real game changer out there.

I know the Browns Well Highway is not far off being reposted back to 110 km/h. This is absolutely vital in the freight route work that has happened in recent years where these roads are now road train rated, that is two trailer road train rated, and so the B-triples, the B-quads, the road trains and the AB-doubles can go up these roads.

Alongside that initial $37 million for these two roads, $5 million more had to be found with some of the work on this road rehabilitation process and I am really glad that happened. This will be a real boon for the Mallee where we see Parilla potatoes. We helped them with a regional grant, putting in $2 million for their $35 million build, building their new packing shed.

Parilla potatoes and the Pye family—Mark and Fiona and Renee and the team—are going through the process of putting houses into Lameroo and Pinnaroo so they can relocate workers and hire other workers and really invigorate the Mallee towns and the community, and save that freight to Virginia then back again. They can utilise those two roads I previously mentioned to get their product out to market, whether it is heading to Sydney, Melbourne or elsewhere.

Certainly, there has been a lot of discussion about roadworks, and I acknowledge the work we have been doing on the Dukes Highway, the Princes Highway and the entrance coming into Adelaide as you come down the freeway. Since it was opened up as a three-lane road about 20 years ago, coming down past Mount Osmond to the lights at Cross Road and Portrush Road, it has not been repaved. We have seen it is getting repaved. There is still some work to be done there.

Sadly, there have been some hold-ups with some accidents and people get a bit excited. I live on the Dukes Highway and, sadly, we have fatal accidents out there and it can shut down a road for 12 hours. You wake up and you cannot hear the semitrailers going past and you think that something has happened. Trucks get rerouted and that kind of thing.

I want to pay my respects to David Diprose, who sadly was the motorcyclist killed on the freeway the other night. He was a mentor for my son, Mack, at Peats Soil, working for Peter Wadewitz. I pay my condolences to the family. It was a bit of a freak accident. We do not know the full story, but I pay my condolences to everyone who knew David and his family.

People talk about access to Adelaide with freight. We have to acknowledge that there is a freight route around Adelaide around Portrush Road. We did some work with GlobeLink. It did not add up financially. Some people quoted it at $7 billion to put four lanes of roads around Adelaide to the north and a railway line and then an airport out at Monarto. It is all good on paper, but it needs to be funded.

Because we now have these new freight combinations and we are getting more heavy freight, as I indicated earlier, anything above a B-double, such as a B-triple or a B-quad or a road train or an AB-double, has to go around the Sturt Highway. There is a turn-off north of Sedan, the Halfway House Road. We put money in there with the federal government—I think it was $12 million or $14 million—to get that bypass back down towards Sedan, Mannum and Murray Bridge through the overdimension route and get them on their way heading south, because legally they cannot go down the freeway. That is alleviating some of the freight task with that heavy freight coming down the hill into Adelaide.

I acknowledge that more work needs to be done, but we must acknowledge that thousands and thousands of tonnes of freight gets transported around this state all the time. I must admit it is record road funding that we are spending in this state. I also look at what we are spending at the Port Wakefield overpass: about $120 million. We have the Joy Baluch second bridge being built at Port Augusta and other roadworks are being contributed to right across the state. The Horrocks Highway is getting some work on the way to Clare. That is certainly good to see and is certainly much needed after years of inaction.

I want to commend what we are doing as a government in the regions. More work needs to be done and we are certainly getting some massive funding boosts around the place. I see the spin-offs with that billion dollars worth of infrastructure that is being built close to Murray Bridge. We have Thomas Foods, with their $300 million to $400 million meatworks, which is getting underway, and we have helped contribute to that with some community road funding. We have a $300 million solar farm waiting in the wings. We have the Bridgeport Hotel, a $45 million development. Ingham's keeps spending millions of dollars on top of their $50 million feed mill. Costa have doubled their mushroom plant at $90 million.

It is so good to see so much investment in the regions. One thing we need to tackle is the housing issue, but we will get to that. I commend the Supply Bill and wish its speedy passage through the house.

Ms LUETHEN (King) (20:39): A supply bill is necessary until the budget has passed through the parliamentary stages and the Appropriation Bill 2021 receives assent. I could easily use up this 20 minutes just speaking to the investments being made in the King community.

My local community have told me that they have never seen so much construction work happening in our local area at one time, and I am grateful to the Marshall Liberal government for helping me to deliver on promises made in the King electorate. Today, I will use this opportunity to highlight just a few of the important projects and the funding committed to the King community. This is a $254.5 million investment in infrastructure, just these few projects that I am going to talk about today, which will be delivering better services for people living in the electorate of King.

On 10 November 2020, the state government announced an additional $25 million in funding over two years for the Golden Grove park-and-ride, bringing the total funding for the project to $33 million. The aim of the project is to meet demand for park-and-ride commuters and to increase public transport usage. The existing Golden Grove park-and-ride was located on The Grove Way and consisted of 177 ground level off-street parking spaces for commuters accessing the O-Bahn bus services. This capacity was not enough; it meant commuters had to park in local streets, causing congestion, or had to drive to other locations, including the Tea Tree Plaza and Paradise park-and-rides.

Excitingly, the new Golden Grove park-and-ride will comprise three levels of parking—a ground floor plus two upper levels—and when complete will provide 450 car parking spaces, which will include 10 disability discrimination compliant car parks and provision for secure bicycle storage. The new park-and-ride will be constructed on the site of the existing car park and its surrounds. The new park-and-ride will also provide seven kiss-and-drop parks for the Golden Grove High School community, helping us manage the growth in the local school community and helping to improve traffic flow around our three outstanding schools at this site.

Importantly, the project is also supporting 150 full-time equivalent jobs over the course of the construction. Works for the Golden Grove park-and-ride project commenced Wednesday 17 February 2021, with project completion expected in early 2022, weather permitting. Upcoming works include mobilisation of a piling rig to undertake drilling and installation of piles, installation of new retaining walls to the southern end of the site and around the new building footprint, pouring of concrete foundation footings and installation of new service connections for communications, power and water.

Temporary car parking was made available from Tuesday 27 April for park-and-ride commuters. The location is adjacent to the South Australia Districts Netball Association. It can be accessed via Atlantis Drive, Golden Grove, or by entering through The Golden Way and driving around to the new spot. I want to thank the City of Tea Tree Gully and SADNA for allowing us to use this space and setting it up to keep people safe in this new park.

From the temporary car park, it is around a 400-metre walk to bus stop 62A on both the east and west sides of The Grove Way. There is also an additional accessible parking set-up available at The Grove Shopping Centre. PTP Alliance are keeping registered community members informed and up to date through a website, letterbox drops and emails.

I did my own letterbox drops this week as well, and under windscreen wipers, just to let everyone know that the new park is ready. Constituents can also contact the project team directly with questions. As I have been on site, checking out the Golden Grove park-and-ride, it has also been exciting to see at the same time, adjacent to this, the roof going on the Golden Grove High School for its upgrade.

The Marshall Liberal government's $1.3 billion capital works program is expected to support thousands of jobs across the state and forms part of the biggest investment in education by any state government in South Australia's history. Our King promise is to deliver a $15.5 million investment in our local Golden Grove High School, creating 38 jobs per year. A great deal of work has already been completed on both capital works buildings, and the upgrade is well on track to be completed and handed over to the school by the end of November.

The capital works project continues to build on the already outstanding facilities available at the school. This will enable Golden Grove High to expand by a large cohort of year 7 students, who will be taught in high school from term 1 in 2022. This means that from 2022 year 6 will be the last year of primary school and year 7 will be the first year of high school. This is a big change for our public education system. Some locals have asked me why we are moving the year 7s to high school. Year 7 is already part of high school across the country, so we are bringing South Australia into line with the rest of Australia and with other education systems in our state.

The high school upgrade includes a new two-storey contemporary learning centre, a new two-storey performing arts centre, a year 12 study centre, landscaped courtyards and outdoor spaces at Golden Grove High School. Just down the road from this, we have the Golden Grove Road upgrade project, which is being delivered in two stages. Stage 1—One Tree Hill Road to the north side (Kunzea Way) of the signalised intersection of Golden Grove Road, the Grove Way and Yatala Vale Road—is complete. Under construction right now is stage 2, Park Lake Drive to the north side of the signalised intersection of Golden Grove Road, the Grove Way and Yatala Vale Road.

The Marshall Liberal South Australian government committed $20 million towards delivering stage 1, which included a roundabout at the junction of Golden Grove Road and Hancock Road; shouldered right-turn lanes at most unsignalised junctions; indented bus bays; on-road bike lanes in each direction; improved pedestrian facilities, including a new footpath on the western side and pedestrian crossing facilities; kerb, gutter and drainage; targeted road resurfacing; and new and upgraded road lighting. Stage 1 supported around 65 full-time equivalent jobs over the life of the project and also a South Australian business won the project, which was fabulous.

The stage 2 construction is underway and roads are expected to be open to traffic by late 2021, weather permitting. The South Australian government committed $30 million towards delivering this stage 2, which includes an upgrade of the Golden Grove Road, the Grove Way and Yatala Vale Road signalised intersection, with a second right-turn lane from the Grove Way approach and second through lanes on Golden Grove Road approaches.

It also includes a protected right-turn lane at the Highgrove Road junction; on-road bike lanes in each direction; kerb, gutter and drainage; road resurfacing; new and upgraded road lighting; improved pedestrian facilities, including new footpath and pedestrian crossing facilities; and indented bus bays. Key intersection upgrades are included as well at Grenfell Road-Golden Grove Road, Milne Road-Golden Grove Road and North-East Road/Modbury Avenue/Golden Grove Road.

Stage 2 will support around 70 full-time equivalent jobs per year over the life of the project. The Golden Grove Road upgrade project team is working in collaboration with the City of Tea Tree Gully to deliver local government infrastructure, including footpaths, as part of this project. To ask any questions or provide feedback, or to register for project updates, the project team can also be contacted directly.

Lastly, I am so pleased to be able to highlight the investment into returning our local health services locally for people living in King. Modbury Hospital is undergoing a $98 million redevelopment. We have listened to the feedback. We are easing pressure on our emergency departments, providing access to a higher level of care closer to home, growing and strengthening surgical services, providing more privacy and a homelike environment for palliative care patients, upgrading facilities and enhancing the experience for patients, visitors and staff.

This major upgrade of Modbury Hospital will provide facilities that meet the needs of patients, staff and visitors now and into the future. This is an exciting period in the history of the hospital, as the investment into world-class infrastructure will ensure that our staff can provide the very best patient care closer to home for residents in the north and north-east.

Construction on Modbury Hospital's new 20-bed palliative care unit has begun as the Marshall Liberal government's job-creating hospital redevelopment has passed its halfway mark. The redevelopment has so far used 100 tonnes of reinforced steel, processed and manufactured locally, in Cavan, as well as well as 1,100 cubic metres of concrete sourced from companies across the state. I also met our local manufacturer of flooring products who said he won the contract to provide the new flooring in the hospital, and he was incredibly happy about that.

Almost 200 construction workers are currently on site at the hospital daily, and 1,378 people have had jobs and been involved in the construction so far, working more than 375,000 hours between them. The new 20-bed palliative care unit will be located on the ground floor of the hospital, providing patients and families with direct access to private gardens, natural light and private ensuites.

The extensive upgrading and enhancing of Modbury Hospital is part of our landmark billion-dollar health infrastructure build across the state. While Labor downgraded services at Modbury as part of their failed Transforming Health plan, the Marshall Liberal government is investing in world-class infrastructure to deliver better patient care closer to home for the residents in the north and the north-east.

The expansion will ease pressure on our busy emergency departments and modernise the ageing facility, increasing capabilities and improving facilities for patients and staff. Completed redevelopment milestones include an eight-bed emergency extended care unit, an upgraded hospital facade and a refurbishment of the administration area on level 5.

The reinstatement of the high dependency unit at Modbury Hospital officially opened on 31 March and will provide many benefits to the local community, including enabling patients who require a higher level of monitoring and management of their clinical condition to be cared for at Modbury Hospital; easing pressure on our emergency department and increasing the complexity of patients admitted to Modbury Hospital; supporting the increase of low to medium complex surgeries in the new surgical suite, which will enable more patients to be treated closer to home; and increasing the ability to manage unwell patients at Modbury Hospital both medically and post surgery.

We know that providing health care to patients in their local area and in their homes leads to better health outcomes for our patients and alleviates stress and inconvenience and travel time for their families. I have been encouraging my local constituents to consider having a coffee in the new cafe at Modbury Hospital so they can check out for themselves how great the new building facilities are.

At Lyell McEwin Hospital, $58 million is being invested to expand and revitalise the emergency department and build an eight-bed mental health short stay unit. The redevelopment, set to almost double the current capacity of the ED, is critical to meeting the increased demand and future need of our growing local population. To be built over three storeys, the ED, when complete, will include 72 treatment spaces, additional resuscitation and triage capabilities as well as a dedicated paediatric assessment and treatment space.

The new mental health short stay unit will provide a purpose-built facility with a more suitable care environment for mental health patients requiring short stays. The unit will ensure that patients have access to specialised care by staff 24/7 after being seen in the ED.

Milestone 2, which is the construction of the three levels of the ED and the mental health short stay unit, commenced recently, following the decommissioning and demolition of the previous existing structures, which was completed late last year. Milestone 2 is expected to be completed by March 2022. The existing ED continues to operate while construction is taking place. The extension of the Lyell McEwin multideck car park, part of the redevelopment project, was completed in June last year, and construction of a private car park opposite the hospital has commenced.

These are just some of the bigger projects which have been funded in King and are under construction right now. The projects that I have mentioned today alone add up to $254.5 million being invested in better services for people living in my electorate of King, benefiting our local community. I will continue to fight for and work hard for further investment to benefit the families and businesses in King. I encourage every person living in King to keep talking to me and to keep me informed of what matters most to them.

Mr DULUK (Waite) (20:55): I also rise to say a few words about the Supply Bill 2021 and naturally indicate my support for this appropriation from the Consolidated Account for the year ended 30 June 2022.

Like all of us, I believe South Australia is indeed in a prime situation for strong economic performance moving forward if we can use the upcoming state budget to invest in our local communities and facilitate the creation of jobs. We always have to remember that it is the private sector and the private businesses and, indeed, the small business sector in South Australia that is the facilitator of job creation but, most importantly, the role of state government and any government is to instil confidence in our economy, in its people and in its communities. As Deloitte Access Economics wrote in their March Business Outlook:

After a fast start out of the blocks, South Australia's economy is now coming back to the pack…a sign of success. Make no mistake, the state handled COVID superbly. With the virus in check, South Australia's economy sprung back to life, getting a lead on its counterparts. So, whereas most other states still have more catching up to do, South Australia has already done that.

It goes on to state:

Yet that also means that the state has spent many of its tickets. Having begun its recovery earlier, SA has relatively less capacity for catch up growth through the remainder of 2021. That's a key reason why state income rose just a smidgen in the closing months of 2020, comfortably slower than every other state or territory.

The willingness of business to take a punt on expanding capacity was the key culprit. Business investment went backwards despite a growth in the national figure.

One of the key factors that I think can drive that renewed business investment is, of course, looking at some of the COVID restrictions that still exist in terms of capacity for business growth. One good example is around the hospitality industry, where we are still seeing venues capped at 75 per cent capacity, which I know is having a big impact on many hoteliers, on our restaurants and, indeed, our hospitality sector.

As South Australians look to go out and to spend their dollars in South Australia as opposed to interstate or overseas, having changes to those COVID restrictions I think will go a long way to ensuring that South Australian businesses are once again reinvesting into their businesses to ensure that South Australians can spend, invest, create local jobs and support the whole supply economy.

There are one or two key economic indicators and metrics where South Australia is still struggling. Of course, I think some of these metrics, especially around unemployment and underemployment, have been key metrics that we have been failing in now for decades—in fact, since the State Bank. A lot of those measures have to do with many of the structural issues in our economy, the ageing of our population, our demographics and the way our suburbs are configured. We have pockets of greater underprivilege and need which also create cyclical and long-term economic disadvantage. This lack of investment in new public transport and our planning system that we have seen for decades actually fits into longer issues around unemployment.

That is why still, right now—even though we have had some good news out of COVID compared to the rest of the nation—we still have higher unemployment rates, we still have high youth unemployment rate, we still have a low participation rate, the total number of people in jobs in South Australia dropped in March from 847,400 to 846,800, and that's a figure of 10,000 lower than March 2020.

Of course, one of the big issues that is always raised by many in the community is around long-term intergenerational unemployment. People always ask the questions: why does South Australia need to bring in workers from the Pacific Islands to pick the very important citrus crop in the Riverland when we have intergenerational unemployment in some parts of our society? What can we do as a community, a government and a parliament to ensure that we can arrest that issue of intergenerational unemployment that is so crippling to those individuals involved and many of the associated socio-economic problems that come with that?

I think they are very important questions that need to be asked and tackled by government. If the government can do that, I think we could go a long way to breaking the back of the long-term unemployment rate in South Australia. That is why it is so important that, through this Supply Bill, the appropriation and the state budget coming up, we can set the framework as we transition through this COVID period and hopefully return to a South Australian economic environment that is a lot freer and not restricted by COVID regulations.

We can all nitpick the different economic statistics, and different sources paint their own pictures. But for me, the focus with this supply bill should be around investment in our local communities, as I said, using the tool of creating jobs and delivering confidence for South Australians. I, for one, know that it is not all bad news. The Governor of the Reserve Bank was in the paper today indicating that he does not expect household interest rates to lift for several years, sitting beyond historic low rates as they are at the moment.

But we know that if we could have all tiers of government looking to collaborate on infrastructure projects it would create a perfect storm for investment in large nation-building infrastructure projects. This is reiterated by programs such as the Local Government Infrastructure Partnership Program and bodies such as Infrastructure Australia and Infrastructure South Australia. Infrastructure Australia recently released its latest priority list which had the largest number of new proposals for South Australia in the list's five-year history.

Of the priorities listed in the February 2021 report, there were several which have a direct impact on my community. They included the discussion around Adelaide's outer ring route capacity, level crossing congestion and looking to deal with that issue, and South Australia's road network maintenance program.

On the issue of freight, Deputy Speaker, I know it is an issue that is very important to your community. One thing I have spoken to many times in this chamber is the matter of freight in the Adelaide and Mitcham hills, not only rail freight but road freight, and how that road freight connects to the South Eastern Freeway and finding long-term solutions. It is not just an issue of freight capacity and how important it is to get economically viable freight moving for South Australia but the way that integration of freight also fits in for commuters.

Once again, we have seen debate in the paper and the press on the back of some awful tragedies on the South Eastern Freeway and the devastating impact that those fatalities have and the congestion that it leads to. As was discussed on radio recently—I think it was mentioned by the federal member for Mayo in her contribution to this debate on ABC radio just last week—what would happen if there were an unholy perfect storm of an absolute tragedy on the South Eastern Freeway in a bushfire season? We could see the huge issue of commuters being stuck and trapped in that road corridor with nowhere to go. It is incumbent on the state government to start the planning process for alternative bypasses for road and rail freight through the South Eastern Freeway, through the rail freight network through my community and the growing residential communities of Mount Barker and beyond.

The Infrastructure Australia report from February outlined the initiative for Adelaide's outer ring route capacity in initiative 6: to improve the safety and productivity of Adelaide's outer ring route, which is heavily congested during peak and nonpeak times resulting in inefficient and costly freight movements, reduced performance of public transport systems, longer travel times and decreased safety for commuters and pedestrians. Currently, road freight from our regions and interstate comes hurtling down the South Eastern Freeway and disrupts our communities.

The RAA and the freight councils continue to advocate for alternative freight routes to encourage truck operators to avoid suburban roads and provide more cost-effective and safer solutions for industry. Infrastructure Australia suggests roads along Adelaide's outer ring route, such as Cross Road, are inefficient, stating:

This results in inefficient and less productive freight movements, reduced performance, longer travel times, and decreased safety for commuters and pedestrians.

Cross-city traffic patterns, increasing land use densities and the location of schools create conflicts at several intersections along the route…

There are also roads that are constrained by property and heritage considerations that restrict expansion of the road corridor—

such as the Waite Gatehouse. An alternative to Cross Road freight movement should be investigated, such as some of those proposed in last year's KPMG study into freight movements in South Australia.

One alternative that is constantly discussed as part of that and that was mentioned in the KPMG report is the redirection of rail freight. The current rail freight route creates road traffic congestion in my community, poses a danger of increased bushfire risk for communities, creates noise and air pollution, is a costly, slow and ineffective route for industry and impairs providing better public transport services. I know that if we could find a solution to this, as the members for Heysen and Kavel know in their communities, it would be to run an efficient public transport bus and train service up to Mount Barker through the Adelaide Hills and Mitcham Hills.

Looking at the current economic climate, it is an ideal time for investment in these types of nation-building projects. A northern freight bypass would deliver end-to-end supply chain efficiencies for local industries, increase the capacity of the rail network and result in a shift from bulk road freight to rail freight. This is a very big issue through the Mallee at the moment, as we are seeing more and more road trains on our roads, increasing not only wear and tear of the roads but safety issues as well.

This would ensure that South Australia plays a key role in future freight movements across the Australian continent and would deliver significant environmental, economic and social benefits for South Australians. These are nation-building projects that we can deliver right now not only to provide local jobs for our communities and distribute an array of intangible benefits but, most importantly, to stimulate the economy, which is crying out for this type of long-term, sensible, public investment.

Some of the other issues mentioned in the Infrastructure Australia report are around level crossing congestion. In my community, this is a really big issue. Previously, 31 level crossings have been identified as posing the highest risk to users and creating the most disruptions to the road network. Three notorious boom gate crossings that are of concern to me and the residents of my community are: Glenalta Railway Station, level crossing on Main Road; Blackwood Railway Station, level crossing on Main Road, Blackwood; and Unley Park Railway Station, level crossing on Cross Road, Hawthorn. Infrastructure Australia has identified all three of these at-grade level crossings in their 2021 priority list, and I believe the Unley Park crossing is the most serious safety crossing. The report goes on to state:

Some of these level crossings are closed to road traffic for up to 25% of peak traffic periods. Level crossings can lead to delays and safety problems as trains, cars, buses, trucks, cyclists and pedestrians cross paths.

Longer boom-gate closures can also create barriers between different parts of the community and reduce amenity to urban areas.

These problems are expected to worsen as road traffic and the frequency of rail services increase with population growth in South Australia.

My community is always appreciative of investment in the road network. Since I have been a member in this place, we have seen significant investment in the road network in the communities of Mitcham, Belair and Blackwood. Right now, we are looking at a $40 million federal and state investment in the Mitcham Hills road corridor as an example of this. We will also be able to see some road improvements along Fullarton Road and I know there are projected improvements on Shepherds Hill Road. I welcome further resealing and widening projects underway around Belair Road and Old Belair Road and around Main Road at Coromandel Valley.

I think that, most importantly, if we are looking at these investments we need and linking those into the rail infrastructure issues, then we really need to look at some of the congestion busting intersections at Laffers Road and Main Road in Belair, Northcote Road and Shepherds Hill Road in Eden Hills, Fullarton Road, Kitchener Street and Claremont Avenue in Netherby, Waite Road onto Cross Road in Urrbrae and many others situated in my community.

Improving the conditions of our roads leads to reduced vehicle operation costs, improved travel times, improved safety risks and reduces potential reliance issues for traffic. As outlined by the government, the South Australian road network aims to reduce the increased backlog of road maintenance on our road network throughout the state, which was estimated to be more than $750 million in 2019. Going back to earlier years, 2017, 2016 and 2015, I know it was sitting at about a billion dollars.

While roads and intersections are an important aspect in connecting communities, of course it is not all about roads. In my community, we are blessed with an abundance of natural beauties and rich heritage. We have the fantastic, historic national park at Belair, botanic gardens and many other important environmental assets. Investing in our environment and in our open spaces is actually fundamental to the growth of our state not only from a protection point of view for the environment but also for what it means to be as a community. Recently, I wrote to the Treasurer ahead of the state budget, asking for significant investments to improve Brownhill Creek Recreation Park, Belair National Park, Sturt Gorge Recreation Park and Frank Smith Reserve, as well as greening initiatives throughout the whole electorate.

With changes to the planning and development code, a common concern in my community is a reduction in tree canopy throughout community, as we are seeing urban density creep through our suburbs. A fund or grant program dedicated to councils and community organisations for restoration and greening projects would assist in improving our local tree canopy and promote the cooling of our suburbs, which is so important as we deal with a changing climate.

Alternatively, another idea I have suggested to the Treasurer and Minister for Environment is a scheme similar to the Great State travel voucher scheme for purchasing of native vegetation. This program would encourage individuals to purchase, plant and green our suburbs through a co-investment scheme from the general public and government. Think of it as a bond scheme—a very long-term but important bond scheme. A combination of new funding methods and allocations from the state government's Park Renewal Investment program will encourage people to be active in our environment and ensure that we have a green and vibrant urban canopy to keep us cool.

Spending time in nature has both mental and physical benefits, which can lead to better health outcomes within individuals and may lend a hand to reduce the current demands on our healthcare system—something very topical at the moment. With those words, I commend the Supply Bill but really seek and implore the government to use the Supply Bill and the upcoming state budget to invest in infrastructure, to invest in our roads and to invest in our communities.

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (21:12): I would like to make a contribution to this debate. Of course our party has indicated we will be supporting the Supply Bill. It is important that we keep the government moving, but it is also important that we highlight some of the issues and also the context in which this Supply Bill is framed.

First of all, I would just like to provide an overall economic context in which this Supply Bill is being presented to this parliament and some of the concerning trends in our economy, which I think we need to be alert about. Sadly, at the moment we have the highest unemployment rate in this state at 6.3 per cent. We have also the highest youth unemployment rate at 16.4 per cent. Added to that, if that is not bad enough, our participation rate is also declining. It is 61.9 per cent, which is equal lowest in the nation alongside Tasmania, which has surged to 66.3 per cent. We are also the only state to lose jobs coming out of the pandemic. Overall, 10,000 jobs have been lost since March 2020, when other states have actually gained positions.

Sadly also for those people who are seeking employment, we have the longest median wait to find a job at six months—the highest in the nation. Combined with that, economic growth is lowest in the nation. Our economy contracted by 1.4 per cent during 2019-20. In the CommSec State of the States report, we are now in fifth place, trailing the national average on almost every key economic indicator. Our budget debt will reach $33.1 billion by 2023-24.

It is also important to note that, while the government has sought to explain the increase in debt in terms of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have to remember that the debt started bleeding out at the very first budget of this government and has continued at trend. So that is the context in which we are coming out of this pandemic and it does not bode well for those people seeking employment, particularly young people seeking employment to start their working lives at the end of the pandemic.

In terms of some other local issues, it is worth putting on the record some of the ongoing issues that this government has failed to address in my electorate and also in nearby electorates. The first one that is a major issue for people, and for me and my colleague the member for Taylor, is Curtis Road. The congestion on Curtis Road is abysmal, and I notice the member across saying the same thing. It is horrendous, and I understand that the local council has been in discussion with the state government over the transfer of the road to the state government as a way of actually injecting some funds to get this important piece of infrastructure upgraded.

It is important for two reasons. Firstly, it is obviously an important safety issue. Secondly, a lot of people who live in that area travel long distances to work. Generally speaking, the further you live out from the centre of a city the longer you travel to work every day, and it pains me to see that people who travel a long distance also have to spend a lot of time on the roads because of congestion. Curtis Road needs to be upgraded. It is not unusual during peak times to have people tell me that it takes up to half an hour to get from Main North Road to the expressway.

The cause of the congestion is quite clear. There are two reasons: obviously, growth in the area in Munno Para West and Munno Para in terms of the Playford Alive project has been very successful. At the moment, with the home grants houses are popping up everywhere. That is good news for that region, but it is not good news if you want to use the roads. If you want to get from Munno Para West to Mark Oliphant College to drop off your kids, it is a nightmare.

Apart from that issue, what is really sad about this is that this matter was actually raised in the Budget and Finance Committee in the upper house. The CEO of the department was asked what the government was going to do about this issue, was he aware of it, etc., and he said he was unaware of any issues with Curtis Road or any discussions that have been taking place for the transfer of the road from council to the state government. I find that extraordinary given that discussions have been taking place for some years. It is a major infrastructure issue in the north of Adelaide affecting both the electorate of Taylor and my own electorate.

Curtis Road is bad enough, but there are some quick and simple solutions to assist, not to resolve the problem, and that is the extension of Newton Boulevard from the existing Munno Para development to Munno Para West. This is where we had the old handball trick where the government said it was the council's responsibility, and the council said it was the state government's responsibility.

Clearly, it is a state government development. It is part of the Playford Alive project. Renewal SA are the owners of the land, they are the developers, and clearly they should be making sure that Newton Boulevard is built as soon as possible to assist connecting Munno Para and all the services at Munno Para, including the schools and shopping centre, to those people who live at Munno Para West.

Closer to home, the Gawler East Link Road is a road that the previous government committed just over $50 million to fund. This government added another $4 million to $5 million to that project in some agreement with local council. The Gawler East Link Road was supposed to be one of those roads that would help reduce congestion on Adelaide Road, Murray Street and Carlton Road. It was designed to link the east parts of Gawler to the southern parts of Gawler so that people would not have to travel through the central parts of Gawler to get from one end to the other. It is a worthwhile and important project that has been funded not only by the state government but also by council and the developers involved.

But, unfortunately, this project turned out to be a bit like the last Liberal government's Southern Expressway—one way only. The problem with this link road is that it has been built to a standard of 50 kilometres maximum, and as soon as the road opened with a maximum of a 50 km/h speed limit the complaints came pouring in. People are not using it because it is too slow to use, and people are concerned about getting caught speeding. In fact, other roads that go through Gawler have a higher speed limit, so people are avoiding this new road and we have invested about $55 million in a road that has become a white elephant.

Quite rightly, the council responded and said, 'Let's try to make it higher—60 kilometres is a reasonable speed, not unreasonable for a link road.' The council had to do some studies. Now we find that the road is not built to a standard that enables it to increase from 50 to 60 kilometres, which I find astonishing. I have seen road speed limits go up and down by 10km/h in the blink of an eye, but now we are told that it must remain at 50 kilometres. So, you have a road that was supposed to carry 12,000 cars a day that is carrying about 2,000 cars a day because people are boycotting it.

It is a major issue in the east part of Gawler. The government has made very clear that the council has to foot the bill for any upgrade. To add insult to injury, when the CEO of the department was asked at the recent Budget and Finance Committee meeting about community concerns on the speed limit he stated: 'I am not aware of any community dissatisfaction with low speed limits.' I can tell members that it is probably one of the key issues in that part of Gawler at the moment. He went on to try to explain why it is 50 kilometres, and he stated, verbatim:

Generally, when a new road is built, there is a period of time required for the wearing in of the final surface to reach its specified coefficient of friction—that's an engineering thing; so it's the skid resistance—and during that period of time temporary lowered speed limits do apply.

It is interesting to note that 'period of time temporary lowered speed limits do apply', but sadly the temporary speed limit will be the final speed limit—it ain't increasing, according to the government or the council. We now have a $55 million investment that is operating at about 20 per cent of what was intended.

Another hot issue in my community, and something which could have been avoided, was the substitute buses to be used while the rail to Gawler is being electrified, which it is a great project. Substitute buses are necessary. A number of people use public transport to get to work and to shop or to get to hospital, and I must say that the government has responded to some feedback and put on some express bus services from Gawler to the city, which has helped, but it has limited services. Clearly the message I am getting from the community is that people do not work from just nine to five; people work from 11 to four, from three to nine—people work at different hours, so having an express bus service from Gawler just at peak times does not work for that community.

The result is that we have a lot more cars on the road, and people are incurring huge costs. I had a couple in my office this week who do not use the substitute services—they need to go to the hospital as they are not well and there are no express services. The off-peak services can take up to an hour and a half, which means that it is a three to four-hour trip. When you are unwell, spending three or four hours on a bus is not a good experience, going down Main North Road, etc.

It is incumbent upon the government, given that the rail services will be out now until at least November this year, to extend those express services right throughout the day. I am not suggesting they run at the same times that they do in the morning, but at least every hour there should be a substitute bus service running at an express rate through to Adelaide. One thing we know about the rail electrification project from the minister's own statements is that it has blown out by $100 million, and obviously the contractor is trying to save every dollar on the project. That is not unreasonable, but it is unreasonable when they are doing things that actually impact on the safety of people in my community.

Another thing they have done at various times is close the pedestrian crossings near roadways and railway stations obviously to do work, but they created no alternatives. So people are now walking along the roadways, people are pushing their prams along the roadways and people with disabilities with their gophers, etc., are on the roadways and obviously it is not a safe thing. It is certainly a concern to people, particularly near schools, where young children are walking along the roadways because the proper safe crossings have been closed off and nothing was put in their place.

An issue I have also been addressing in my capacity as a duty member for the electorate of Schubert is a particular intersection at Greenock, Moppa South and Samuel roads. Both the previous minister and the current minister have indicated that this is a safe intersection, but there have been four serious crashes at that intersection in the last six months. It is a major bypass route for heavy traffic throughout the region and this particular intersection is not well designed, so improvements are required there. It is interesting to note that every crash has been quite serious and we are fortunate that no-one has been killed. Another crash happened only last week where a car rolled over. The intersection does require some major investment for improvement.

Another issue of concern to the community is when is our hospital going to be upgraded. Last year, the government announced that it was going to spend $50 million on upgrading the emergency services department of the hospital. That is good news. It was a welcome announcement. We assumed, because of the announcement, that things were happening, but nothing was happening. Last week, six months after the announcement, there was an announcement that they have actually selected someone to do some design work. I am not sure where they got the $50 million budget from when there was no design work done at all.

It is interesting that when I put in a freedom of information request to find out where the project is at, etc., the government refused to release any documents—blank, no documents. There is a veil of secrecy around when this project will be delivered. There is not only the secrecy around that but also the issue around the standard of care now provided at the hospital. I have received a number of complaints in relation to food, etc. This is not a reflection at all on the staff who work at the hospital. They can only work with the resources available. Clearly, the hospital has been starved of funds as the government calls in the bean counters from Victoria and pays them over $50 million to cut services in our hospitals.

We only have one ambulance unit in Gawler for a growing community. Almost every week I get a complaint about people having to wait an inordinate amount of time for ambulances. Only this week, I was walking along Murray Street and a lady stopped me to talk about the situation with her husband, who was having a heart attack as it turned out, and they had to wait a long time to get an ambulance service. When they got to the hospital they were told that was the standard at the moment. You cannot get an ambulance service within the specified time that has been set out. A growing community certainly needs more staffing and also ideally a second ambulance unit for the area.

Another thing the government promised at the last election in the seat of Schubert was to deliver on a new Barossa hospital. Apparently they were supposed to deliver a fully costed business case. We now know from the release of Infrastructure SA's report that a full business case has not actually been undertaken but that it has caused some sort of preliminary business case. I have no idea what a preliminary business case is compared with a full business case. It will be interesting to see whether this government actually delivers on its commitment to advance this project to a stage where it can actually start to be built. Certainly, there is a lot of cynicism in the Barossa community as to whether this project will be delivered.

In terms of complaints I have received around my schools, it was interesting to note the comment made by the minister today about funding for disability services in our schools. If there is one complaint I have received strongly from public school communities throughout my electorate—school after school after school, governing council after governing council—it is funding for disability services. In fact, I understand the IESP program the minister referred to has now been suspended and is under review because it was so cumbersome and difficult to get funding that most schools actually gave up trying to get funding for their students.

We had students in our schools who needed funding but who were not getting the funding support they required. One school told me it could take up to two days of a staff member's time to do one application for one student to get funding. To make things worse, once that was done it went into a process where it was considered by some committee and often the funding request was disallowed, with no reasons given. Our children with disabilities and their families deserve better than this. We should be making sure that every child has the sort of funding that ensures they reach their full potential in our public school system.

Like most MPs, I visit my schools on a regular basis. In a recent visit to Munno Para Primary School I did a walk around with the principal to see what the facilities were like, and we came across one of the buildings that had a whole range of fencing around it. I asked, 'Is that building scheduled for redevelopment?' The principal looked a little embarrassed and said, 'No, the fences are around there because the verandahs on this building are not safe. They are structurally unsafe and the kids can't go anywhere near this building.' But it is being used; it is a classroom, and it is being used. It has fencing around the outside because the building is partially unsafe. Looking around this school, this is a school that has been neglected by this government. There are inadequate facilities for the students, and this school community deserves better.

Mark Oliphant College has been expanded to provide places for students in the growing area. There are two things here: one is that the school will probably be full by the time the actual redevelopment finishes, so students will again be crammed into non-classroom areas and, secondly, the traffic in the area will be even more chaotic than it is now. The school was never designed properly in terms of providing parking or drop-off areas for students, and it is very unsafe. These are some of the issues my community has asked me to raise and put in this context. Hopefully this Supply Bill will address some of those; if not this Supply Bill, then future budgets.

Time expired.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay) (21:33): I am delighted to stand today to talk about the Supply Bill. It is an opportunity for us to reflect on what an unexpected year we have faced. Of course, we have had a great health response in South Australia led by Grant Stevens and Nicola Spurrier, but the numbers clearly show that our economic response, led by Steven Marshall and Rob Lucas, is the worst in the nation.

South Australians responded to the global pandemic by listening to what we needed to do: wash our hands, keep our distance, work from home, get tested if we were sick, wear a mask when required, and of course continue to check in with the QR code. These measures have enabled South Australians to be able to live life as normally as possible, and as soon as it was safe we were given the opportunities to make these decisions.

However, we have an opportunity before us with the vaccine rollout. It has had several false starts, much confusion and much information. Obviously, on this side of the house we have been very critical about how slow South Australia has been compared with the rest of the states to make this vaccination available to South Australians. It is simply not good enough.

As soon as I can I will get the vaccination for my age group. However, only this morning on talkback radio I heard a couple, who are in the relevant age group to be vaccinated, say they were advised to wait until September. This is just unacceptable. We have an opportunity. Not everyone in the world is getting this vaccination. Not everyone has an opportunity to be personally covered from COVID as much as possible, yet the delays, the confusion and supply issues are making access to this vaccination unclear, unclear because people are unsure about if and when they will receive it.

My concern in particular is about the lack of a robust education program telling South Australians what is out there and available to them. We speak today about the health outcomes we have had during this very difficult time. We must be clear to South Australians about when the vaccines are available, for what age, for which group and how to do it. I particularly have concerns about vulnerable communities and migrant groups who are feeling very unsure about whether they should get the vaccine at all.

I am going to go out there and talk about getting vaccinated. A concern for each and every person here should be what the mixed messages are, the lack of clarity and the people who are concerned about whether or not it is safe. We must have a robust education campaign and get out there and tell South Australians why we want them to get vaccinated, how to get vaccinated and make it easy and simple for them to do.

We have lived through an unprecedented time in our history, as we have fought and continue to fight this world pandemic. We asked businesses to close their doors. We asked businesses to limit the number of people on their premises. In fact, we continue to do so with the restrictions. We closed national and state borders to limit the movement of people. These decisions were deemed necessary to keep us safe. But now our attention turns to the economic recovery. We need a stimulus to restart our economy.

Let's make no mistake: South Australia may have a solid record on the health front, but economically we are at the bottom of the pack. Our current economic position is nothing short of alarming. South Australia is the only state to lose jobs since the COVID pandemic. Let that sink in: the only state to lose jobs. What is going on here? We just have to look at the statistics of the State of the States report.

South Australia has slumped to fifth overall and we are trailing the national average in key growth indicators, including employment, where we are negative 1.2 per cent versus the national 0.6 per cent. In retail trade, we are up 4.8 per cent but nationally it is up 6.4 per cent. Construction works decreased 8.8 per cent, national decreased 2.4 per cent. In equipment investment, South Australia is down 7 per cent, national down 5.2 per cent. Dwelling commencements in South Australia are up 6.4 per cent versus nationally up by 19.4 per cent. Even COVID-ravaged Victoria is ranked higher than South Australia on these economic indicators.

To add more pain to South Australians, South Australia now has the worst unemployment rate in Australia. South Australia has the worst youth unemployment rate in Australia, and South Australia has the equal lowest participation rate in Australia. There are currently 134,600 South Australians who are unemployed or underemployed. How is it that we managed to keep South Australians safe but we cannot stimulate our economy? This is embarrassing and this lands squarely on this Liberal government. What are you doing to stimulate our economy? Why are we at the back of the pack? It is simply not good enough. Deloitte Access Economics Business Outlook showed South Australia had the lowest business investment figures in the country. In fact, they warned of dark times ahead, and I quote, 'South Australia's economy is running out of catch-up runway,' and its bump is becoming a grind. This should be a wake-up call. Where is our response? Where is our stimulus?

The facts speak for themselves. When we look at investment and we look at the December 2019 quarter to the December 2020 quarter, investment in our state has decreased by 11.7 per cent. What is the plan here to transition to new investment projects? How are we proactively promoting South Australia as a place to invest? We are a standout in the world for our livability, and kudos for being effectively COVID free, and yet where is the direct investment strategy? Everyone is talking about Australia and our great response to COVID, and our investment is going backwards here in South Australia. There appears to be no plan.

Let me talk about trade. In the same period, the annual goods export figure is down 5.7 per cent. We saw declines in refined copper, petroleum products, lead and wool but of course the absolute incredible blow to the South Australian economy has been dealt via the trade tariffs on wine, barley, timber and lobster from the Chinese government.

These figures were from before we saw the full impact of those trade tariffs, so I expect more negative figures to come. Before COVID, 79,000 South Australians were employed directly or indirectly in our export sector—79,000—that is a significant portion of people in our state, already down 5.7 per cent. What happens when we fully realise the impact of these trade tariffs on our exports?

There are about 8,000 South Australians involved in the grape and wine industry alone, and at its peak we exported $800 million worth of wine to China each year, making up the majority of the $1.2 billion of wine exports to China. So as well as producing 42 per cent of Australian wine grapes, we also produced 78 per cent of Australia's highest quality grapes. What that means is that we are exceptionally impacted by these tariffs and what this means is job losses for South Australians. While the federal government pursues appeals with the World Trade Organization, a process that will take some time to play out, at a state level we urgently need leadership. As we diversify our exports away from China, there is now a rush for us to look at other destinations like the US, the UK and the wider Indo-Pacific region.

Recently, there was an announcement about the wine export recovery and expansion program, and I welcome that this government is finally paying attention to our wine industry, but this is not going to be enough. It is only barely going to touch the sides. What we must be doing is furiously lobbying the federal government for more intense support. Let me remind you that 8,000 South Australians are employed in wine production and grapes and this tariff has impacted massively on that industry.

The Marshall Liberal government ripped up the previous government's regional trade plans and they have scaled back their trade missions over time. There has been a focus on trade offices, but it is not going to generate the short-term intensive support that local exporters need to increase their share in existing and emerging markets. We need to be innovative and do things differently, knowing that international travel is unlikely in the near future, but we cannot afford to wait.

This is an opportunity for us to think outside the square. We have the post-Brexit free trade agreement coming up with the UK. What is it that South Australia could do to maximise our exports in goods and services over there? Is this an opportunity to look at some of the red tape that exporters constantly talk to me about that stop them from exporting? We should be active while we wait for our borders to open and we should continue that dialogue and support those businesses.

Many times in this house I have talked about tourism and of course our tourism economy, our tourism and hospitality industry, has been massively impacted by COVID and the truth of that impact has just been revealed. In December 2019, we were at a high, with our visitor economy being $8.1 billion. The latest figures have it at $4.7 billion—not quite half, but getting there very fast. It is expected that that decrease will continue throughout the year.

Prior to COVID, 18,000 businesses were engaged in the visitor economy and of course we know jobs have been hit even harder with the outrageous decision to axe the Adelaide 500, an event that South Australians love that brought 15,000 interstate tourists here every single year. People are still really angry about this decision. I am sure the people of King have raised it with their local member because they have certainly raised with me the decision without any real understanding to axe the Adelaide 500. We lost $3.4 billion out of our visitor economy and we just made a decision to axe a much-loved event. What is going to happen next? We know that it is likely that the Tour Down Under will go ahead but be much limited as it was this year, so what is going to fill our hotel rooms in 2022?

Recently, Steven Marshall, the Premier, had the opportunity to announce the Events Advisory Group with much hoo-ha and much celebration. This group was going to come up with events and festivals to fill out the calendar, but what have we heard? We have heard nothing. There is absolutely no plan. You just decide one day to cut the Adelaide 500, a really successful event that brings lots of people into South Australia and employs more than 450 South Australians, but have nothing to fill it and there is still nothing from the Events Advisory Group. When are we going to hear what their great ideas are? What are you waiting for? Things are going to take time to develop. We need to know what these events and festivals are going to be. What is holding you up because people want to know? People want to know how you are going to build up tourism and hospitality as we go forward.

Yesterday, the federal government declared the establishment of the reimagining of the visitor economy expert panel. It was great to see that they appointed a former Labor tourism minister, Martin Ferguson, to chair this—a bit of bipartisanship there—because the federal government knows how important tourism and hospitality is to Australia. It is a huge employer of South Australians, and it is a key part of our economy. Where is our South Australian equivalent? What is our plan to recover tourism? We have heard a lot about the renaissance in regional domestic tourism. There are increased numbers of South Australians holidaying in their own backyard; however, there is a two-speed economy in tourism. I am particularly concerned about those people who are focused on the international market, because they are fighting for their survival.

I expect that as soon as the borders open up we will have an absolute boom in international tourism. It will take some time for aviation to get back on its feet, but Australia will be seen as clean, green and safe. However, with the end of JobKeeper, an expected 29 per cent of tourism businesses are either letting staff go or closing. What keeps me awake at night is thinking about what international experience operators will actually survive this time. Who is actually going to be here to support international tourists when they start to come back?

In the short time I have remaining, let me touch on a few local issues that are of concern. The delayed and delayed Gawler electrification project is a contentious issue in my electorate, and there is much frustration about the very, very slow substitute bus. We have called time and time again to make those substitute buses free. There is an issue about youth unemployment, because we now have the great title of the highest youth unemployment in Australia. Whatever happened to some of the employment opportunities like the Northern Adelaide Irrigation Scheme? Where is that investment? How are we going to grow those jobs in the north?

There are a few perennial issues. I need Commercial Road to be resurfaced. I have written to the former Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and the current Minister for Infrastructure and Transport. This is a key road in Salisbury, used by a lot of trucks and cars every single day. Please resurface Commercial Road. There is the issue we have with Nurlutta, which is used by many people who go to Bedford industries every day. One side of the Nurlutta train station is disability compliant and the other side is not. There was a very nasty accident involving one of my constituents. I ask the minister to please fix this up.

It would be remiss of me not to raise the perennial issue of the Park Terrace railway crossing. It is something that holds up a lot of traffic in the area of Salisbury. It is one of those things that adds to congestion every single day. I ask that it continue to be advanced on the Infrastructure Australia list and be supported. Finally, there is my concern about no workforce support programs with the closure of SA Structural and the ending of 200 jobs in the north. How is this government supporting workforces that have been shattered and closed?

Time expired.

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart—Minister for Energy and Mining) (21:53): I thank all those speakers who have made a contribution to this stage of the debate. There will be an opportunity for 10-minute grieves for all speakers on this same topic, so anybody who has chosen not to speak up until this point will have another opportunity to make a contribution. I have certainly made sure that all opposition members, including Labor and Independent members of the opposition, were aware that their chance for a 20-minute contribution was tonight but also that their chance for a 10-minute contribution will come tomorrow. I thank all members who have made a contribution.

Bill read a second time.

Supply Grievances

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart—Minister for Energy and Mining) (21:55): I move:

That the house note grievances.

Debate adjourned on motion of Dr Harvey.


At 21:56 the house adjourned until Wednesday 5 May 2021 at 10:30.


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