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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-08-24 Daily Xml
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Appropriation Bill 2021

Estimates Committees

Debate resumed.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee) (17:30): Before we broke, I started with some introductory remarks on the committee stage of the Appropriation Bill and you will be greatly relieved to hear they will not go on too much longer. The last thing I wanted to make mention of that came out during the estimates committees was some questioning around Lot Fourteen.

Unusually, when the Liberal Party came into government, the Lot Fourteen precinct was not only renamed in order to ensure that people who had an instinctive understanding of where the old Royal Adelaide Hospital site was could now be confused, having no idea where Lot Fourteen possibly was. Aside from that change in nomenclature, remarkably the most junior minister of the cabinet, the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, the member for Schubert, delegated his responsibilities for that site to the most senior minister in the cabinet, the Premier.

On the face of it, you would think, other than that unusual aspect of a junior minister delegating to the most senior minister, maybe it was just to ensure that someone more senior and who had a greater number of staff at their disposal could ensure that things would proceed apace at Lot Fourteen.

Of course, the two signature projects, which the government took to the last election, to be delivered on that site were the Aboriginal Art and Cultures Centre, as it is now known, and also the new international culinary school which was to be an amalgamation of the Regency Park TAFE facility, which has served this state extremely well for decades and a private entity, Le Cordon Bleu, and $60 million would be allocated to this project—$30 million from the state government and $30 million from the federal government in the City Deal, which I earlier referred to as receiving less funding than the Townsville City Deal, such is the close working relationship our Premier has with the Prime Minister.

Money was provided in the first budget of this government, the 2018-19 budget, to commence work on the culinary school. There were a couple of press releases put out, firstly by the Premier and then by the Minister for Innovation and Skills, the member for Unley, about the culinary school in the first half of 2019 and then it has been radio silence ever since. So I asked the Treasurer, 'As minister responsible for Renewal SA, whose responsibility it is to superintend the land itself down there, how is the culinary school going?' He said, 'We are reconsidering our plans about that.'

The Hon. L.W.K. Bignell: Half-baked.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Yes, parbaked, as the member for Mawson says. Of course, very quickly after that revelation made its way into the media, a document was furnished from a source in the government, which was actually a cabinet document, an excerpt from a cabinet document, showing a list of cabinet decisions including one specifically relating to the international culinary school and that that school be scrapped and instead replaced with a new—and if I get the description of it right—cyber industries centre which presumably will give final breath to the Premier's commitments around Blockchain. So we are waiting for the new Blockchain facility to replace the now defunct international culinary school.

An honourable member: They will build the blocks there.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Yes, that's right, they will build the blocks there, presumably in some sort of chain-like arrangement. That, of course, is not the only part of those two commitments that have stalled. Of course, the Aboriginal Art and Cultures Gallery is now approaching three years late and more than $50 million over budget. It seems that the, at first, strange decision by the member for Schubert to upwardly delegate his responsibilities for the Lot Fourteen precinct to the Premier has resulted in two of the Liberal Party signature election commitments either stalling, in the case of the Aboriginal Art and Cultures Centre, and blowing over budget or just being scrapped altogether.

The City Deal was a National Partnership Arrangement entered into between the state and the federal government. The City Deal required the state government to undertake certain specific actions. Those actions were that by April of this year business cases for all the major elements to be funded from the City Deal, including the culinary school and the Aboriginal Art and Cultures Centre be finished, submitted and accepted by the federal government by April 2021, and that would trigger the first release of payments to the state government.

The Advertiser has asked the Premier's office: have those business cases been completed, have they been approved by the federal government and has money been provided by the federal government to the state? Of course, as we saw in question time today, the Premier's office is like the Premier—that is, evasive and not willing to answer those legitimate questions. So projects directly managed by the Premier himself and his team are either cancelled or have blown over budget.

I will conclude my remarks by speaking briefly about a couple of issues that are close to the heart of constituents in my electorate. Acting Speaker, I know you will be interested in these because you are a neighbour, on the other side of Grange Road now, and soon to be a little closer to Trimmer Parade after the next election with the change in the boundaries. You will be interested to know—in fact, you might have even been there I think a few Sundays ago—that the Deputy Premier finally announced that work would commence on the first stage of the Coast Park project between Semaphore Park and Grange.

Members may be aware that the Coast Park project, which was initiated nearly 25 years ago by former transport minister Diana Laidlaw and largely funded by councils, has been almost completely delivered, other than a couple of sections in the southern coastal suburbs and also this stretch in my electorate. It has been extremely difficult to get this project delivered in my electorate because there has been a small clutch of residents whose houses are built in these sand dunes who strongly oppose the building of this Coast Park project.

A former council, the City of Charles Sturt council, put together a reference group to examine how the Coast Park could be developed and that reference group reported not too long after the 2014 election. Unfortunately, in hindsight, the chair of the reference group and other members were property owners along that stretch of absolute coast.

I cannot help but feel that some members of that reference group who had those residences influenced the recommended option for the Coast Park; that is, it was not to be a Coast Park but a road park with the shared walking and cycling trail not to be along the coast, as it is for the remainder of the nearly 50 or so kilometres along Adelaide's coastline, but instead be along Military Road, taking it away from houses.

That is not acceptable to the community. I thought I would do what I could as a newly elected local MP and sit down with the residents who were in favour of it, sit down with the residents who were opposed to it and sit down with the interested community groups. Those are groups like the Tennyson Dunes Group, the Western Adelaide Coastal Residents Association (WACRA), even those residents who have formed their own environmental group to oppose things like the Coast Park, notwithstanding that they will be built immediately adjacent to the hundreds of tons of concrete, steel, glass and wood that comprise their own homes in the middle of the sand dunes. Nonetheless, they oppose further development next to their houses.

I tried—I tried for 18 months to negotiate an outcome that would see the Coast Park delivered—and failed. To give the City of Charles Sturt their due, they proceeded and tried to get this project underway. That same group of residents who have opposed this Coast Park took the council to the Supreme Court and tried to haul them over the coals for not meeting the letter of their own consultation policies. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court found in those residents favour.

When the former Labor government allocated nearly $4 million, in addition to the nearly $4 million the council had allocated to deliver the Coast Park in its entirety between Semaphore Park and Grange, it was thwarted by this legal action. I am pleased to say that the former Minister for Planning and the former Attorney-General, the former minister for Enfield the Hon. John Rau SC—

An honourable member: Of blessed memory.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: —of blessed memory—brought a change to the Linear Parks Act into the house to enable a linear park to be declared in an area such as the area I am talking about, which would then enable the Coast Park to be built without the sort of legal action deliberately construed in order to frustrate a community project that the vast majority of residents in the western suburbs would like to see finished.

We had a change of government in the course of this Linear Parks Act passed by the former Labor government, laying the path (pardon the pun) for this project to be built. Unfortunately, the current government, sniffing the wind from some of those residents—not all—particularly in Tennyson and Grange along Seaview Road and in similar areas, and knowing they would oppose it, go out to consultation to declare this area a linear park but seek to declare a linear park only for the first part of the Coast Park project, the easy part, the Semaphore Park to Tennyson Park. That is what was announced a few Saturdays ago.

What the government is now saying about stage 2, the tricky part, the part that goes past the most vocal and wealthy opponents of this project, is that that this is now only 'possible', that we have to have another round of consultation about whether we get on with this Coast Park or not. Well, enough is enough. The Liberal government is not committed to delivering the Coast Park in its entirety. That cannot be argued: they are not committed to it.

It is only 'possible,' according to the Deputy Premier and according to their candidates in the coming election. From the Labor perspective, we make the same commitment to the people of the western suburbs that we made at the last election: we are committed to delivering it, and we will deliver it between the houses and the beach, where the rest of the Coast Park has been delivered throughout metropolitan Adelaide.

Yes, there are, in an obscurity of lands titling, six properties that go down to the high-water mark on one portion of Seaview Road, which prevents the path from going in front of those houses. Notwithstanding those six properties, we will be delivering the Coast Park where we said it should be delivered at the 2018 election. That is a stark difference between the Labor Party's approach to the next election on this issue and the Liberal government's approach on this issue.

The Deputy Premier can stand up in here and make all sorts of claims about how she is committed to delivering the Coast Park, but the simple fact is that she is not. She has the power to do it. She had the power to go out and consult on the entire stretch, but she deliberately chose not to. She deliberately chose to avoid the hardest part of it, and now she has set in train a process, where this will deliberately not be resolved before the next election.

I say shame on this government. The former Labor government put in place the legislative changes and the funding to get this delivered, and in the last 3½ years it has been deliberately stalled by the Deputy Premier and other ministers in order to avoid what they think is going to be a backlash amongst a tiny proportion of residents. I have surveyed my electorate and 600 responses came back to that survey. All but six of them were in favour—all but six of them. They want this project delivered and they will not brook any further delay or obfuscation by this government.

Sitting extended beyond 18:00 on motion of Hon. S.J.R. Patterson.

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (17:45): I would like to make a brief contribution to the Appropriation Bill. The reason I need to do so is that there were some announcements during the estimates process that really upset my community, and I would like to focus perhaps on just one announcement.

In a media statement issued by the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, under the heading 'Hard work means fewer project delays despite COVID-19 pandemic', the minister tried to spin how he is going to sort these delays to the community. What has really angered my community about that is the delay in the electrification of the Gawler rail project and also his lack of commitment to improving the substitute bus services. Those two issues really did anger my community.

First of all, he played down the delay; in other words, it meant nothing and it was just a minor glitch in the system. But for the people who have had to put up with this delay for over 12 months—not a few weeks of the lockdown we have had—it really does grate on them.

Secondly, they have to put up with a substitute bus service, which has improved a bit after heavy lobbying by the community, but it is still not free and the reality is that for a lot of people it is still a lesser service in the sense that it can take up to 1½ to two hours to get to work. For those people who can catch the express services, it is not too bad, but there are those who cannot.

There are a lot of people who do not travel in peak times. Because of their work arrangements, they work different hours. A lot of people work outside of peak times. A lot of people do not have the advantage of a second vehicle. Often people who work as cleaners and other people are doubly punished by having to take a slow service to work early in the morning or late at night or even during the daytime.

In this three-page media statement, the Gawler project has one small mention. It is an insignificant little mention. I can assure you that the outrage of the community was palpable. The Facebook page put out by the local newspaper was inundated with complaints about the minister's refusal to even consider modifying substitute bus services to improve the quality of life of those people who live in that electorate, particularly a lot of students who try to balance study and work commitments in part-time jobs to get ahead. The minister's treatment of this project, in the sense that he has not come clean and explained these delays, is really sad.

Another thing that needs to be mentioned is that there was no clarification about the future of Curtis Road—another hot-button issue in my community. People are now starting to believe very strongly that this government does not care about people in the northern suburbs. Certainly, the impression I get from all the survey work I am doing is that this government really does not care about Gawler and the northern suburbs and that is shown by the lack of investment in infrastructure in a whole range of areas.

For example, people are concerned about ambulance ramping in local hospitals, which continues despite the Premier giving a commitment that would be resolved. People are concerned not only about ambulance ramping but the lack of ambulances in our community too. We only have one unit in Gawler. If that is either ramped somewhere or taken somewhere else, our town is not covered by an ambulance service. We have an increasing number of stories about people waiting for an ambulance, causing quite a bit of stress and impacting on people's health and also their lives.

Throughout the whole process of estimates, what was really sad was that government ministers spent all their time trying to justify things which could not be supported. It also showed a certain disdain to make themselves accountable and the government accountable as well. That is certainly true about the issue of the electrification project. The minister was asked about when this was due, and we got the normal glib answer from the minister, 'Well, it's actually in the media statement. Look at page 24 or 25 of The Advertiser. It's in there'. It was a little story in there. The fact that he was not even prepared to be open and honest with the community shows the calibre of this minister.

Health, as I said, is an ongoing issue. There is also the issue that it is clear we need a major investment in infrastructure for what is a huge growth area. In Gawler and the northern suburbs, and also in my colleague's electorate of Taylor, we have some of the strongest growth areas in the state, and yet the social infrastructure is not keeping pace. Certainly, investment in our schools is not keeping pace. The investments in schools that are going on at the moment were investment commitments made by the prior government. There has been no new investment made by this government. All that is being done at the moment is the commitment which the previous government had made.

On the one hand, we have tens of million dollars being spent on new eastern suburbs schools, yet I have a school in my area which is literally boarded up because the buildings cannot be used because of a lack of investment in the school. With those few comments, the message certainly from my community about this government's Appropriation Bill is that the government certainly does not care about Gawler and the northern suburbs.

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (17:51): I would like to speak briefly on the Appropriation Bill to make some reflections on what I learned in estimates when inquiring about some detail about the way in which money has been spent and plans to be spent. One of the issues that I was concerned about in terms of the local area for Port Adelaide is the treatment of the Australian Maritime and Fisheries Academy, which has been in Port Adelaide in the TAFE building—it is now a TAFE building in name only; the TAFE has been closed by this government—for some 20-odd years, offering a course, training people who are absolutely at risk if they are not well trained.

People who work in the maritime field are absolutely in danger if they are not properly trained in how to operate those vessels, yet the treatment of this government of that institution has been quite remarkable. It has been very dismissive and very high-handed. They are suddenly told, 'By the way, we won't be extending the lease. We've given this bit of the building away.' They have given it away to what they thought was Naval Group, although I believe it is possible that it is a subsidiary or a related company to Naval Group, perhaps a supplier. I do not have the detail unfortunately because the government has not been explicit.

In estimates, it turns out that in fact the Australian Maritime and Fisheries Academy still has a lease and subsequently has been offered an extension of that lease, but that had not been at all clear to Maritime Fisheries Academy, nor is their security of tenure, which enables them to invest in building up the number of students that they are able to train. I know that they wrote to the Premier very concerned about this. They wrote several weeks ago and are yet to have any kind of reply to that letter that emerged in the media yesterday.

Another area that has been pretty badly treated by the training side of this government is Tauondi Aboriginal College. It is an institution that is a couple of years away from being 50, which is a very fine age to be.

An honourable member interjecting:

Dr CLOSE: Welcome. It is now on the verge of having to work out if it is going to be closing its doors. This is an institution that has trained many really significant Aboriginal leaders in South Australia. In fact, it has trained many significant Aboriginal people who have gone on to turn their lives around.

I met a woman who said that she had been working as a cleaner and was struggling to make ends meet. She had been taken into Tauondi College, gained a qualification and was now working her way through university in order to become a lawyer. The very significant role that it plays has been cut off by this government, just severed by this government. When I asked the Premier, as the Aboriginal affairs minister, there was absolutely no quarter given. There was no sense that this was a great tragedy to lose an institution like that, and I am sure that the Aboriginal people who heard those comments have taken that very much to heart.

A complete absence in the budget is the Port rail spur that had been committed to by the previous government. The contract signed was suddenly cancelled. The businesses in Port Adelaide who felt that they were able to invest on the basis that the government had committed to investing, that a contract had been signed, were devastated by the termination of that contract; the inexplicable and sudden severance.

Of course, sand carting came up as an issue. The local community were concerned that people involved in the community group, the reference group, were concerned to hear that the department does not consider it has any kind of written understanding with that reference group about how much sand is to be taken and under what conditions. I had some feedback about that, raising those concerns.

Mangroves are also in my electorate around St Kilda; that will be leaving my electorate at the election. We have lost some 10 hectares of mangroves at St Kilda. Some 35 hectares of samphire and saltbush area have died off as a result of what is clearly a transfer of highly saline brine from one area out into the mangroves. I cannot say exactly what has caused that, I can speculate, and I have heard the opinion and extremely well-respected views of local scientists, but I cannot say exactly what caused that, nor can I say that the action that caused it was approved by the government or consistent with the plan that the company has with the government, because the investigation is not yet complete.

It has been more than a year since locals started to notice the die-off, yet the minister was quite happy to say that the investigation would not be completed until at least the end of the year, which is disturbingly long, because not only do we need to know what happened but we need to be able to make sure that it does not happen again. There is a lot of brine that is within these salt fields and there is a lot sitting north of St Kilda that people are raising very serious concerns about.

I also raised some issues that stray outside my immediate electorate but of course are in my area of responsibility as the shadow minister. One is the question of the way in which Flinders Chase National Park has been treated. The government, as people will recall, approved a development that sits on clifftops, and the local friends of the national park group as well as environmentalists were appalled by this. They went on strike. It must have broken their hearts because they love that national park and want to do good work to support it. They also organised a legal campaign and were in court trying to say that this approval went counter to the management plan and, on my reading of it, it does.

I am not a lawyer, and I do not want to offer legal expertise or advice, but on a simple reading of the management plan of the park it was not consistent. They were in court about that when the government decided they would bring in a regulation that waived the normal planning process for approving and also waived the native vegetation clearance approval process that any other development would have to go through, so any private development over a million dollars in Flinders Chase National Park would not have to go through those processes. I asked the minister if he was concerned that the approval was asked for and granted within a day, as I understand it, and he said no. The Minister for Environment did not find that surprising or disturbing at all.

Also, the marine parks were of concern to me. We have been waiting and waiting to see if this government is going to accept that there has been an accommodation reached between environmentalists and the commercial fishers over what the government wants to do to slash the sanctuary zones in the marine parks and to turn them over to commercial fishing. The two sides of this—the commercial fishers and the environmentalists—have done an incredible job working on an accommodation. They have reached one, as I understand it, and are sitting waiting for this government to determine whether or not it will adjust its management plan for the marine parks to reflect it. I did not get from the minister any sense of when that will be. What is the timing? When will we finally be able to put this to bed?

There is a question on Belair National Park. We know that the local community rose up and with almost one voice said, 'We do not want seven soccer pitches in the national park.' The minister in the press release had been spruiking this as part of his master plan—and the most significant change in the master plan—that this would be going in, saying that this would be using community infrastructure and be fantastic for the community.

Suddenly, he announced that he was not going ahead with that, that this was an idea that came up and was clearly not compatible and will not be moved forward after receiving all this feedback. When I asked him whether it was the case, perhaps, that the minister's office had put that into the management plan and had been the one to say that was a good idea rather than the department, the minister suggested that it was again a community reference group that had done that.

I have spoken to a couple of people in the community reference group, and it is not at all clear to me that that was what they thought was going on. They were not being asked to decide which ones were appropriate. They were being asked to give feedback, and they said, 'If you go ahead with this one, there will be trouble,' and trouble there was. It is very easy to try to make good announcements that you think everyone likes. It is owning them when they do not and admitting that you are changing your mind that shows true leadership.

Finally, the waste levy was jacked up a couple of years ago in the budget to a 40 per cent increase. The argument at that time was that this would help continue to drive down the amount of waste that goes to landfill. The anticipation for last year was that it would drop by 4,000 fewer tonnes going into landfill as a result of this increase in the levy. In fact, what we saw was a 37,000-tonne increase in a blowout in the amount of waste going into landfill.

In the budget papers, there was an explanation that was about construction. In the minister's answer, he did not think that construction was much of a problem and that it was more that people were cleaning out their sock drawers and eating more at home and not putting that into the green recycling. It is bad enough that it happened; it is even worse that we do not seem to know why.

My real question is: in noticing that this was happening, at what point did the government realise that there was a clear problem, that what ought to be resources, ought to be recycled as resources, was being tipped into landfill, where they are not only a complete waste but very, very expensive and collected by local government? Why did they not say, 'Perhaps we should be getting some information out. We should be doing something about this to make sure that those resources are captured'?

They seem to have just sat back and allowed it all to happen, and then we saw this 37,000-tonne blowout in the target. Whether I call them the highlights of the lowlights, they were the estimates experience, with that I conclude my remarks on the third reading.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Planning and Local Government) (18:03): I would like to make a contribution to this debate and acknowledge the work done in relation to the necessary passage of the Appropriation Bill and the matters that are before us. I have been listening with interest to a number of member contributions, and I see that the member for Lee just cannot help himself again. He gets it wrong again. I do not know why he does not check the record on these things.

In relation to the development of our coastal linear park along the northern part of the metropolitan coast, which traverses his electorate, the irony is that he does not appreciate that in this instance we are actually on the same side and that he and the people in his constituency might be well served to work with me and Mayor Angela Evans, who has been so supportive in her praise of the work we have done in this regard.

About 12 months ago, when I took over the role for planning, I found that we were getting this money back—of course, for the reasons the member has pointed out. There was litigation, the council lost and it all got too hard, and they said, 'Can you just take it over and deal with this matter?'

I said, 'Of course. That's part of the deal. It's state money to come back. We will receive that money back and we will progress this matter as we can.' Consistent with the linear parks legislation, which the member also identified—

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan interjecting:

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: Again, he interjects, 'When is it to continue?' and so forth. He just does not get it, does he? Let me just say, though, that I have actually put out a press release on this, it has been in the paper and it has actually been advertised. We are now at the stage where we are looking at the area, as he says, from the southern edge of the Tennyson Dunes Conservation Reserve to Terminus Street in Grange as the part of the next coastal linear park for consideration. As he would know, if he has even read the Linear Parks Act—I do not know—but he mentioned it in his contribution about the importance of my predecessor, the Hon. John Rau, who had progressed that.

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan: SC.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: I am very happy to make it QC. As you know, we have passed legislation that allows me, in fact requires me, to present that. I think I have sent that message very clearly. If Mr Rau is listening intently to this debate, I am more than happy to present here— I do not think he will. I think he is in that locked-in set for the SC group, but I am always open to consider his application and progress it if he would like to come up in the world. In any event, let me get back to the coastal linear park and the importance of it.

When this legislation was passed, if members would like to have a look at this legislation, it set out a process by which a linear park is to be approved. Part of that requires that whatever the park parameters are have to go through a process, including public consultation, and the consultation—

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Lee, I felt I was very considerate of you during question time.

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: You threw me out.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, I know, member for West Torrens. You were my first, in fact. Anyway, I will come back to this, Attorney. Member for Lee, you made a lengthy and considered contribution without any interjection, so I would appreciate—

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: That's not the point. I would appreciate it if you gave the Attorney the same courtesy.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: Thank you, Deputy Speaker. Congratulations on your contribution to the management of the house today too. It has been very good.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: It is not over yet.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: No, I am on my best behaviour. The member for Lee did this back on 8 June and he throws this out there as though this is some major problem. We have had a process. Indeed, I have had all the same groups he has referred to in my office with the Department of Transport when we were dealing with the area that has been opened up by me and the mayor. Recently, we were down there to officially announce the conclusion of that exercise. Mayor Evans came down to be part of that important part of the project.

Since that time—in fact, last week—I made a further announcement that the public consultation in relation to the area from Grange to Tennyson is now open. It closes on 17 September. There is a required period available. That has to be done, and the statute actually requires it. I cannot just skip over it, but I do not want to anyway. I think it is important that we invite all those people, including the member for Lee's constituency, firstly to go online to our new PlanSA portal and the information is all available there, with lovely maps and areas to have a look at, including the special park area that is protected. The member refers to some of his residents—I think they are in his electorate—who traverse the sand. The boardwalk cannot come around the front, but there is a proposed detour behind those houses.

All of that is available on the website. I would encourage his constituency, together with, I think, half a dozen people who apparently in his survey did not like this idea of having it, to all go online and have a say about it. We need to have a contribution here as to the proposed area and layout of the linear park, areas they want me to particularly take into account in considering the approval of any linear park and what protections they might look to for dune coverage, vegetation, habitat, etc. These are all matters that are critical to the residents who live there and also to those who would visit.

These parks have been so popular that they attract people from all over the state. When people come to visit our coastal parts of metropolitan Adelaide, they rejoice in being able to have access to these areas. They have been a huge success in other areas, all the way down to Aldinga, and we would like to ensure that we go through the proper legal process. We are doing that right now. Submissions close on 17 September.

I urge the member for Lee to hop online and send me a note about whatever he would like me to consider—what colour cement, what colour boardwalk, what trees. I am not big on Manchurian pear trees, as I have often said in this house, but I am happy to look at any other seaside vegetation that you might want to make a contribution on.

In this instance, notwithstanding now two bites of concern in a contribution to this house by the member for Lee, we are actually on the same side. I look forward to the day when there is further and new infrastructure that is being completed. The member for Lee might even like to come down to have a walk along the boardwalk at some stage and certainly bring his children and family. We would be very happy to show him what work is being done.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens) (18:10): Estimates was an interesting process I thought this year, sir, ably chaired in committee A by you. Can I say, sir, in your final year in parliament, I think you have shown the entire chamber and all those who observe the parliament what a capable chair you are and you will be missed.

Mr McBride interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: No, he did not kick me out. He would have liked to but he did not. But he is, despite the hard time that I give him, very good at his job and I want to thank him for his service. Hopefully, we will get some time at the end of the year to talk about members who are not recontesting but, if we do not, I want to put on the record my admiration for your service in a very dignified way. I think you are a good example to all members in this house about the true meaning of public service, so thank you very much.

Having said that, sir, I do not think the same could be said about the minister I was examining in committee A, the honourable Minister for Infrastructure and Transport. I think it is fair to say that that day we saw a minister who was not on top of his brief, unable to give direct answers to direct questions, probably someone who had not read the budget papers, probably someone who did not understand how to read the budget papers and probably someone who did not really understand the government's program.

More or less, in my opinion, from the way he conducted himself, he needed advice on every single answer. The reason he needed advice on every single answer was not that he just did not know the answer to those questions but that he wanted to waste time. You can tell who the confident ministers are. They are the ones who instinctively know the answer to the question, who have read their briefing papers in advance, who understand what they were able to achieve through the budget process and what is in the budget papers and who are the masters of their own destiny.

I do not see that in the member for Gibson. I do not see that in the way he conducts himself as minister. The reason that is shown out is by the accusations against him, which are growing day by day. The accusations against him, I think, show a minister who is frustrated and angry when he is questioned because he does not understand his role.

The minister made a policy decision in this budget to take away about $2.1 million or $2.3 million that is allocated each and every year to sporting organisations that operate on a basis of being not for profit. He has reallocated that money or a portion of that money, a large portion, to other organisations for the first time. It is fair to say that that decision has sent shock waves through volunteer sporting organisations across South Australia. Now, $2.1 million is a large amount of money, but in the consideration of the overall budget it is relatively small, which shows you the impact it has had, that the minister has decided that he would intervene in this small amount of money from a policy perspective to reallocate that money to organisations that are for profit.

When he did that, and that overarching organisation that represents those bodies complained—because, let's face it, if your funding model to provide volunteer services to volunteer sports is based on getting your money from the government and that government makes that cut, it is very difficult to then face that power and criticise it, which is why community groups go to their member of parliament or organisations go to a governing body. There are industry bodies all across South Australia that are big enough and ugly enough to be able to take on governments. That is why they are there.

I know this because I saw it with some organisations that were unhappy about the former government's policy decisions. Rather than individual members standing up, they had their overarching industry bodies do it for them. This is no different. So, when Sport SA went to see the minister to discuss this radical change in funding that is going to volunteer organisations like Triathlon SA and small groups that do not get large advertising revenue or membership fees from people who participate in those sports, they were met with a barrage of abuse, so much so that they complained. When they complained, that complaint became public and now the minister is suing them. He is suing the CE of a volunteer sporting organisation.

That legal action that the minister is taking—sorry, I should say concerns about this issue. He is beginning the process of taking defamation proceedings against Ms Leah Cassidy. That process, in my opinion, is designed to silence and intimidate other people from speaking out, 'You get cut in the budget and you criticise us, you will get sued. So do not criticise us. Keep your mouth shut before the election. Do not speak up.'

There is something about the culture of the cabinet that does not like dissent. I have heard it from other industry associations. I have heard it from a number of them getting phone calls from prominent ministers, disappointed that that industry association or that industry group may have criticised a government decision. For all of us, that means very little because we are used to it. We work in an environment that is designed for conflict. Look at the way the seats are set out here—it is an adversarial system of politics. But if you are an industry group and you have a senior minister call you, who you rely on as a regulator, someone who sets your taxation rates, someone who sets the ability for you to operate, and you get one of these phone calls, it would be very intimidating.

That goes to what I saw at Hove. At Hove, there were a number of people who took up their legitimate democratic rights to protest about a piece of infrastructure they thought would adversely impact their local community, and the response from the government on that was, 'How dare they? Woe is me. Woe is the minister. The poor minister and the poor minister's family.' Using your family to defend yourself I think is unfair on the family and unbecoming. The idea of saying, 'Remember my family was subjected to such and such' as a political defence is not on. Our family members are civilians and should not be involved in any political defence or attack.

These community members I have spoken to, person after person after person, have told me about the processes of the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport in dealing with infrastructure programs. He refused to meet with them as a group. They had organised themselves, as is their right, into an action group. I think they were called the Hove residents' action group and they wanted to meet with the minister, have a public meeting and invite other local residents in his constituency to attend. The minister refused to do it. He said, 'No, I won't meet with people in a group and I won't meet with people in a public meeting. I do all my consultations one on one.' You have to ask yourself why; why would someone want to do the consultations one on one rather than meet with a delegation?

I will give you a few reasons. One is that there are no witnesses other than your Chief of Staff or your own staff, and it can be quite intimidating to see a minister and their Chief of Staff or departmental officers when you are on your own. What we got out of these meetings, what I have heard, are accusations of bullying and intimidation—bullying and intimidation, in his own local community, of local constituents.

It is fair to say that I do not think that is the last we will be hearing about complaints about the member for Gibson and his conduct and the way he administers his portfolio. I think the man is out of his depth, and when you are out of your depth sometimes you lash out, sometimes you get angry—and I think we are seeing that play out. To be fair to the member for Gibson, it is not his fault. He was promoted above his abilities by the Premier, and the Premier should know better. He should not have appointed a man like the member for Gibson to that portfolio, because his portfolio is one of the most important in government.

The current shadow treasurer, as the former infrastructure and transport minister, delivered the Torrens to Torrens project under budget and on time; Darlington; the Northern Connector. He went about doing media conferences, went about dealing with issues that had legacy issues (members might remember the tram issue where the wind had knocked over the guard railing). He dealt with all those issues and never once lashed out; there were no accusations like those we have heard with this minister. He was able to conduct himself in a high-pressure portfolio. What we have seen with the Premier's appointments to this portfolio are two failures.

I go now to the member for Schubert, who is leaving us. He will go down in South Australian political history as the first minister to be found guilty of misconduct under the ICAC Act. Just for those who follows this, misconduct, in the ranking of offences, is higher than maladministration, and it is no small feat to be found guilty of misconduct.

Just think about what the member was found guilty of: he did not even read the act that governs his ability, or lack of ability, to appoint or dismiss members of the Adelaide Cemeteries Authority—basic governance. I agree with the Ombudsman in that it is not that serious in terms of misappropriation of money, but my point is that in terms of governance it is staggering. When you are appropriating—how much are we appropriating today? What is the appropriation value?

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: So here we are appropriating $16 billion, and in that appropriation we are seeing ministers who have governance over that appropriation. The estimates role is not only to examine the decisions of the government through a committee process but also to examine the people who have these commissions from the government. It is public scrutiny. That is what this room, these parliaments, are designed for: public scrutiny of the executive and the expenditure of the money.

I have to say that in the portfolio areas I had since we have been in opposition, of the two ministers who have held probably one of the most important portfolios one lost his job and I think the other one is in a lot of trouble. The front page of The Advertiser showed that the minister who is administering what he claims is the largest infrastructure spend in South Australia's history is suing a very small organisation and a CE for standing up for volunteers. I wonder if there are more. What happens if more come out?

The minister gave us a number of assurances in estimates about that investigation. One is that he said he would cooperate in full with that investigation, and the second is that he told us, in estimates, that he would answer all their questions. He said he would not claim privilege on any documents.

Importantly, the minister made it very clear that he did not instruct his department or his CE in his department to exclude Sport SA from an online meeting regarding the most recent COVID-19 lockdown. He made these statements unequivocally in the parliament and I would be very interested to see what happens over the next few days about Mr Wingard and his comments in the parliament and whether Mr Wingard will be facing any more accusers, because I think this minister is hanging by a thread and that thread is under extreme pressure; one more cut, one more accusation, one more proved allegation, and I think it is time for this minister to go.

I also want to point out to the house what a farce the minister has made of Erma Ranieri's investigation, launched by the Premier, into the allegations against him. A complaint is made to the Premier about his minister's conduct. The Premier then somehow decides to choose the public sector commissioner to conduct this inquiry who has no legislative basis for investigating a minister. That is point one. Nevertheless, that is what he has chosen.

The public sector commissioner has no expertise in investigating accusations like this because it is a minister, so she has hired a private investigator. That is not a criticism of Ms Ranieri. She is a highly qualified public servant I have a great deal of regard for. I would just point that out. She is conducting that investigation and it is ongoing.

To pre-empt that investigation, the minister has now launched legal proceedings that go to the heart of the allegations because he claims the allegations are defamatory. It is the investigation that will decide whether or not these allegations are proven or otherwise, but the minister now is launching legal action.

The minister tells us he is not using any government money for this action and he has not received an indemnity. We do not know because every time we ask the Attorney-General whether any government ministers have received government indemnities, we do not get any answers. We do not know if the member for Schubert received an indemnity in his legal action defending himself against the ICAC referral to the Ombudsman in the inquiry that found him guilty of misconduct. We do not know. They will not tell us. This is public money and every time we ask these questions in estimates we get absolutely no answer.

Then of course we saw the Attorney-General in estimates answering questions and making statements, claiming them to be fact, and then we hear on radio those facts questioned. To be clear, I am not making an accusation that the Deputy Premier has misled the parliament—yet. However, if it is found that ministers during estimates made comments that were not accurate, this house has a responsibility to the people of South Australia to do something about it because when you are appropriating $16 billion—

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan: It is $17 billion.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: $17 billion—and spending commonwealth money and state money raised through federal and state taxes, the very least we should expect from this parliament is that the ministers who answer those questions do so honestly. Sometimes they can make mistakes. Make no mistake—people can get answers wrong unintentionally. That is different. No-one would want a minister to resign because they have made an unintentional error. We are all human. We all make mistakes. It is the deliberate ones that we are interested in. It is the deliberate misleading.

I recently had the opportunity to debate the honourable Minister for Infrastructure and Transport at the Civil Contractors Federation. It was a good debate. It was in all the very best of spirits. The point I wanted to make there is the point I want to make to the house in the last minute and a half that I have.

The government has, I think, quadrupled South Australia's state debt. The budget papers in the risk statement show that a 1 per cent increase in interest rates will see our interest bill increase by a quarter of a billion dollars per year. At the end of the forward estimates, our interest bill under our current borrowings will reach nearly a billion dollars per year in interest on the debt we have with the current interest rates we have.

The question I posed to the people at that debate was: if the biggest infrastructure program this government has is the tunnels, who in that room thinks they are going to get the contract to build the tunnels? If you do not, do we have the capacity to continue borrowing more to keep on building more, to keep on building infrastructure, with the current debt burden this Premier, this Treasurer and this infrastructure minister are leaving us? If interest rates do ultimately go up—and in my experience they ultimately always do—what will be this state's interest burden courtesy of the Marshall Liberal government in only three years?

We were on track in the last Labor budget at the end of the forward estimates to have the second lowest debt levels in Australia. Now we have some of the highest. I will be very interested to see how much of that money will be spent here in South Australia and how much will go to the interstate contractors building one massive tunnel.

Mr SZAKACS (Cheltenham) (18:31): If the budget estimates process was to illuminate the plans of this government for health care in our west, my constituents and those of the member for Lee and the member for West Torrens should not have held their breath. We know when it comes to health in the western suburbs that this government have tapped the mat. They have tapped the mat and they are not interested anymore. They are not even pretending to try.

The Hon. V.A. Chapman: Like the Repat that you closed.

Mr SZAKACS: The Attorney is showing her sense of geography once again. I might start with The QEH. It was funded in 2017 by the then Labor government. What do we have to show for it? We have delays, and we have a cost increase, which is the tax on the inaction of this government—a huge cost increase.

The one promise the government did say they would match, which Labor were very proud to commit to, was a revamped, renewed rebuild of the outpatients facility sitting in the oldest, most run-down building—in fact, noncompliant even from a disability perspective—in the entire SA Health capital assets, and that is the tower block. What have they done? It is gone. There we go: the outpatients facility, the one promise that the government announced, is gone.

Then there is the COVID testing clinic down in the west. What do we know about the COVID testing clinic in the west? It was closed without notice, without any explanation. In fact, the explanation we got was a lovely cute little emoji on a window that said 'COVID clinic closed'. Has there been a replacement? Absolutely not.

When it comes to the COVID vaccination hub, the west is nowhere to be seen, despite the fact that Labor have been calling for this continuously, despite the fact that there is a fitted out, lovely badged, pretty floor at The QEH, which was ready to go for a COVID vaccination hub. It is not to be seen in the west. That is incredibly disappointing because the vaccination rates in the west—in fact, in four of the suburbs that I represent in the electorate of Cheltenham—are amongst the 10 lowest vaccinated in the state.

This is not because we are stuck with a bunch of crazy conspiracy theorists who are anti-vax. Absolutely not. What we are faced with in the west is a wonderfully diverse community, 40 per cent of whom are born overseas, many of whom are not proficient in the English language and many of whom do not have the privilege of a car they can drive around in. Instead of making vaccinations easier for the western suburbs for those communities that are calling for assistance, we see nothing. They have to jump in the car or jump on four buses to get to Wayville. It is just not good enough.

It is the personal stories that I and many of us in this place, certainly on our side of the chamber, hear daily. These are the stories of our residents, our local constituents, who have been stuck in this roundabout within SA Health, cancellations of critical surgery and lack of ability to get in to see a specialist. The Premier might not care, the health minister might not care, but I think it is only fair that those stories, those people, are heard in this chamber—because I care. We care on this side of the chamber, and those people deserve to have their stories spoken of and heard in this chamber in a time and in a place where the government simply cannot walk away.

Those are the stories like that of Michael of Queenstown, who has lived with a bicuspid aortic valve for most of his life. In January 2021, his specialist advised that urgent surgery was required, classified as a category 1 procedure, and referred him to The Queen Elizabeth Hospital. He had to wait until 1 April, some four months later, only to be told at that point what he already knew: that he needed urgent surgery.

After follow-up appointments on 9 April for an angiogram and on 15 April at the Royal Adelaide Hospital cardiothoracic clinic, his surgery was finally booked for 27 April. On 27 April, the day of surgery, after waiting six hours, Mr Lloyd was told he needed to go home because there was an emergency, and his surgery was rescheduled for 4 May. He was notified only five days prior to the surgery that his procedure would again be pushed back, this time to 6 May. Remarkably, he was contacted the day before this surgery to cancel the procedure again because they did not have enough staff to undertake the surgery. Finally, Mr Lloyd had his surgery on 11 May, only after my intervention, 5½ months later for a category 1 cardiac surgery.

I have also met with Moira of Rosewater, who has suffered heavy and prolonged bleeding for many months now. On 13 April, an ultrasound identified a tennis ball size cyst and a polyp. Ms Victory was recommended to undertake, again, a category 1 medical procedure. Following this, she had an appointment on 20 April at the Women's Health Service in Port Adelaide. This was cancelled. On 21 April, Ms Victory was referred to North Adelaide Obstetrics and Gynaecology, but they refused to see her, even for a consultation, because she did not have private health insurance.

On 21 May, Ms Victory finally saw a specialist at, this time, the Women's and Children's Hospital, where it was determined, once again, what we all know, that she needed urgent surgery. She was phoned an hour later to be told that this surgery would not be performed. The Women's and Children's, unfortunately, she was notified, would not be able to undertake the surgery, or did not have capacity to undertake the surgery, because of her bariatric condition.

On 6 June, Ms Victory was referred to The QEH, only to be told on this day that this appointment would need to be cancelled. On 17 June, she was rescheduled for another appointment at The QEH, but again the appointment was cancelled on the day and she was referred to the emergency department. Imagine that: imagine turning up for what is now the fourth scheduled appointment and being pushed to an emergency department, wheeled over to the emergency department. There would have been ambulances ramped outside, beds full of patients seeking acute mental health assistance because they have nowhere else to go, and a woman, a local resident who is in desperate need of planned surgery, is told that she now needs to present as an emergency patient. It is just unacceptable.

On 29 June, Ms Victory was referred for further tests, but on 23 July, again just two hours before confirmation of her procedure, she was phoned to be advised that it was cancelled. I wrote to the minister back in June about these delays and cancellations, and neither I nor Ms Victory have heard anything since—nothing since.

There is also John of Alberton, who was diagnosed with mouth cancer in 2005. He was scheduled to undergo reconstructive surgery on 22 March 2021, but that was cancelled. His rescheduled appointment on 3 May was also cancelled. When I wrote to the minister, I was advised that his surgery had been rescheduled to 12 July. He was contacted on 9 July to discuss his pre-surgery requirements. He then presented to the RAH as advised on 12 July and completed his admission forms. After waiting for over an hour, he was advised that the surgery had been cancelled this time due to a shortage of beds. No date was rescheduled and no appointment was given to him. Once again, I wrote to the minister on 12 July and have yet to receive a response.

The same sort of story can be heard from Debra of Alberton. She had a fall in 2020 and was advised that she required knee replacement surgery. She was even told by her doctor to purchase private health insurance to avoid extremely long wait times, wait times that no doubt would be alleviated if you listened to the clinicians, if the Liberal government did not break their promise to rebuild the outpatients clinic at The QEH. Sadly, Debra, like many vulnerable South Australians, cannot afford private health cover, so she continues to struggle on crutches, and use a wheelchair to get around in the community, just to take a shower.

I heard from Mark of Woodville. He was advised by The QEH to contact me because of the extraordinarily poor experience his son had had at the hospital. His son was one of those many patients I spoke of who was admitted with acute mental health issues. On 12 April, Mark's son was directed to The QEH for a mental health assessment by his GP. He presented to the ED at 11.30am and was there until 6.30am the next day: he had waited for over 30 hours. During this time, he was visited twice; the rest of the time he was left alone in a bed in the ED. Disgusted, Mark took his son home and was advised by staff on the way out that some mental health patients on that very day had waited three days for a bed.

Sadly, I could go on and on, and it is stories like these that are becoming all too familiar in South Australia under the Marshall Liberal government's stewardship. Too many people are waiting too long for recommended procedures. They are waiting too long for necessary procedures, only to have their appointments cancelled and rescheduled multiple times due to the lack of beds and lack of resources in our health system. It is shameful and it is simply unacceptable.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Planning and Local Government) (18:42): I am happy to conclude, and I thank all members for their contribution in relation to the Appropriation Bill.

Motion carried.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Planning and Local Government) (18:43): I move:

That the remainder of the bill be agreed to.

Motion carried.

Third Reading

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Planning and Local Government) (18:43): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time and passed.


At 18:45 the house adjourned until Wednesday 25 August 2021 at 10:30.

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