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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-06-24 Daily Xml
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Bills

Appropriation Bill 2021

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 23 June 2021.)

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (12:00): I rise to indicate that I will be the opposition's lead speaker on the bill. It is not lost on me, the privilege that has been bestowed upon each and every one of us elected to this place. The men and women of this state have invested in each of us the authority to pursue the betterment of our society. It is a grave responsibility, and I take that responsibility seriously. Furthermore, it is not lost on me, the significance of having this privilege at this time: 2020 was arguably the most significant year our world has ever experienced since World War II.

As COVID-19 descended upon us early last year, the whole world knew that this crisis was going to be something different. In a new age of internationalism and globalism, this pandemic would encroach on all four corners of our planet. In Australia, in customary fashion, we have combined the good fortune of having a continent to ourselves with the hard work of our people and sound judgement to find ourselves in a better position than almost any other nation around the world in our handling of COVID-19.

In our federation, South Australia has been no exception. Through the leadership of our Public Service, from the Premier right down to the lowest paid and least recognised public servants, our state has responded well to the health crisis. We have all collectively backed the judgement of Grant Stevens and Nicola Spurrier to make the big calls, and they have got them right. The whole state's collective effort has undoubtedly saved lives, and the overwhelming suppression of the virus has thankfully mitigated the curse of mass unemployment. For this, I think we can all breathe a cautious sigh of relief.

However, we know there are many challenges that remain. As we speak, COVID-19 is causing increasing alarm in the state of New South Wales, reminding us all that the COVID story is not going to be over anytime soon. Only 4 per cent of our state's population is fully vaccinated, and our island continent remains closed to the rest of the world, a status nobody believes can be maintained in perpetuity.

As for our economy, despite the fact that today, and for the majority of this year, our state has had the worst unemployment rate in the nation, it is also true that as a nation our labour market is in a better position than anyone would have expected 12 months ago. In no small part this is a function of the greatest fiscal stimulus our country and our state have ever known. The level of borrowing undertaken by a conservative government at the federal level, and a supposedly conservative government at the state level, is truly unprecedented—truly unprecedented.

We should be clear that every self-imposed metric on debt and borrowing that the former state Labor government rigorously applied to itself for 16 disciplined years was dismantled by the Marshall Liberal government in the two budgets before the pandemic. In the two budgets after the pandemic, those debt metrics have been completely obliterated. It will take decades for even the most shameless partisan South Australian Liberal to ever suggest that theirs is the party of fiscal discipline. Indeed, this budget all but guarantees that no Liberal will ever make comparisons between this Premier and his purported political mentor, John Howard.

While it is true that both expansionary fiscal policy and loose monetary policy have combined to keep people in work, it is also true that Australians intuitively know this cannot and will not last forever. People rightly expect that those on the treasury bench are making expenditure decisions that are oriented explicitly to either growing the economy or improving their wellbeing. Anything short of this is reckless.

If we are consciously going to burden future generations with unprecedented debt, then the least they are owed is a plan to pay that debt back while also inheriting a better society. I believe we can do both, not just because we must but because we have done it before. The post-COVID world does present our home state and our home country with an extraordinary opportunity, a rare opportunity, one that we have not seen since World War II.

Not too dissimilar to today, in the summer of 1945-46 Prime Minister Ben Chifley and South Australian Premier Thomas Playford presided over governments deeply indebted, but both led a population that was equally weary post World War II yet eternally optimistic about the days ahead. Both leaders knew the pursuit of economic growth was paramount, not for the sake of it but for the betterment of every man, woman and child. South Australians wanted industrial expansion but coupled with economic mobility and social progress—and both leaders delivered in spades.

Chifley, having taken on the leadership and the prime ministership in 1945, delivered major programs like Snowy Hydro; the establishment of what is today the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme; a huge housing build; massive social security reform, including new maternity allowances; university and technical college reform, including the establishment of the ANU; and the creation of the Commonwealth Employment Service—not bad in 4½ years.

Playford, having developed a taste for government action during the course of the war, acted equally assertively post the war: the mass expansion of the Housing Trust, the nationalisation of electricity supply and the establishment of ETSA, and the foundation of Elizabeth are just three examples. When my grandparents arrived in 1948 and 1949 they had literally nothing to their name, but they knew they had landed in a state with truly unparalleled opportunity.

Post World War II, both Chifley and Playford understood the significance of the opportunity they had to be leaders at that time. So they delivered policy, they grew the economy and built a fairer society. They did not just see the moment, they seized the moment. Chifley and Playford knew how to lead.

Fast-forward 75-odd years, and here we are with a strikingly similar opportunity to that of the post-World War II South Australian era. Spurrier and Stevens have delivered us COVID success, debt is high, the population is weary yet extremely optimistic. People appear willing to tolerate more debt, but they want a plan to pay it back and they expect any extra debt must deliver a better society. Therefore, reform is on the cards. The state is ready to be led.

Enter Premier Marshall, and what do we get? Cuts to health and a basketball stadium. The dilettante is exposed. In the big post-COVID pre-election budget, the only new idea the government has is to move a basketball stadium two kilometres up the road. If there is a virtue in this budget it is that it gives South Australians a crystal-clear window into what another four years of this government looks like: more talk but no delivery on infrastructure, more cuts to health and no new ideas. This budget represents a tragic waste of opportunity and a mud map to maintain our status as having the worst unemployment rate in the nation.

On this side of the house, we have a different plan. We have already started rolling out a serious economic policy to put our state on a trajectory of long-term growth, growth that is not only sustained by an ever-increasing debt burden. I submit two examples to you, Mr Speaker: firstly, our policy to lead from the front in reform on the higher education sector in this state. We have three good universities in South Australia, but none of them are in the top 100 globally. Our young adults deserve better. Young South Australian men and women should not have to travel interstate or overseas to get access to a world-leading university.

In a global context, South Australia is and should always aspire to be a high-wage economy. In a world where both capital and labour are increasingly mobile, our best chance to maintain our prosperity is to ensure that every last young person maximises the functionality of the muscle between their ears and the skills with their hands. Universities are central to this cause. Furthermore, research and development is a much unheralded key plank of growth policy in any advanced economy. Although some of our universities punch above their weight in R&D funding, we need more, and on this score size does matter.

We know that early in this Premier's term he was presented with an opportunity by the Adelaide University and the University of South Australia to show leadership, but this Premier chose to look the other way and did nothing. He squibbed it. If university amalgamation can deliver our state a top 100 university, increased R&D funding and greater access to higher education for our kids, then the state government should take an active interest in that reform. Despite the complexity and the difficulty and the controversy, Labor will show leadership on university amalgamation.

Secondly, I have announced the most ambitious hydrogen policy in the nation that, if elected, will see a Malinauskas Labor government deliver one of the largest hydrogen production facilities anywhere in the world. At its heart, my hydrogen plan is all about jobs—secure, well-paid, full-time jobs. We will build a 250-megawatt electrolyser, a 3,600-tonne hydrogen storage facility and a 200-megawatt combined cycle gas turbine fuelled by hydrogen. All of this will deliver cheaper, clean electricity produced right here in South Australia—not interstate but right here in South Australia.

The whole plant will be owned and operated by South Australians through a government-owned business enterprise. This policy will establish our state as the centre for the hydrogen industry, which has unlimited potential. The race is on around the globe for the key first-mover advantage in the hydrogen industry. With our abundant renewables, once derided by this Premier, we can lead this race and set about exporting clean, renewable energy and reinvigorating our manufacturing industry.

Again, this policy is complex. It is hard, but with leadership its delivery is not beyond the people of our state. Make no mistake: I am not naive to the fact that, politically, higher education reform and hydrogen are a harder sell than a basketball stadium, but this is the sort of serious industry policy our economy needs if we are going to grow our economy and expand our middle class while making it more prosperous.

These are the opportunities before us here and now that cannot wait for the election, but there are others even more glaring, like the chance to make Adelaide as the centre for mRNA vaccine production in the nation. In BioCina in Thebarton, we have the plant and the company that are ready to go with approvals in place.

So what are we waiting for? The Premier has not even picked up the phone to call the CEO. Let's be frank: if the CEO of BioCina is willing to make time for the opposition leader, I am sure he will make time for the Premier. If I had my hand on the tiller right now, I would be bending over backwards to get this deal done. Premier, on this you have my support. Let's work together and allocate what funding is needed to put our best foot forward and get this vaccine production off the ground in South Australia.

In Labor, we understand not everyone is going to work in vaccine production, or at Lot Fourteen for that matter, so other economic policy in other areas matters too, like major events. Given the Premier decided to axe our biggest, most economically successful major event without any thought being applied to what is replacing it, can the Premier please find another tourism minister—maybe even bring back Ridgy—because it has been eight months since the current tourism minister promised replacement events for the Adelaide 500. So far not one—seriously, not one single event—has been announced to replace the Adelaide 500. Illuminate was announced before the Adelaide 500 cancellation. With the worst unemployment rate in the nation, we cannot afford to wait any longer.

Education has always been the central policy vehicle in our society to achieve upward mobility and fairness. Education is an area where there is much self-congratulation by this government with very little effort actually made. In short, on the one hand the vast majority of the investment made was inherited by this government and, on the other hand, the outcomes claimed in training are vastly overstated.

Before I explain what is so inaccurate in the budget and the summaries about education and training, I will congratulate the government on one element of the education budget: the investment in health checks in early childhood is a worthy one and one that this side of the chamber wholeheartedly endorses. We know how important the early years are, not only in guiding development but also in intervening if there are challenges. 'The earlier the better' is the mantra for early childhood education and development.

But let us return to the issue of the government claiming to be spending so much more money than ever before on education. As the government papers themselves explain, when you turn up or look to the detail, the increase in education spending is as a result of enrolment increases in public schools—as a result, I hope, in part, because of the investments made by the former Labor government—and the increasing numbers of students with identified disabilities, and the flow-on of the increase in funding of what was left over from the Gonski deal.

The Gonski funding was fought for by teachers, SSOs, principals and parents. It was fought for by state and federal Labor. It was not fought for by the South Australian Liberal Party, but they are happy to claim the increase as it flows in. Similarly, the government claims a massive increase in apprenticeship and traineeship commencements, illustrating the claim with a graph. It is always worth reading the fine print when it comes to this government, and there is an asterisk that says it all: 'The Skilling Australia Fund includes pre-apprenticeships-traineeships and apprenticeship "like" activity.'

In other words, the data the government congratulates itself on is not the same as the data it compares itself to, which is actual apprenticeship and traineeship commencements. Let us not overlook the $143 million decline in the innovation and skills budget over this budget because the federally funded Skilling Australia program comes to an end. What happens afterwards? Nothing, according to the budget.

Then there is the all-important area of our natural world. This government has tried to slide into Labor's slipstream on climate change, going from deriding South Australia's investment in renewal energy in the Bolt report to embracing Labor's legacy as its own. We want climate change to be bipartisan—it should be—but that requires action to match the rhetoric. The first sign of trouble came in the first Marshall budget, which slashed $11 million from climate change work in the environment portfolio.

This has been followed by tepid policies on having a plan to have a strategy on hydrogen while we watch the other states start to seriously enter the race to profit from making the low-carbon transition. The Climate Council report card in 2017 on the renewable energy race had South Australia far ahead of the rest of the nation. By 2018, Tasmania and the ACT had caught up to us and the rest of the states are well on their way. Make no mistake: the state and the nation that moves quickest on not only having low-carbon energy grids but also being able to export that energy will secure its place in the emerging 21stcentury economy.

Is there any awareness of that in this budget? The short answer is no. There is not one mention of climate change in the budget speech—not one mention of climate change in the budget speech. There is no real policy in the entire budget. The nearest it comes to that is $2.1 million for clean energy initiatives that come to an end after the first two years.

A policy designed to undermine transition to a low-carbon economy is, of course, the electric vehicle tax, which was announced last year, then delayed and now announced again. This tax would make South Australia the only state with no financial incentive to buy an electric car yet have a tax to make it more expensive to run one. It is clear that we will not have the full range of electric cars available in South Australia, including the newer, cheaper vehicles, if there is no growing market for them, and this government appears to be absolutely determined to make sure there will not be one.

What is also under threat in South Australia as a result of this government is the natural environment—nature. In 3½ short years, the Minister for Environment has racked up quite the record. He has been found by a royal commission to have capitulated to the Eastern States in regard to the River Murray and since then has delivered not one drop of the 450 gigalitres due to South Australia. He has managed to agitate communities across the state—the phone is ringing hot.

The Kangaroo Island community, for example, were so appalled by his approval of a private development on clifftops in the Flinders Chase National Park that they went to court to seek a review of the decision. He slashed marine park sanctuaries despite the recommendation of his own scientific review that they be kept intact. He put out a proposal for consultation for seven soccer pitches for the Belair National Park, and, when the backlash forced him to retreat, he tried to distance himself from the idea, leaving the club to carry the can.

He proposed putting a road for trucks through the dunes at Semaphore and found it was not needed after all when all the locals started to push back. He was part of two government decisions that have now been reversed, one to remove memorial pine trees at Hove for the ill-fated level crossing and the other to demolish the state heritage listed Waite Gatehouse, which was suddenly able to be relocated. It is not a great record coming into the final year before an election.

What has he achieved in this budget? In this budget, the minister is evicting the National Trust, a community organisation that has been headquartered at Ayers House for 50 years and spending money on the building to put a government department in it. Make no mistake: Labor has no issue with the History Trust; it is a fine agency, worthy of support. It is the government and this minister who have chosen to pit the National Trust against the History Trust by evicting one in favour of the other.

In this budget, there is nothing for nature, other than giving some councils more money to plant trees. Labor has no issue with money for trees, but nature is more important and the challenges the planet faces more serious than this budget reflects. As the Conservation Council calls it, this is a deeply disappointing budget that does not keep up with the huge challenges we face in the areas of climate and biodiversity protection.

Health: every South Australian was looking to this budget for a response to the health crisis. The first pages that anyone worth their salt was looking at when the budget papers were handed down on Tuesday were those that refer to health expenditure and staffing in the health system. I was stunned, genuinely shocked, that in this budget this government in the upcoming financial year are reducing funding to our health system. They are reducing staff in the LHNs of our health system. Our health system is in crisis. People are calling out for change.

I have spent some time in recent months trying to talk to frontline workers about their experiences in the health system. You can read all the briefings in the world and you can have all the arguments about the statistics you like, but nothing replicates talking to someone on the frontline and hearing the experience they are having to endure.

I think it is sometimes true in politics and public policy generally that small issues can be exaggerated and inflated and can mischaracterise an issue as a crisis when there is not one. But anybody who has spoken to people who work in our health system will tell you that this is real. It is real and it is getting worse. Stories from the Ambulance Service are particularly pertinent, particularly disconcerting; one is the story of Judi and Pauline.

Sixty-six-year-old Judi of Aldinga was ramped outside the Flinders Medical Centre for 6½ hours in August last year with a perforated bowel with complications. She then spent another two hours stuck on a gurney next to the entrance door of the ED before finally seeing a doctor. Judi's 86-year-old mother, Pauline, suffered the same fate to an even more horrifying degree, forced to wait for seven hours on the ramp at Flinders after waiting 2½ hours for an ambulance to attend her nursing home. With another six ambulances ramped before hers and a suspected neck injury, Pauline was required to stay completely still at the age of 86, unable to move for seven hours.

Next is Amanda, who presented to The Queen Elizabeth Hospital last month with suicidal thoughts. She was offered a longer term care bed in Queenstown and multiple days of care to recover, and then that offer was abruptly taken away because Amanda was told there were not enough beds. Amanda said she is reluctant to head back to hospital even if she thinks she needs to because she knows ramping is out of control and she is worried she will be turned away again.

Then there is Sarah, whose six-month-old niece was experiencing breathing difficulties and frothing from the mouth at her Mile End home. Sarah's sister Emily phoned the ambulance at approximately 6.40pm and the case was classified as a priority 2. For those unaware, that is a life-threatening case. A SPRINT car arrived on scene and warned that, because of extreme ramping, there were no ambulances available to transfer them to hospital. They waited for over an hour before an ambulance was available to attend. Both of Sarah's own daughters have existing breathing difficulties, so they stayed on FaceTime together through the horrifying wait. Sarah summed it up perfectly when she said:

There are no concerns whatsoever with the care my niece received from paramedics and those at the WCH—who were all fantastic, professional and caring. But the wait times are unacceptable and downright dangerous.

Yesterday, I had a cup of coffee with four or five ambos at a coffee joint in Hindmarsh. Naturally, there is a predisposition for our frontline workers not to disclose their stories. They are a resilient bunch and not accustomed to showing struggle. We should be conscious of the fact that our ambos are some of the most intelligent South Australians we have. It is not easy to become a paramedic. You have to get into a university degree with a TER of something like 98 or 99 just to get in the door. These are highly intelligent individuals with compassion in their hearts.

Yesterday, I was talking to a few of the ambulance officers and I met Sam from Mount Barker. Sam enlightened me that in Mount Barker there is one ambulance for a population something in the order of 30,000 people and growing apace. Sam explained to me that basically on every shift that he and his workmates have to endure, if you get one callout and the second one comes, there is nothing. He told me one story that I have struggled to stop thinking about.

He told me that he got dispatched from Mount Barker to go to a hillside town, which I will not name because it is small and I do not want to compromise the patient. He was dispatched from Mount Barker to a small town, and normally that town would be serviced by the Woodside ambulance. Woodside to this town is about a 15-minute response time.

The parents had called the Ambulance Service because their five-year-old child was experiencing multiple seizures that were not stopping, and it had never happened before. They called the Ambulance Service and they waited and they waited. The 15-minute response time passed. Sam's crew was dispatched from Mount Barker and it took 40 minutes to get there. They rolled up, came down the driveway, the parents were waiting at the bottom of the driveway, and mum was completely beside herself.

Two seconds later I am hearing another story from another ambo about his being stuck, internally ramped, with a father who was beside himself after their 11-year-old son had attempted to commit suicide. And then there was the next story, and then there was the next story. You cannot hear stories like this and justify $600 million of taxpayers' money being spent on a basketball stadium.

To our ambos, amongst so many others in our Ambulance Service, I know you are crying out for change. I know that you are not crying out for your own interests. You are crying out for the interests of your fellow South Australians who look in your eyes in their time of greatest need. I want to say to our ambulance officers: I have heard your call, my team has heard your call, the people of South Australia hear your call, and we will not let you down.

When you hear the real-life stories that are happening every day in our health system right now, you cannot possibly justify a basketball stadium, which is why I will not. I have announced today that a Malinauskas Labor government will not proceed with the basketball stadium. The $600 million of South Australia's money that Premier Marshall will spend on the stadium I will spend on the things that really matter, and nothing is more important right now than getting our health system right. Instead of the basketball stadium, we will invest in our ambos and our hospitals. Furthermore, I commit today that, of those funds, at least $100 million will go to our regional communities—to Country Health.

Elections are always about choices, and with a whole 10 months to go there are already a few: a South Australian-owned public transport system running for the interests of people, or a private public transport system running for overseas profit? The Adelaide 500 or nothing? Lead on hydrogen, or wait for someone else to go first? Invest in our health system, or build a basketball stadium? These are the decisions that the people of our state will have to make in nine months’ time. And there will be more to come, but none more so than who will lead our state into the 2020s.

I have been observing this Premier rather closely over the last 3½ years, and a theme has been emerging: it is always someone else's call. Just think about it for a moment. The most obvious example is our COVID response. Just as COVID-19 was starting up, the Premier handed all his authority over to Grant Stevens and Nicola Spurrier, and thankfully that has served us well, very well, which is probably why the Premier seeks to take all the credit. But when things go bad, it is always someone else's advice that is responsible.

Think: the member for Schubert and the bus cuts; Rob Lucas and the land tax debacle; Scott Morrison's position and ours on medi-hotels; the upstream Nats for his government's capitulation on the River Murray; the WA Premier and Malcolm Turnbull dictating our GST share for the benefit of Western Australians; and my favourite, the SATC for the Adelaide 500.

You never heard the Premier saying, 'I made the decision to cancel it and here are the reasons why.' Instead, it was, 'The SATC recommended it, so I took their advice.' Premier, if all you do is take other people's advice, why are you here? I am afraid to say it, but this government is not being led by a Premier, it is being led by an MC. A leader who wants all the credit but none of the responsibility is not a leader at all.

I do not need the credit, but I do want the responsibility because we do live in the greatest state in the greatest country in the world. COVID has put that up in lights. But if we are going to maintain our standard of living and hand over South Australia to our children in a better state than the one that we enjoy, we have to realise the opportunities staring us in the face, just as Chifley and Playford did.

If this Premier will not seize the post-COVID opportunity, then I will. Where the Premier's team is not ready to step up to the policy plate, mine is. We are united and excited about the months ahead. In March next year, my team and I will humbly submit our policy and ourselves to the people of this state. With their blessing, we will do good things for the great people of South Australia because goodness knows they deserve nothing less.

There being a disturbance in the galleries:

The SPEAKER: Order! Expressions from the galleries are disorderly, including applause from the galleries.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay) (12:36): I rise today to make my contribution to the appropriation debate and to indicate how disappointed I am by the lack of direction in the budget handed down on Tuesday. As a commentator noted on breakfast radio yesterday, this is the response the government makes when it knows a response is needed but does not know what that response should be. He summed it up well. Across my portfolios of trade, tourism and investment, I could not agree more, because what is missing is a real plan for recovery and renewal.

Let me start with trade and investment. In the budget papers across the forward estimates, the Department for Trade and Investment's operating expenses will be massively reduced from $62 million to $42 million. This cut means that seven FTEs are gone this year, nearly 5 per cent of the FTEs of the whole department. How do we expect the department to achieve its goals with continued cuts?

Let's talk about the failures of this government in trade and investment and key performance indicators on the South Australian share of foreign investment. When this government was still experiencing the flow of investment from the work of Investment Attraction South Australia in 2019-20, South Australia had 15 per cent of the national share of foreign direct investment. Today, we have achieved just over 6 per cent. It is in black and white that we have gone backwards.

There is also the failure of South Australian exports in the share of national trade. The minister for this portfolio recently crowed about our trade success and whilst overseas—

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The leader will not interject from out of his place. My point is: the leader has had his opportunity. He was listened to in silence, as will be the member for Ramsay.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON: Whilst overseas goods exports did increase over the past 12 months, they remain at only 3.3 per cent of national overseas goods exports. This is far away from the 7 per cent target this government set itself and well below 4.3 per cent when Labor was in government. This target is unlikely to be achieved as we battle several challenges.

Whilst there is money in the budget for trade diversification of our wine sector, it would be remiss of me not to mention that the China tariffs are still going to have ongoing impacts on jobs. About 8,000 South Australians are involved in the grape and wine industry alone. Our state at its peak exported nearly $800 million worth of wine to China each year, making up the majority of Australia's $1.2 billion in wine exports to China. As well as producing 42 per cent of Australian wine grapes, we produce 78 per cent of Australia's highest quality grapes.

As we pivot away from China, we are now in a rush to look to other markets like the US, the UK and the Indo-Pacific. The recent announcement about the wine export support is simply not enough to truly support the massive impact on this industry. Jared Stringer, the President of the Adelaide Hills Wine Region, said in The Advertiser that, whilst there are some really good green shoots in some overseas markets, it would be naive to think that more than $1 billion previously bought by China could be easily absorbed by other markets. This is jobs in South Australia. It needs our support; it does not need cuts.

Let's talk about trade offices. One of the key trade announcements is the creation of a trade office in Paris to capitalise on the opportunities arising from the free trade agreement with the UK. While I have no objection to the opening of trade offices per se, I do have concerns that the best intelligence tells us that for these offices to work effectively and achieve results on the ground they need to be well resourced and supported back here at home. The reduction in staff at a local level seems to raise questions about whether this support is going to be delivered. I am also concerned that there is no apparent funding to resume trade missions when international borders eventually reopen.

At a recent trade round table I convened, one of the several key takeaways was the importance of Australian companies actually meeting with potential buyers face to face. It was also noted that, while trade shows were of use, nothing replaces the building of relationships one on one and that government can have an important role in facilitating and supporting this initial contact. There is great disappointment that this department has cut once again and this government has failed to achieve, on its own metrics, an increase in foreign direct investment, going backwards from what we had before, and of course our national share of exports is nowhere near 7 per cent.

Let me now turn to tourism because the tourism sector, as has been acknowledged, has been one of the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. With our national borders closed to the rest of the world and snap border closures across the nation hindering interstate travel, the toll on this sector has been enormous. We have seen a massive decline in our annual visitor economy from a high of $8.1 billion at the end of December 2019 to now just $4.7 billion. It is expected that this will decrease even further this year. Let's just hear that again: a massive decrease of $3.4 billion to the South Australian economy. What does that mean? It means jobs—jobs lost in a significant industry. It means real people losing their livelihood in what was previously a growth industry sector.

Let us remind ourselves that, prior to COVID, 18,000 businesses were engaged in the visitor economy, employed in tourism and hospitality, and we had reached a high of 40,500 people directly employed in this industry. It is not up for debate. It is a simple fact that the visitor economy has taken a massive hit. You would think that a sector of our economy that has had a $3.4 billion hit would deserve continued attention—not just one-off but continued attention. That is what is so disappointing.

Many of the employers in this space tend to be run by families who run smaller microbusinesses. Tourism Research Australia data in June 2020 showed that 89.8 per cent of businesses in this space are small. Smaller businesses, usually family run, employ between one and 19 employees. With the end of JobKeeker, we sadly saw that a number of them closed their doors, particularly those reliant on international travel that could not easily or economically pivot to the domestic market, such as travel agents.

We know that with snap border closures our tourism operators face instant cancellations, so I know today we will have tourism operators throughout South Australia accepting cancellations and spending their time arranging refunds. I am not criticising the need to close borders. What I am drawing attention to is the continued impact on our visitor economy. It needs our attention; it needs our support.

Of course, even before COVID-19 tourism was an incredibly competitive space. Marketing our state to ensure that we maintain our state's percentage of domestic tourism is vital, and we are going backwards on that metric. The South Australian Tourism Commission National Visitor Survey, released in March, shows that our interstate overnight trips decreased from 2019 to 2020 by a whopping 61 per cent—61 per cent.

As I have talked about in this house before, there is a two-speed economy emerging in tourism post COVID. Whilst some operators in some regions have reported good summer bookings and early signs of a positive winter, this is patchy at best. In fact, the government's own budget papers state:

It is important to note that the impact on the regional visitor economy of COVID-19 has not been uniform, and there are many regional tourism operators, particularly those previously reliant on international, interstate or corporate markets, for whom business conditions remain suppressed.

That is in your own budget papers. The Tourism and Transport Forum's previous analysis has reported that the South Australian Tourism Commission would need at least $400 million over the next four years to address the economic black hole the pandemic and the bushfires have left.

Despite this landscape, this budget has continued in the true Marshall Liberal government style by rolling out more cuts in this important sector—$20 million of them, in fact, over the next four years. Let me just read this out for you. When we look at the operating expenses for tourism for 2021 it is $96 million; in the coming financial year, down to $92 million; in 2023-24, down to $88 million; then $75 million; and by 2024-25 it is $72 million.

This is a massive cut. This is even more concerning given the fact that nearly $10 million of this is being cut from the tourism marketing budget this coming financial year. So at a time when our competitors are investing to market their states, to maximise their holiday at home advantage, South Australia is going backwards.

Tourism is a job creating sector, and it creates jobs fast. We know that every dollar invested in tourism exponentially grows our visitor economy and with it brings jobs. South Australia regained the unwanted title of highest unemployment rate in May with 5.8 per cent. We have 53,900 people looking for work, and it beggars belief that instead of using this as an opportunity to grow and support this sector we saw nothing of that in the budget. So I am genuinely starting to believe that this government either does not get it or, possibly worse, places no value in it.

Our Premier, Premier Marshall, is responsible for tourism. Where was your voice for this industry? You are letting them down. You think your job is done. You are abandoning them. It is not done. This is a government that does not believe that tourism is worthy of government support, despite the sector being largely made up of mum-and-dad businesses in regional South Australia.

Let's talk about the vouchers because this Marshall Liberal government had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do anything to help the tourism sector. From as early as June 2020, the Labor opposition was calling on the state government to launch a travel voucher scheme to assist the sector, similar to the one in the NT and Tasmania.

The Great State Voucher scheme, when it was finally announced in October, only covered specific accommodation providers, excluding other businesses, such as hospitality, travel agents, experiences, tours and attractions, offering $50 vouchers in regional areas and $100 for the CBD and North Adelaide. This is well short of the $200 vouchers proposed by the opposition, which would have covered the entire state and all people and businesses involved in tourism.

Once dragged to the party, the first iteration of the scheme was stingy and narrowly focused, benefiting only 3 per cent of all listings on the government-run southaustralia.com. It was only in response to lobbying on behalf of other tourism-related operators that finally in round 3 there was support for tourism experiences. I had someone talk to me the other day who said it was fantastic for their small startup. They had $9,000 worth of bookings through that experiences voucher—something that we had been calling for from the very beginning.

We know that when JobKeeper was ending people were very concerned about what was going to happen to the tourism industry. Many people believed that the Morrison government would extend JobKeeper for those involved in tourism, but of course it did not happen. We know the tourism vouchers have had some success.

However, we remain concerned about their low redemption rates and the fact that it was bungled from the beginning, focusing just on accommodation and not supporting travel agents and experiences. You have to wonder what the outcome might have been for this voucher scheme had it been correctly targeted and properly promoted with a broad registration of operators and businesses across the sector.

I want to touch on events because the Premier, with great acclaim, started the events advisory committee in November 2020 to supercharge the events calendar after the axing of the Adelaide 500 Supercars race. When we asked the chief executive of the SATC, Rodney Harrex, for a definition of the group's role recently in the Budget and Finance Committee, this is what he said:

The group acts as a think tank, in terms of providing a forum to share suggestions and ideas regarding additional leisure event opportunities for South Australia.

So South Australians have been asking: what is going to replace the Adelaide 500? Let us remind ourselves that in 2019 the Adelaide 500 injected $45.9 million into the state's economy and attracted more than 15,000 interstate visitors. It was a shock announcement when this Premier made the decision to cut this event. Let's be clear: this decision is still burning in the community. They are angry about the axing, and that is why Labor—agile and led by a great leader—made the decision to commit to South Australians that Supercars will be back.

It is six months since the establishment of the events advisory committee—six months—and there is not one new major event to replace the cancellation of the Adelaide 500. What was the point of this Events Advisory Group? There are some great people around that table, yet nothing has been announced.

There is an interesting definition of what a new event seems to encompass. In fact, in the budget papers, apparently there are new events happening, but they are not quite what we were thinking. Apparently, annual events that have been resecured by the SATC, such as the Masters Games or the State of Origin, are now new major events. Apparently, the 10 years at the Adelaide International at Memorial Drive is considered a new event. Exhibitions at the Art Gallery are now new events. Securing a change of sponsor may also trigger capturing new event status. These are not new events: this is business as usual. This is what the Tourism Commission does. None of these events come anywhere close to replacing the economic impact of or the jobs lost from the Adelaide 500.

With no Adelaide 500, we now have a massive hole in our events calendar. With the continued closure of national borders, the Tour Down Under is likely to be small again. How are we going to replace those 15,000 interstate visitors here? When you look at this, others have done more. Just last week, New South Wales announced a $200 million fund to market for significant events. There is nothing like that is in this budget. The impacts of COVID will be with us in the tourism industry for many years.

Time expired.

Ms HILDYARD (Reynell) (12:57): I, too, rise to speak to the Appropriation Bill. This is a budget of misplaced priorities and wasted opportunities. Sadly, this is a budget demonstrative of a deep lack of care for South Australians who most need support and a budget demonstrative of a government that refuses to hear our community's growing calls for change.

Budgets always speak to what a government prioritises and values and to how a government understands or does not understand the needs of the community and what matters to them. This budget is no different. Interminably, we hear the clichéd slogans over and over again from those opposite that they are building what matters—hollow, clichéd words without substance and often uttered to avoid answering questions, slogans given by a government that absolutely does not understand nor has any compassion for what actually matters to our community. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted.

Sitting suspended from 13:00 to 14:00.

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