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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-09-07 Daily Xml
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Bills

Statutes Amendment (Budget Measures 2021) Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 22 June 2021.)

Mr BROWN: Deputy Speaker, I draw your attention to the state of the house.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: There not being a quorum present, ring the bells.

A quorum having been formed:

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee) (16:06): I rise to make some contribution on the Statutes Amendment (Budget Measures 2021) Bill and indicate I will be the lead speaker on behalf of the opposition. I also indicate that we will be supporting the budget measures bill, and I also foreshadow, as the government has done, that the opposition has placed some amendments on file, to which I have given a notice of motion, which we will consider at the conclusion of the second reading stage.

The budget measures bill proposes amendment to five acts but really gives effect to four main changes. The first is a change to the Land Tax Act, which proposes to provide some legislative basis for a new scheme that will benefit developers or homebuilders proposing to build homes for the sole purpose of renting them, providing a land tax discount for that purpose. There is also a curious change to the Payroll Tax Act, which seeks to abolish the payroll tax exemption available on application for certain screen productions that occur in South Australia. I will speak about that a little further in a moment.

Perhaps the most significant changes legislatively are the changes to the Road Traffic Act and to the Motor Vehicles Act, which seek to provide a legislative framework to enable a new type of traffic camera to be rolled out in South Australia: mobile phone detection cameras. These are not cameras in mobile phones but cameras that would detect drivers using mobile phones, rather than focusing solely on the task at hand of driving. There is also a change to the Mining Act to provide a changed treatment, or perhaps a more robust treatment, for the taxation of minerals under the state's royalty regime. I will start referring my comments to the changes relating to the Land Tax Act 1936.

This is a remnant change left over from the package of measures, which ended up being considered by the parliament in the second half of 2019. You will recall that the 2019-20 budget, released in June 2019, contained an initiative to change the Land Tax Act's land aggregation arrangements and also the treatment of land held in trusts. The idea at that time was to raise an extra $40 million a year. There was not only surprise but some outcry at that time about those measures.

Of course, over the period between June and late November, when the parliament finally considered a final package of land tax changes, the show had moved on quite considerably from what was initially proposed. The government estimated they would raise $40 million from that package. As it turned out, after they had some modelling done they were subsequently estimating to raise more than $100 million a year from those changes.

The government were required to consider and eventually commit to a whole series of additional measures to offset the very significant additional impost in land tax bills that the Premier and the Treasurer were proposing to impose on South Australian property owners. Some of those were reductions to the relatively small number of property owners who owned more than $1 million worth of taxable land. They received very significant land tax cuts, while thousands of residential property owners and commercial property owners were required to pay a lot more money.

In the end, rather than raising more than $100 million a year of additional revenue from those land tax aggregation and trust changes, the government were estimating to raise an extra $86 million a year from South Australian property owners—hardly consistent with the lower costs mandate that we were promised by the now Premier, the member for Dunstan, in the lead-up to the last state election. That reduction in the top rate was not the only offset that was provided by the government in their eventual land tax package.

There were all sorts of concessions that needed to be made by the Treasurer in the other place in an effort to convince some members of the crossbench in the other place to support that legislation. One of those concessions was to introduce some changed arrangements to public housing. There was also the rollout of more energy-efficient technology to try to reduce the cost of power bills, as well as some other initiatives.

One was sought by the Urban Development Institute of Australia, in particular, and without question, the Master Builders Association—the two leading voices in South Australia when it comes to property developers and commercial, residential and even industrial builders. Those two bodies, most prominent in prosecuting matters on behalf of the property industry here in South Australia, had sought some changed arrangements for both display homes and for a new build-to-rent measure. Now, not quite two years on, we are getting to the legislative consideration of the second of those and that is a build-to-rent property.

The bill introduces a 50 per cent land tax discount for eligible new build-to-rent properties. As far as I am advised, the strictures around this regime are still yet to be settled. They are to be based on the New South Wales build-to-rent guidelines, which have been promulgated and in force for some time there. Eligible projects will attract a discount of 50 per cent of the land tax that would otherwise be liable for the land value of the parcel of land being used for that sort of development.

If we are honest, it is probably not going to make a significant difference in the scheme of things when it comes to housing affordability in South Australia. We know from the government's own admission that there are over 16,000 South Australians on the Housing Trust waiting list and that there are many tens of thousands more South Australians seeking to get into a private rental property but who are unable to. The government estimates that it is going to forgo the princely sum of $50,000 in the first year of the scheme's operation and $100,000 a year on an ongoing basis.

You can imagine, Mr Deputy Speaker, that on an average-size proportion of land that may attract a land tax liability of some hundreds of dollars or, if it is aggregated with other properties, perhaps $1,000 or more, then this is not going to equate to very many properties at all. Nonetheless, it is better than nothing. The question will be, though, how the rubber hits the road and how developers actually bring stock to market, making use of this scheme.

What we do not want to see is a private version of what the housing minister, the Hon. Michelle Lensink in the other place, is proposing to do in my electorate of Seaton and that is knock over 35 admittedly old and past their use-by date Housing Trust properties and try to replace them with 101 properties on the same footprint. In fact, I will not say the same footprint; it is actually a smaller footprint because some of that land that those 35 properties occupy within one block of area within Seaton is to be taken up with a reserve and land required for access to those properties and so on.

It does not take much to gather that an area of some 20,000 square metres, accommodating 101 properties, even if they had access to all that land, would have an average block size of only 200 square metres. Once you start removing parts of that 20,000 square metres for a more than 2,000 square metre reserve and so on, those properties are going to be on very, very small blocks of land.

Minister Lensink has attempted to throw down the gauntlet to me when it comes to affordable housing. She said, 'If the member for Lee doesn't support what I am doing in Seaton, I challenge him to come up with an alternative.' I can say to the minister that my alternative would be that if you are going to redevelop Housing Trust properties in Seaton, first of all that gets a tick from me. That is something I support, and she would know that her chief executive undertook some master planning work in 2016 and 2017 when I was the housing and urban development minister.

She does not need me to convince her that I am in favour of redeveloping this area because some work has already been undertaken. That work was not taken up, unfortunately, just as we have seen the minister take up in some areas proposed dwellings that were too small and at a density level that was far too high for what I consider to be appropriate for the area.

I support redevelopment in Seaton. What I would support is that, if you can knock over 35 houses, then at least replace the number of Housing Trust dwellings with what you have taken away. You might have had the impression, when I said 35 being knocked over and 101 being delivered, that all them were going to be public Housing Trust dwellings. Unfortunately, they are not. Only 16 of them will be—so 35 down to 16.

Other properties will be developed for sale to the private sector. Even that in itself I am not outright opposed to. I think if we are going to redevelop some Housing Trust stock, particularly older houses on much larger blocks, it provides some opportunity for new dwellings to be built and properties to be made available to particular people in the private sector.

For the area of Seaton, for example, I am thinking of young families, etc., who are keen to move into a good suburb like Seaton, with all the facilities nearby, such as the West Lakes shopping centre, the new WEST development and, of course, the mighty Seaton Ramblers Football Club, located on Pedlar Reserve. There is also a terrific high school—Seaton High School—that the former Labor government committed $20 million to upgrading. I was pleased to be there with the former Premier Jay Weatherill and former education minister Susan Close to announce that. It is a good area.

You can knock over Housing Trust houses as long as you replace them with the same number of Housing Trust dwellings. You can even make some additional properties on excess land available for the private sector. The one thing that I cannot countenance, that the minister for housing is doing in trying to provide additional properties to the private sector, is just selling off vacant blocks without any prescription on what is to be built there, other than housing, because that will mean that we will not get a bespoke, well-designed, well-planned type of development in this part of the western suburbs.

I certainly do not support excess sale proceeds from that process being taken out of Seaton and being used elsewhere. What the Hon. Michelle Lensink is proposing to do at Seaton is create sales of up to $17 million and then take more than $7 million of that revenue and use it elsewhere around the state. I think the people of Seaton, particularly the Housing Trust tenants in Seaton, deserve that that money should be reinvested in the area from which it is raised.

If the government cannot afford to make its Housing Trust redevelopment programs stack up on their own merits, then they should be supplementing them from the central budget, rather than effectively taking money from one area of high-density Housing Trust and moving it to another. The people of the western suburbs, and of Seaton, deserve much better than how the minister for housing is treating them. That is what I think we should be doing when it comes to providing affordable housing.

I notice that, aside from this build-to-rent scheme, there are some measures the minister for housing would like us to believe will significantly change the demand for public housing—changing the income and assets threshold. She herself has admitted that it will reduce that Housing Trust waiting list, which is currently over 16,000, we are told, by only 600. It will not even make a 6 per cent difference to the Housing Trust waiting list, and I think that is regrettable.

I would have liked to think that this government would do far more when it comes to addressing the Housing Trust waiting list and the demand particularly of category 1 people on the waiting list. I also note that in this build-to-rent scheme, the New South Wales guidelines on which we are told the South Australian scheme is to be based will require a minimum development size of 50 properties. That is a significant number of properties; that is a significant level of investment.

That will necessarily preclude this measure from a lot of people who would like to contribute to providing some more rental properties here in South Australia and basically limit it to those companies that have the financial capacity to be able to bankroll a development of at least 50 properties. While there are many builders in South Australia, not a huge number have the capacity to commit to such a large development. In that respect, it is unnecessarily restrictive.

I understand why that threshold has perhaps been reached in the New South Wales context and I can understand even from the Treasurer's perspective, or Treasury's perspective, that they would want to limit it to the top end of the housing construction market because it probably lowers the financial risk of somebody taking on a development and not being able to deliver it.

Perhaps in the current context of the housing construction market, which is pretty hot at the moment, the HomeBuilder scheme has superheated the housing market here in South Australia to the point where we are struggling to find sufficient materials to build these houses. Nonetheless, it seems that we have another two years to fully investigate the guidelines that this build-to-rent scheme will adopt, because the budget impact does not commence until the 2023-24 financial year and that is at a half-year cost of $50,000 before the full-year cost follows the next financial year in 2024-25.

So it seems there is still 18 months to go, maybe even a little longer, until these guidelines will be settled. This will be one of the areas that we are keen to pursue during the committee stage of the bill, trying to find out as much information as we can about how far developed these guidelines are and what other requirements there may be in the future once the scheme is rolled out.

As I said, it is a lasting and perhaps final reminder of the debacle that were the land tax changes of 2019. I was going to say that it was the only time I have seen the government announce a significant change in tax policy without knowing how much revenue it would raise, how many people would be paying it and how much it was going to cost them, let alone how the government would actually administer changes to the taxation regime.

Even as we meet here today, there are still land tax bills which are being sent out for the previous financial year which will mean that for many people who have land tax liabilities they will be receiving two bills for subsequent financial years in a matter of weeks from one another. If they should find themselves in the circumstance where they had to apply to RevenueSA during the course of last year's COVID-impacted circumstances and they deferred their land tax, they were required to pay that land tax back in the last six or so months as well. So it is even conceivable that they have had three years of land tax bills to pay in a 12-month period—hardly reasonable on many property owners who are still struggling to regain their livelihoods after the financial impacts of the pandemic.

I was going to say that it is the only time I have seen tax reform undertaken like that but, of course, there is another bill on the Notice Paper that is a good example of that, and that is the introduction of an electric vehicle levy, another announcement of a change in tax policy with no comprehension from the government about how they would roll it out—but, of course, we will not speak on that, will we, because that would contravene standing orders.

The next measure is the Mining Act. The changes to the Mining Act seek to introduce a regime where the government will impose an observable market index price or similarly independently determined sale price in cases where the mineral sale price declared as part of the royalty self-assessment is not considered with the market price of that commodity.

Clearly, there is a concern either in the energy minister's department or in the Treasury department that when some miners are self-assessing for royalty payments they might be under-declaring the amount of money they have to pay to the government in royalties. For example, they might be saying that, given the amount that has been mined, extracted and proposed to be shipped off to another market, they declared too low a price to which a royalty rate would apply.

I was interested when I was briefed on the bill—and I am grateful to the officers who made themselves available for a briefing on the bill—and I asked on how many occasions had there been a concern about underquoting the price to which the royalty regime should apply, the response was that they were not aware of any, which makes me wonder why we are even contemplating this. If there is no problem, if there is no mischief afoot, then why on earth are we doing this?

Are South Australia's miners currently meeting their obligations and declaring an appropriate price against which royalties are calculated, or is there something else that is going on here? Are there leases or tenements held by people, companies or organisations which the government is concerned or suspicious about that, should they start mining and exporting in the future, they may be under-declaring what they need to pay the government for royalties? We look forward to trying to get to the bottom of that. I am not quite sure that there is the need for this given the assurances we have had from the government to date, but I am happy to be corrected. If there is a problem here, then we look forward to hearing the details of it.

One thing I was keen to ask during the briefing is: who will monitor this regime? On the basis that there is a regular acquittal for the purposes of calculating the royalties of a miner letting the government know how much they have mined, what it is worth and what the royalty rate should be, who administers that within the government and who is checking whether that price is reasonable? Now that the legislation is more prescriptive around the fact that it must be effectively an accurate market price, who will be taking on that assurance work within government? Who will be regularly checking? Will there be any additional effort put into this measure?

From the briefing I received on the bill, it seems that there is not any proposal to put additional effort in. That leads to the question of how much additional revenue is to be gained from this, and if the answer is none, it looks like the parliament is considering legislative changes which certainly are not needed, and that takes us to the amendments to the Motor Vehicles Act and the Road Traffic Act.

As I mentioned before, these changes are being made to give South Australia Police the capacity to introduce these new mobile phone detection cameras. We all support additional efforts on road safety. I know the minister for road safety does. He is so keen to roll out road safety improvements that he has asked South Australians for their ideas. I, of course, am always interested to hear what the minister for road safety thinks about these things, but, notwithstanding that, I guess if we are going to hear what they are then we can hear from the people what their ideas are.

One area that the minister has jumped on early is the opportunity to hand out an extra 35,000-odd fines each year to South Australian motorists. If that is representative of what SAPOL thinks is the level of offending, then clearly we should be doing something about it. Having 35,000 people a year on their mobile phones being pinched by their cameras is nearly 100 people a day.

Even on South Australia's extensive road network—we are not going to have a camera on every corner, of course, but there is likely to be a handful of these cameras, maybe half a dozen or maybe a dozen; the government's budget for this is $19 million—that investment will pay itself back every 15 months or so because the government estimates that they will be raising something in the order of about $14 million or $15 million a year in fines for this. In fact, over the first three years, 100,000 fines is what the government estimates they will be able to hand out, with 37,000 in the first year, 35,000 in the second year and 28,000 in the third year.

Clearly we are all concerned about people using mobile phones while they should be driving. For those of us who drive ourselves in to this place, we would be horrified to see people staring down at their laps or not paying attention to the road, otherwise using their mobile phones, even those people who think they are being safe by slowing down in the middle of traffic, perhaps believing they will give themselves the extra buffer while they send out that last tweet or get off that last text message while they are driving.

That is incredibly dangerous, let alone what you often see, which is motorists who start veering out of their lane or even veering towards oncoming traffic. It is extremely dangerous driving. Of course, we shudder to think of drivers who do that when they have other people in the car as well. We support cracking down on that sort of behaviour.

If we are going to start handing out fines, you would like to think that it will have a significant improvement to road safety outcomes, a significant deterrent effect. Over a three-year period, a drop from 35,000 fines to 28,000 fines still means that on average SAPOL must be expecting about 80  per cent of people to continue doing the wrong thing or the hit rate to be at least 80 per cent of what it was when these cameras first came in.

This is no $170 fine. This fine is more than $500. In fact, it is more than that because it is $500 plus the victims of crime levy, which is now more than $90. So the total fine is $646, which is extraordinary. That is a big fine in anyone's language. What I also found interesting is that, if you are handing out 100,000 fines over three years and each fine is $646, when you do the sums that must be about $64 million in revenue that is being raised. But the government's figures estimate that only $46 million will be raised, some $18 million less than what that calculation would suggest.

What was the Treasurer's explanation to the Adelaide Advertiser when they asked about that discrepancy? 'We don't expect everyone is going to be able to pay the fines, and so that's how much revenue we are banking on coming in.' An $18 million shortfall on what would otherwise be a $64 million increase in traffic fines is extraordinary. It is largely not a deterrent for the behaviour, judging by the figures that we have seen, and the fines are so substantial that a lot of people are not going to be able to pay them. It is a remarkable road safety policy.

One thing we are looking forward to hearing from the government is—if the deterrent impact of having these cameras and the level of the fine that would be handed out to a motorist caught by these cameras is not what the government hopes, if it is not having that deterrent effect, that it is not like it is 35,000 in the first year and perhaps that is halved over the course of three years—what other efforts the government is rolling out, given that they are making such an enormous amount of money each year from these additional fines.

Is there a commensurate amount of expenditure that the government is committing to in advertising about these cameras, or not even about the cameras but advertising about road safety and the dangers of using mobile phones? Will there be some sort of awareness campaign as these cameras are about to be introduced that people should have another go at doing the right thing when they are behind the wheel and put their phones away, ignore them, put them into the centre console, put them in a cubbyhole in the dashboard or in the glove box, just get them out of eyesight or even out of their mind's eye so they can focus on the task at hand?

I could probably answer that question now because in the Budget Measures Statement there does not seem to be a commensurate increase in road safety expenditure and there do not seem to be additional campaigns to try to get motorists to do the right thing. We now have a continuation of what we have had for the last couple of years, where we have had some sort of combination between SA Police and the Department for Transport trying to determine themselves what will be the most effective road safety message, or they look at what other centrally funded, independent road safety organisations in other jurisdictions, either around Australia or New Zealand, are rolling out for their road safety advertising campaigns and just borrow those ads and put them on South Australian TV and so on.

I have to say that I had a period of time when I was not road safety minister but I did attend some road safety functions, principally those days leading up to a long weekend or school holiday period or a summer holiday or Christmas holiday period. A minister would stand with road safety organisations, SA Police, maybe even someone from Transport or a paramedic or an SES crew—those first responders who have the very unfortunate role of having to respond to road accidents—and make it clear across all the TV news programs that people needed to be careful over that long weekend or holiday period.

It has happened on rare occasions under this government, but I have to say that it does not happen as often now as it used to. Fair enough, we have gone through periods when, during some long weekend periods or even school holiday periods, we have not been able to travel around South Australia like we used to, but we have had periods when the level of travel around South Australia has been much higher than it has been previously. As international borders have been closed, we have had periods when tourism-related travel around regional South Australia has increased. There has been an opportunity for the government to do more in this space.

The government comes up with the completely disingenuous and deliberately misleading claim that the former government 'sold the MAC'. That is absolutely not true, and they know it is not true. They know it is a deliberate misrepresentation of what happened. Yes, the South Australian Motor Accident Commission is no longer responsible for writing compulsory third-party insurance policies. Yes, that did change under the former Labor government and, yes, as a result motorists are paying on average $100 a year less in CTP premiums.

Yes, all those things are true, but it was this government, led by this Premier and this Treasurer, that got rid of the Motor Accident Commission and its motor accident-related functions of research, investigation and promulgation of road safety activities, including advertising to the public of South Australia.

Perhaps the road safety minister might see a couple of submissions to his public plea for ideas around road safety that it is time to consider independent research about what messaging works best for South Australians because in the first full year of this government, the road toll absolutely escalated. I am not saying that it is solely because of removing a central motor accident authority, such as the Motor Accident Commission, but that does not help.

When the road toll is increasing, when the number of people dying on our roads or suffering casualty crashes on our roads is escalating, that is the time to put more effort into this and not less, as we saw under this government. You do not need to take my word for it—you can speak to the former independent chair of the Motor Accident Commission, Mr Roger Cook.

He dedicated a lot of his adult life to pursuing better road safety outcomes because of the tragic loss his family suffered due to a motor vehicle accident. It does not bother him who he is speaking to—a Labor or a Liberal politician, a Labor or a Liberal supporter, or a supporter of another brand of politics—he will deliver exactly the same message; that is, these sorts of organisations are important for ensuring better road safety outcomes.

Mr Cook was frank and fearless in his advice. He enjoyed putting controversial suggestions to governments to try to push them into action on improving road safety. The one that springs to my mind was cutting down large trees on the side of rural roads. If you ever want to start a public debate, that is the way to do it. There are not too many people in the middle of that conversation: it is one side or the other, and they are very firm in their views. Those are the sorts of efforts that need to go into road safety.

We support going after motorists who are using mobile phones, but I have to say that, on the figures presented to the opposition, this looks more like revenue raising than delivering road safety outcomes. Perhaps we all, including SAPOL, will be proved wrong. Maybe these cameras will have a far greater deterrent effect than the numbers Treasury have provided to us.

Maybe people will be put off reaching for their mobile phones, particularly when they are stationary at intersections, when they know that cameras can look down through the windscreen or side windows of a car and see people doodling away on their mobile phones and give them a fine accordingly. I hope they are right; I hope it does have a big deterrent effect but, if it has only a modest impact on the level of offending, then it does look like revenue raising.

The other thing I will say on this is that, when it comes to revenue raising from motorists, this government have turned it into an absolute art form. They have done it particularly since that same budget I mentioned before, when the land tax changes were first announced since the 2019 budget. This government came after motorists in a way we have never seen.

Registration fees were increased significantly above the regular level of indexation, and that was aimed purely to raise revenue—more than $12 million a year—tweaking up the level of car registration fees across the board. It did not matter whether it was four cylinders or less, or bigger engine capacities. The real sleeper was the administration fee we see on our motor vehicle registration bills—increasing that by up to 30 per cent; in fact, I think it was more than 30 per cent. I think it went from $7 to $10, and even up to $30 for some transactions with Service SA. If an extra $12 million of motor vehicle registration fees is a lot, this was actually designed to raise an extra $24 million per year on top of that.

Poor old member for Mawson, who represents Kangaroo Island, his constituents, as well as constituents in Roxby Downs, represented by the member for Giles, I am told—I was erroneously going to say the member for Stuart.

The Hon. D.C. van Holst Pellekaan interjecting:

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: The minister does do a lot of good work for people in Roxby. He is changing the royalty regime for them in this same bill. They lose their outer areas concession for motor vehicle registrations. People who live in those areas—Coober Pedy, Roxby Downs, Kangaroo Island and I think the unincorporated areas of South Australia—were getting a 50 per cent discount on their registration. I am not quite sure of the historical reason why. I suspect that if you took a straw poll amongst the recipients of that concession, it might say something like they are not convinced the quality of the roads they get to enjoy is the same as what a lot of other South Australians enjoy and so perhaps that is why they had a discount. Anyway, they lost that discount.

It is not a huge number of motorists, but it is a significant discount for them. Many of them by necessity drive vehicles with large engine displacements, given the work that they have to do around their properties, and in many instances losing that concession costs them a couple of hundred dollars per year.

Of course, in that same budget in 2019, we had a go at increasing fines for some traffic offences. What the government assured us was that it was no problem, just like they assured us the land tax changes were no problem, massively increasing the corporate fee that could be paid by organisations in lieu of nominating a driver where a vehicle registered to that organisation had been detected committing a traffic offence. No problem.

Basically, the words from the Treasurer were that organisations had made a fine art of cheating this scheme so the drivers were not getting demerit points if they were in a company vehicle and that this now would either force them to pay the corporate fee if they were not going to declare which driver was driving their vehicle or they could finger the driver who was driving the vehicle and they would get the demerit points, if it was one of the offences that attracted demerit points. Off the top of my head, I think the corporate fee went up to $1,800.

I know that not everyone has direct experience in an organisation that runs fleets, but there are a lot of them. You only need to think of firms with multiple trade vans, electrical or plumbing firms, that sort of thing, where drivers are not only out and about the whole day, running to and from and in between jobs, but they are also not in the same vehicle each day. The response from the government was, 'That's their fault. They should have better driver-tracking systems for which driver is in which vehicle at what point in time.' It is just revenue raising.

There was one instance where a corporate fee was justified at being increased, and indeed I was the former transport minister who did it, and that was for trucking companies coming down the South Eastern Freeway, driving contrary to the Road Rules, either speeding or using their brakes rather than using engine braking and risking the truck careening out of control, and that sort of thing. But just blindly applying it across the community in an effort to raise additional revenue was extraordinary. That was an extra nearly over $14 million this year.

Last year's budget had another go at hitting motorists. We saw a 50 per cent increase in the victims of crime levy. It is now more than $90. I can remember when it was $30, when a speeding fine used to be something in the order of $120 or $150 and the victims of crime levy was $30. Now we are talking about fines of over $500 and a victims of crime levy of more than $90. Is the victims of crime levy actually raising revenue to go to victims? Well, largely not; that has not changed.

What this government did in its earliest days in an effort to manufacture a surplus in its first year was prepay $146 million out of the Victims of Crime Fund to the South Australian Government Financing Authority to try to settle claims from people who had been abused in state institutions. As noble and wholly supported as compensating those victims is, of that $146 million, only $12 million has been run down, effectively, so there is still $134 million in that scheme.

Even though that nearly $150 million has been taken out of the Victims of Crime Fund, it continues to increase each year. It is not as though that money will compensate victims. You only have to watch the news or read the Adelaide Advertiser to see case after case of a person or a family appearing before the state's courts seeking justice for themselves as the victims of some sort of crime. Largely, the amount that goes to victims is not changing.

Altogether, with the increase in registration fees, the increase in the administration fee, the abolition of the outer areas concession, the increase in expiations for some traffic offences and the massive escalation of the corporate fee, the increasing of the victims of crime levy and now this new mobile phone detection camera, motorists in the first year of all of those initiatives running together will be more than $80 million a year worse off—$80 million a year worse off. That is how this government has come after motorists. It is absolutely extraordinary.

Then, of course, we have the government's proposed new electric vehicle tax. That basically wipes out the savings to motorists from the former Labor government's changes to the compulsory third-party scheme in South Australia, the $100 or so a vehicle on average that is being saved as a result of the former Labor government's changes to the CTP scheme, which I notice this government try to claim as their own initiative now.

Along with the $1 saving that the Minister for Energy has achieved from the reference price in electricity prices, this government have tried to pump that up with a couple of hundred dollars for a dual-car family because of the former Labor government's CTP changes. No-one is buying what they are selling. People see through that sort of disingenuousness pretty clearly, and it is absolutely clear that, despite all the effort undertaken by the former Labor government to bring down the cost of motoring in South Australia, the government have put it straight back up.

The last measure is a change to the Payroll Tax Act. This seems to be a really curious one as well. I think either the Cannes or the Venice film festival is on at the moment. I know that the member or Playford would have been looking for the reviews of the new version of Dune that Denis Villeneuve has produced. He looks forward to the film being released, presumably sooner than the latest James Bond film.

It is regrettable that South Australia will not be able to submit a sequel to Mortal Kombat to the latest European film festival. It was to be a large production in South Australia. It involved a large production crew and some well-known Australian actors coming to South Australia. Josh Lawson was one of the key actors, with a very memorable appearance on Channel 10's Have You Been Paying Attention to spruik Mortal Kombat II. For those of you who might be inclined to YouTube, his appearance on Have You Been Paying Attention to talk about that is well worth a look.

Not only that, there was a large production crew, a lot of Australian actors and some international actors and of course extras. They could not get the member for Unley away from the set. It did not matter how many cameras on lights they erected around the set to warn off people who might be interrupting filming, he was there with bells on—wild horses could not have dragged him away. Not only was he an apprentice but he was a thespian as well, we are now led to believe.

It was a big production, and it goes to show that, despite all the criticisms we had from the member for Dunstan, from the member for Bragg and even from the member for Unley himself about the former Labor government's $50 million investment in the Glenside film studios, this can facilitate a burgeoning industry, that this is an industry worth supporting.

It is important to try to actively support this industry because, particularly in the last 18 months, Australia has become a sought-out location to film screen productions. If any of you have been subjected to Nine Perfect Strangers in the evenings as I have, you will have seen a large and extensive Hollywood cast being filmed in Australia for those sorts of TV productions. Whether it is Queensland or New South Wales and, to a lesser extent South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia, those states continue to do what they can to attract these film productions.

We have had a longstanding payroll tax exemption here for wages paid in respect of these productions, and the change is now being made in this budget measures bill to abolish that payroll tax exemption and replace it with just a grant fund. The explanation from the government is that our payroll tax exemption for these screen productions was too narrow and too tight and was not giving South Australia the fullest opportunity to bid for screen productions here in South Australia.

So when people were contemplating which Australian jurisdiction they might go to, to film or produce something, if they were comparing the taxation treatments jurisdiction against jurisdiction they might find that South Australia had an overly restrictive taxation treatment and they might think that they have to pay less tax in Queensland or New South Wales or Victoria, so they will go elsewhere.

That made me think, 'Well, wouldn't we make a virtue of changing our payroll tax exemption? Wouldn't we change the Payroll Tax Act to significantly broaden it?' Rather than doing that, we are just abolishing the exemption, full stop, and saying that we will have a grant fund. I am told that in recent years the grant fund has spent on average about $1.6 million on attracting film productions to South Australia—almost the security bill on the Mortal Kombat site to try to keep the member from Unley away from the camera, I am told. It did not seem like a large amount of money to me.

I would have thought that the government's necessary, secret subsidy in Mortal Kombat was likely to be significantly more than $1.6 million. Clearly, I am not as practised in this area as the member for Unley or perhaps even the Premier, but I am not quite sure that removing a payroll tax exemption altogether and just having a fund—which may or may not be available for a particular production—was going to put us on the most level playing field with those jurisdictions interstate. Perhaps I am wrong.

It would be great to get some information about how much money has been paid out in recent years to try to support these screen productions and even to whom it has gone. We know from public reports in the media that Queensland and New South Wales are spending tens of millions of dollars a year to attract these productions. I would hate to think that, even though he campaigned against it for a long time, the member for Unley is now celebrating the Glenside film studios but under-resourcing our state's capacity to attract these productions here to South Australia.

I guess the other point is: what will be the guidelines that will provide some sort of direction to a minister or to a government about providing grant funds to these sorts of productions in the future? That is something that we will be particularly interested in when it comes to the committee stage of the bill. I suspect $1.6 million is only a small proportion of the South Australian Film Corporation's budget as well. So, if we are going to go after these productions, if Australia is indeed the place the world wants to film their productions at the moment, are we the most competitive or has the former Labor government made the right investment and the right start at making us competitive in this place but we are now not seeing what we can from these efforts?

I am also aware that the government has placed some amendments on file. They have some modest changes they want to make to some of the wording of the bill, which to me seem reasonable, although of course we will check and we will ask during the committee stage of the debate about what the government hope to achieve by those amendments. But they are not alone in amendments. I have placed on file amendments from the opposition—very reasonable amendments—seeking to mirror the arrangements which the parliament and political parties had access to in the lead-up to the last election. That is to include an additional budget measure which requires the government of the day to establish a parliamentary budget advisory service.

This was something that was sought in the wake of the 2014 state election when the member for Frome committed to supporting Labor to form government. He thought it was reasonable that all members of parliament, and indeed major political parties, had access to an independent costing service, funded by the government but independent of the executive of the day, to provide some confidential advice to members of parliament and political parties about proposals that they wish to take to the next election.

This is entirely reasonable and healthy for our democracy. It was a shame, I think, that the Liberal government refused to use the Parliamentary Budget Advisory Service in the lead up to the last election because I suspect, as a state, we would have ended up with far better outcomes than what we have seen to date, for example. The government had the opportunity, of course, to take some of their key election commitments to try to get some robust costings around them.

Basically, the way it works is that the Treasurer is required to establish an attached office to one of the administrative units that he is responsible for. It is most likely to be the Department of Treasury and Finance and that would be resourced and staffed by seconded members of that relevant agency to provide confidential advice to members. In the past, for example, a member of parliament had made an inquiry about how much it would cost to deliver a particular kind of transport project.

So the staff within that advisory service would go, on a confidential basis again, to the relevant department—in that case, the Department for Infrastructure and Transport—ask for a costing about something and they would cost it up, again on a confidential basis, and that would be given back to the person who requested it, and it worked.

I know that some of the crossbench MPs in the other place, members of the Greens, used it and they proposed several election policies based on that, including one that the government itself had promulgated and that was delivering a right-hand turn of the tram onto North Terrace, something that had been strongly advised to me by the transport department—not as being something that could not be afforded but that was quite simply undeliverable with the tram stock that we used. That did not stop the Liberal Party of the day going out and committing to it, which became the first but definitely not the last of their broken election commitments.

They could have used it, for example, for the GlobeLink policy which was a centrepiece policy for the member for Dunstan, now Premier, in the lead-up to the last election. In fact, frontbenchers, shadow ministers, committed on the record that that project would definitely happen—their words not mine—in the lead-up to the last election.

What happened after the election? Of course, they would have got their blue book from Treasury and from their relevant departments showing that it simply could not be justified on a public investment basis. There was no demand for a freight airport at Monarto because apparently the Premier and the member for Unley, who announced this policy, did not realise that planes carrying passengers also carry freight and, without a combination of those two, a freight-only airport and freight-only flights being run exclusively from that airport are not economic.

They also disbelieved the work that the former assistant minister for infrastructure and former member for Mayo Jamie Briggs put together and that was an independent study on taking the rail line around the back of the Adelaide Hills. That was costed in that report at that time at $2.6 billion. I think that report was dated about 2012, so you can imagine what the cost of that would have been in 2018 dollars, and you can imagine what it would be even now with some of the price escalations we are seeing around the country for infrastructure projects.

You could also imagine the benefit that it would have provided to the Liberal Party had they received a robust costing for the Port Wakefield overpass. We were assured by the Liberals in the lead-up to the last election that this would only cost $24 million, and we knew that because they had taken advice from a former chief executive of the transport department who said, 'Yes, I built the one at McLaren Vale, and in my view it would be exactly the same, and I am pretty confident that that would be $24 million.'

You would know, sir, as would the member for Stuart, perhaps better than most members of parliament, that the size of the trucks which use Port Wakefield and would avail themselves of an overpass to get to and from Yorke Peninsula, for example, tend to be a little larger than those that run up and down the main street of McLaren Vale. In fact, I have not checked the transport department's RAVnet site recently, but I think they can now run A-doubles throughout Yorke Peninsula so that necessitates a much larger and much greater scale of road infrastructure in order to use that sort of overpass.

So we have a cursory look at the budget papers and the Port Wakefield overpass has gone from $24 million, as committed by the Liberals at the last election, to $124 million—just a small increase there. This is the sort of thing which would be fixed by a parliamentary budget advisory service, being able to get a robust costing as a political party is putting their ideas together.

Of course, it is not the only significant increase in costs we have had since the change of government. The Festival Plaza project has had well over $30 million injected into it. Even those of us who are fortunate enough to have a car park in there, it is the only undercover car park I have been in where you need to carry a brolly around, despite the extra $30 million that has been contributed to it.

Springbank Road, which we had the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport spruiking today, I think is most recently a $61 million project. Of course, the proposal to upgrade that into a single intersection was something which had been proposed by former member for Waite the Hon. Martin Hamilton-Smith. I think more than $20 million had been set aside in the 2017 budget by the member for West Torrens when he was Treasurer.

We had the then Minister for Transport come and say, 'No, not a single intersection solution—that's crazy. What people really want is a two-intersection dogleg solution. People know instinctively as motorists that rather than go through a single set of traffic lights, they would much rather go through two sets of traffic lights to get where they are going.' I have to say that did not quite strike a chord with me or the other members of the opposition.

Despite whatever bogus traffic data or modelling the then minister put, we had month after month after month go by, we had a change in the design back to a single intersection, and costs escalated from $26 million to $41 million to $60 million. So there is a real benefit in helping political parties get their costings right. It is good for public debate. It is good for democracy.

If the public can be assured when the leader of a political party comes out and promises a $5 billion to $10 billion infrastructure solution like GlobeLink that it has been thoroughly thought through, that the costings themselves have been looked at by the experts within government and provided some level of assurance, then the public can take it on face value and they can make a judgement whether, in their view, it is a good idea or a good use of taxpayers' money or, in their view, it is not a good idea and that they think that money should either not be spent or spent in another area of priority.

I cannot understand why this government seems to be cool on the idea of a parliamentary budget advisory service. In a media article over the weekend, the Treasurer's rationale was that he thinks it would cost $1.5 million, which I have to say seems like a fair amount of money. He said we should be spending that on hospitals, not spending it on a PBAS. If he feels that way about $1½ million spent on that, imagine how he feels about $662 million being spent on a basketball stadium that no-one has asked for and that no-one can seem to justify. It is extraordinary.

Of course, the PBAS is not a solution to any harebrained schemes being promulgated by members of parliament. The basketball stadium clearly makes that argument itself. We are still liable for politicians from time to time, even in government, coming up with ideas about how to spend money that are completely out of step with that of the community. But it will make an important difference.

If the government, under the stewardship of housing minister Michelle Lensink, says, 'This is the Liberals' policy when it comes to housing at the 2022 election,' and if the Labor Party says, 'This is our policy when it comes to housing at the 2022 election,' and the Greens party says, 'Here is our policy at the 2022 election about housing,' well, why should voters not have the capacity to think that all three of these different proposals have had the ruler run over them by experts within government?

If somebody has access to an advisory service like this, a well-resourced, independent and expert advisory service available to all MPs and registered political parties, and then somebody announces an election proposal, policy or initiative that has not gone through this process, the community will quite rightly ask, 'Why haven't you had the ruler run over it? How can we be confident, given what we've seen at the last state election and what we've seen in the years since, that this idea makes sense?'

The Treasurer says, 'Oh, well, political parties should do what I had to do when I was in opposition.' It is not my fault that the Treasurer in the other place spent 27 years in opposition doing those hard yards and coming up with those election policies, but the demands of the community and the demands of public debate are now higher. People expect more and people expect a better standard when it comes to these matters than they did previously.

At the last state election, the Treasurer announced his costings, and it was basically a two or three-page press release. About a third of it was saying that he was not going to do what Labor was going to do and another third of it was, 'And I can tell you from responses to questions on notice and information I have received that all our proposals are affordable within the context of the state budget.' That was it.

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: That's now the standard.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: That's now the standard. However, it is not unreasonable to amend the budget measures bill to require another bill, another act, to be amended so that the parliament can have access to this sort of service.

I look forward to the debate—and not only on those four areas of change the government is seeking to make in the passage of the unamended bill—and the questions we have about each of those different areas, which I outlined in my comments before. Of course, we will also ask the government, just for the sake of the record, what they are hoping to get out of their own amendments. I am also looking forward to the discussion we are going to have in the committee stage, if and when we get to it, about the proposal put by the Leader of the Opposition. With those ever so brief remarks, I conclude.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Lee, I may have been remiss in reminding you to indicate that you were the lead speaker—

An honourable member interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am making a fairly big assumption here, member for Lee, but I take it that you were.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I did that. I did indicate that, sir.

Mr BOYER (Wright) (17:22): I rise to add my own contribution to this bill and in the first instance would like to focus on the changes proposed in here to the Motor Vehicles Act and the Road Traffic Act, which were covered in some detail by the member for Lee. I have a few perspectives of my own I would like to share, as the shadow minister for education as well, in what are incredibly important areas of public policy.

It is fair to say that this is probably the most significant part of the bill. In fact, when passed, it will provide the legislative basis needed by SA Police to commence the operation of these new mobile phone detection cameras, of which we have heard so much over the last few months. The bill also makes amendments to the Road Traffic Act 1971 to allow for the detection of offences involving the use of mobile phones in vehicles.

In practice, these detection cameras will be installed at high-risk metropolitan sites, and the high definition cameras that will form this new set-up will target drivers who are illegally using a phone while they are supposed to be in charge of a motor vehicle. This technology may sound new to us here in South Australia, but it has already been trialled in Victoria, just across the border, and I understand that it is currently being used in New South Wales and Queensland as well.

A three-month trial was conducted in Victoria using some of these high-resolution mobile phone detection cameras at some locations. It ran for about three months, I understand. In that three-month trial, it found that, of a total of 679,438 vehicles that went past these cameras, one in 42 drivers were detected illegally using a mobile phone behind the wheel.

That might sound like a lot, and I think it is, but I understand that the authorities in charge of conducting the trial in Victoria suspect that the rate is actually much higher than one in 42 because the trial occurred during stage 4 COVID restrictions that were then in place in Victoria. That rightly limited the mobility of people to move around metropolitan areas and, indeed, the state.

That would therefore suggest that, of the almost 680,000 vehicles that passed the cameras involved in that trial, it would have been a far greater number had stage 4 COVID restrictions not been in place. Nonetheless, I think we can all agree that when you consider the amount of traffic on our roads on a daily basis, with one in 42 drivers being detected illegally using a mobile phone whilst they are supposed to be in charge of a motor vehicle, it is a very serious issue indeed.

The way that the technology works, as I understand it, is that it actually uses artificial intelligence to enable high-res cameras to catch images of passing vehicles. Incredibly, not only is this technology amazing, in the sense that the AI component of it can pick up what is potentially a mobile phone, as opposed to something else that the driver could be using in the car, but it is capable of doing this in all traffic and weather conditions. Rain, hail or shine, these cameras are capable of detecting motorists who are using mobile phones when they ought not to be.

I want to say from the outset that this initiative does have the support of the opposition, as the previous speaker, the member for Lee, just outlined. There is absolutely no doubt that driver distraction and driver inattention for all reasons, but particularly as caused by the use of mobile phones behind the wheel, are a scourge in our society at the moment. There is no doubt about that. If you take the time to speak to any of the first responders who might attend traffic accidents—whether they be SAPOL, MFS, CFS or the SES—they will reinforce to you, as they have done to me, that we have an epidemic of people using mobile phones whilst they should be concentrating on the road.

I should add here that, having this in my mind and being someone in a job that necessitates a lot of electronic communication, I have had cause to contemplate doing this myself when parked at intersections in my community. At a red light for a significant period of time, I have sometimes scanned those vehicles around me, and on more than one occasion I have seen that every driver behind the wheel at that intersection—and we could be talking six or eight cars I could see from my vantage point—was using their mobile phone while waiting at the lights. It is quite remarkable. With that in our mind, it is incumbent upon us as lawmakers, as parliamentarians, to do something about it.

The road crash data of course reinforces just how dangerous this inattentive and distracted driving is. It reinforces just how dangerous using a mobile phone whilst being behind the wheel is. In fact, between 2015 and 2019 distraction or inattentive driving was listed as a key contributing factor in 43 per cent, or 193 individual cases, of all fatalities, and 48 per cent, or 1,396 individual cases, of all serious injury collisions. They are remarkable numbers.

In 2020, inattention or distraction was attributed as a contributing factor in 56 per cent of crashes involving a loss of life. I will say that again: last year, inattention or distraction whilst behind the wheel—and the majority of those cases I think we can probably safely assume was due to the use of a mobile phone—was a contributing factor in 56 per cent of crashes involving the loss of life. They are staggering figures when you consider that this is not poor road conditions, poor weather conditions, medical incidents or dangerous driving by other vehicles on the road that may have contributed to the loss of that person's life: 56 per cent is due to distraction and inattention. It is fair to say that it is at epidemic levels and that we certainly need to do something about it.

As one who is mildly obsessed by cars, as I think it is safe to say the member for Lee is, and as one who spends a lot of time reading about new motor vehicles and the amazing gadgets and technology they put in them now, I often pause to reflect upon what these statistics might look like, given the incredibly high levels of inattention and distraction, if the vehicles these distracted and inattentive drivers were driving did not have the most amazing modern safety features they now have.

Some of the stuff that I have in my humble Ford Mondeo—which is perhaps not the most salubrious vehicle, I agree, but I am very fond of it—is technology that keeps me and my family safe and was the stuff of science fiction when I was a kid, and that was not so long ago. We have things now that we take for granted in quite affordable vehicles, such as auto emergency brake, blind spot monitoring, rear cross traffic alert and lane assist, and those are just a few. That is on top of things like airbags.

I remember the first vehicle that my family had that had ABS and an airbag was a 1993 Ford Futura. It had an airbag for the driver—bad luck if you were the passenger or the kids in the back—and an anti-lock braking system, and we thought that was incredible. We thought that we had really made it and that it was a flash vehicle.

Mr Odenwalder interjecting:

Mr BOYER: Yes, it had sport mode and all that kind of stuff as well. It was really flash. It gives me reason to think now that in these vehicles that do not have one airbag—some have more than 12—if we had people using mobile phones in those older vehicles we used to drive in the way they do in today's modern vehicles, the level of road trauma we would be experiencing on our roads would be absolutely out of control.

We have technology now that makes up for some of this woeful distracted and inattentive driving, technology such as auto emergency brake that at relatively low speeds will apply the brakes in a situation where the car is about to collide with another vehicle or a pedestrian—often because of course the driver is on their mobile phone. If we had the kind of problem we are dealing with now 20 years ago in vehicles that had none of that technology, I think we would see the levels of road trauma far above those we see now.

In many respects, we are made a little more immune from the effects of this distracted and inattentive driving than we would be if it were not for the amazing technology that we all take for granted and that we have in our motor vehicles on a daily basis.

I should add here that in my capacity as the shadow minister for education, and as someone who tries to drop his three daughters off to school as often as I can, I know that members of this place will agree with me when I say that we also have a growing problem across the metropolitan area with overcrowded kiss and drops at our schools, mostly at primary schools, where kids are still driven to school by their parents or carers.

Those kiss and drop zones at schools are becoming increasingly busy and overcrowded. In many cases, they are landlocked by the size of the school and not able to grow with the number of parents who have started to drop kids off. There is another whole issue there that we could discuss about kids not walking to school or riding their pushbikes to school but, that aside, schools and their kiss and drops have become more dangerous places as well. I think the potential for a catastrophic incident at a school due to inattentive and distracted driving from parents has only grown.

With all those things taken into account, I would like to reinforce that the opposition supports these mobile phone detection cameras. In what is an incredibly long segue, I would like to also add that, as the member for Lee touched upon, we are looking at an expiation fee for this offence now of something like $646, including the Victims of Crime Fund component.

I understand that this probably has us in line with similar use of mobile phone offences that we apply. It may also be in line with what is charged in other jurisdictions interstate. Nonetheless, at some point we need to grapple with the issue that these fines have grown to such a magnitude that they run the risk of imposing incredible financial hardship upon the offender, resulting in some very unfortunate and unintended consequences for the individual or their family.

I completely accept that using one's mobile phone while at the wheel is a very dangerous practice. I accept that using one's mobile phone behind the wheel could result in the death of not just you but also another driver, passengers, other motorists or pedestrians. As elected members of the South Australian state parliament, we are in a privileged position to grapple with the difficult issues. My question is: where is the tipping point in terms of mandating an expiation fee that serves the very important purpose of acting as a big disincentive for motorists to reoffend, that goes well past the point of acting as a very strong and powerful disincentive and, in addition, imposes a catastrophic financial penalty on some South Australia families?

I also accept that the levels of these fines have been rising for a number of years. My concern is that a fine of $646 could have a lasting financial impact on low-income South Australians. We need to remember that the point of expiations is, yes, to get the offender to pay a financial penalty for their act, whether it is using a mobile phone whilst driving, speeding, failing to give way, or whatever it might be, and also to act, therefore, as a deterrent to stop that person from committing such an act again. The point is not to financially penalise someone to the point that not only can they not afford to pay the fine but also they cannot afford basic necessities for themselves or their dependents.

I have to say that these stories are real and I have seen them in my community. I have spoken with people in my community who have been subjected to an expiation fine of this kind of magnitude for their one and only traffic offence. An older resident made a mistake and was very remorseful about their behaviour. They acknowledged that their behaviour could have resulted in the death of someone else or, at the very least, a very serious traffic accident. They had never done it before and were very unlikely to do it again. They were left with no choice but to visit a payday lender to get the money they needed to pay the $600-odd. I do not think that is necessarily the area we want to be in.

It is not always the case. I acknowledge that, but I think we need to grapple with what is a very real situation, where some South Australians suffer such financial hardship, due to some of these larger traffic fines, that they resort to cutting down on necessities or visiting some of these more dubious kinds of payday lenders to get the money in time to pay the fine before paying any additional late fees that might be added. I must say, too, that in some cases it could lead to some kind of petty crime in order to find the money to pay it, and that would certainly undermine the entire regime here.

As the member for Lee noted—and I think this goes some way to proving my point about the number of South Australians who will have difficulties such a large fine—that the 100,000 fines forecast under this budget across the three-year period at the $646 level, including the victims of crime of course, would come to $64 million.

But, interestingly, the government is forecasting $46 million, and I am reliably informed by the work the member for Lee has done that the Treasurer's response to that is that they do not anticipate that all motorists will be able to pay the fine. Now, does that not speak volumes? Of the $64 million that could be recouped, we are talking about potentially $18 million here that the government is already forecasting may not come into their coffers.

I completely accept that in some cases it will be people who certainly do have the means to pay the fine and are simply recalcitrant and choose not to. But I think we can safely assume that somewhere in that $18 million of forgone revenue that would otherwise be coming into the government coffers in these fines, there are some people who simply cannot pay the amount.

For that reason alone, I think it is incumbent upon us to take action and look at this to see if we can do a bit more research into finding a sweeter spot, I guess for lack of a better phrase, in terms of finding that balance between a deterrent, a financial penalty, but not imposing such financial hardship on low-income South Australians that they have to make choices between basics and necessities or paying their expiation notice.

I would also like to touch briefly in the time I have remaining on changes to the Land Tax Act. The member for Lee again covered this in good detail. I think it should be noted that the opposition understands all too well that there is a crisis out there in terms of rental availability and rental affordability. I note that the origin of this land tax incentive to offer a discount on eligible new build-to-rent properties is designed to stimulate or incentivise or encourage developers or landowners to build properties which are then available in the rental market, hopefully increasing supply and reducing the cost—and that is indeed a noble pursuit.

I think when we look in a little more detail at what is forecast here by the government in terms of what this discount and land tax will actually cost to the budget, it is only expected to cost $50,000 in the 2023-24 financial year and then $100,000 in the 2024-25 financial year. So given the limited amount of revenue the Treasury is actually forecasting here—or the limited amount of revenue that Treasury is forecasting to be forgone here I guess I should be saying—I think the estimate is only a very small number of these build-to-rent properties are actually going to be created or incentivised by this discount and most likely will be a drop in the ocean.

In the short time I have left, I also want to reiterate the words of the member for Lee in terms of the changes to payroll tax insofar as they will affect incentivising films and TV shows to be shot here in South Australia. I am quite passionate on this topic. I think we have a very rich history in South Australia. I was going through before some of the amazing films shot here like Rabbit-Proof Fence,Gallipoli,Picnic at Hanging Rock,Shine,Look Both Ways,Wolf Creek, and The Adventures ofPriscilla, Queen of the Desert. We have a very rich history.

I very much hope that the work the previous Labor government did to bring us into line with other jurisdictions Australia wide and internationally to make us more competitive does not result in us being able to not being able to produce some of the fantastic classic Australian films we have produced in the past.

Mr ODENWALDER (Elizabeth) (17:43): I rise to make a very brief contribution to the Statutes Amendment (Budget Measures 2021) Bill. As has been noted, this bill makes amendments to various acts—Land Tax Act, Mining Act, Payroll Tax Act—but my focus will be, as was the member for Wright's, on the changes to the Motor Vehicles Act and the Road Traffic Act.

I want to speak primarily about those changes and put them in the context of the road safety measures taken, or not taken as the case may be, by this government. It has been an area of policy which has seen a series of delays and inaction on various measures which the experts tell us could have significantly decreased road trauma and road death in our state. It has seen two successive ministers who have refused to take action in a timely way. I think that is a great shame and that we could do better. I will get to this, but the Road Safety Strategy to 2031 has been released at last with some positive measures in it, and I look forward to discussing them as they come up.

But the most significant part of this bill, certainly in my view as the shadow minister for road safety, are the amendments to the Motor Vehicles Act and the Road Traffic Act, which provide the legislative basis for the implementation of these mobile phone detection cameras, these artificial intelligence-run cameras which are based on algorithms which observe behaviour and then make assessments on the basis of that observed behaviour.

First, this bill makes amendments to the Road Traffic Act to allow for the use of these artificial intelligence-based cameras, which use images taken by high definition cameras which are then used by artificial intelligence to identify whether or not a driver is using a mobile phone as defined by the law.

The intention is that these cameras will be placed in high-risk metropolitan sites, although, under questioning in the estimates process, the minister could not identify where those sites would be. It will be interesting to see what methodology is used to identify what those sites should be, where they should go, whether they will move around from time to time and how mobile these mobile phone detection cameras will be.

The bill also makes amendments to the Motor Vehicles Act to ensure consistency of definitions resulting from the changes to the Road Traffic Act. I will get to the technology soon, and there is some apprehension felt by members of the community, including myself and others on this side of the house, about the use of this technology. That is not to say we are opposed to the technology, but there is a certain amount of apprehension when you start using this type of technology. I will get to that soon.

First of all, I want to talk very briefly about road safety generally and the need for us to be vigilant in this area because, these concerns notwithstanding, we do support these measures. We do not oppose the measures outlined in this bill. I sincerely hope that the government are in fact wrong in their projections, that these measures do act as a deterrent to certain types of behaviour and that we see the road toll, road trauma and road death statistics go down as a result.

The police talk of the fatal five offences that are the cause of a significant proportion of road deaths and road trauma. These focus on the road user rather than on the road system, and we will get to systems later. The fatal five offences include drink and drug driving, speeding, seatbelts, dangerous road users and distraction.

It is increasingly clear to all of us, even before we look at the stats, that distraction caused by mobile phones is growing exponentially as a problem, probably across the world but certainly within our own state and our own country. Our phones are all consuming. We conduct so much of our business and so much of our social lives on the phone that it is very easy to inevitably be pulled into a phone as we drive. We need to be constantly vigilant that we are not doing that and that we are creating a society where that is not acceptable behaviour.

As the shadow treasurer said, road crash data collected over the last five years shows that distraction is a key contributing factor to 43 per cent of all fatalities and 48 per cent of all serious injury collisions. In 2020, inattention or distraction was shown to be a contributing factor to 56 per cent of crashes involving the loss of life.

I think these figures speak for themselves, but I also think they are almost certainly understating the problem. These observations have been made before, but anyone who looks around them while they are driving can see the problem. Anyone who sits at a traffic light and sees a person in front of them with their head stuck determinedly down while the traffic lights turn green can see the problem.

It is not a surprise that policymakers are desperate to combat this, whether it is through fines—and I take on board the concerns of the member for Wright about fines generally and these particularly high fines specifically—or demerit points, or by the addition of the sort of technology we are discussing here through this bill. That said, though, the shadow treasurer can be forgiven by having some misgivings about the motivation for this measure at this time.

The fines for this offence are now $646; that is $554 plus $92 for the victims of crime levy. That is a lot of money. It is not as much as in Queensland. I know that when the government introduced these new fines quietly two or three years ago there was some commentary that the government may indeed follow the lead of Queensland and drastically increase the fines for these offences to $1,000. The $646, as it is now, indexed, was a 60 per cent increase, which is far enough, but to increase it to $1,000 would have been a bridge too far, and that idea quietly died.

These fines were increased two or three years ago and it is pretty clear again, looking at what the shadow treasurer has been able to draw out of the government, that these artificial intelligence cameras will turbocharge the revenue-raising effect of these drastically increased fines. As I said, the shadow treasurer has done his homework. The government's own figures seem to reveal that the government is happy to accept that the deterrent effect of these cameras is minimal—and I hope they are wrong—and that these cameras may just be part of the state government's treatment of most motorists as a reliable form of ever-increasing revenue.

Again, on the government's own estimates these increases mean that next year motorists will be paying an extra $15 million in mobile phone fines, $10 million in higher victims of crime levies, $14 million in higher speeding fines, $2.9 million in higher registration costs just in outback areas, $24 million in higher admin fees on rego bills and transport transactions, and $12.7 million in higher registration costs. As the member for Lee points out, this is even before we start talking about the electric vehicles tax.

I am keen to impress upon the house, as others have, that the opposition is not opposed to this bill. We will not be opposing the measures in this bill. Indeed, I think everyone here knows that I take road safety very seriously and that I would argue very strongly for any measure which would demonstrably reduce the level of road trauma and deaths on South Australian roads. That is why we in the opposition were so angered that, in the first budget of the Marshall government, the government axed the Motor Accident Commission.

The Motor Accident Commission was an independently constituted body, which provided advice to the government, which provided promotional activity based on that advice and was very successful and internationally recognised as an important factor in reducing the road toll over the previous 10 years in South Australia. Following the decision to axe the Motor Accident Commission, we saw an enormous spike in road trauma and in driver death. Indeed, not only was it the highest spike in more than a decade but it was the highest figure for driver deaths in more than a decade.

These figures continued to remain high until COVID hit and changed all our road traffic movements and driver behaviours and so on. Even with COVID and all that it entails, the statistics remain grim. Total fatalities this year stand at 66. This is, of course, far better than the peak in 2019, but it is still much higher than the average and higher than this time last year. Clearly, whatever the government claims it is doing about road safety simply is not working.

We have been assured by the government time and time again that the money allocated previously to the Motor Accident Commission in its role as an independent advisor, some $12 million per year, will be ring-fenced and allocated to road safety. I have to take the government's word on that, yet through various budget estimates processes it is still unclear exactly where that money is being spent.

We do know that SAPOL has taken a lot of the promotional work, and of course SAPOL continue to do the very good work that they do in responding to road trauma, as indeed do other agencies, such as the CFS, the SES, the MFS and so on. SAPOL continue to do that work despite the fact that they are significantly stretched in their resources by the COVID response.

We have also been told that that the research and advisory functions previously conducted by the Motor Accident Commission have been passed on to a road safety advisory group. But, two or three years later, it still remains unclear to me exactly what this group does. We have heard nothing from them. I have not seen a media release. I have not seen the minister stand up beside them and announce what their advice is, what their activities have been or how they have contributed to the road safety effort in this state, if anything. I hope they have; I hope they have been beavering away behind the scenes, really working on some significant changes later on, but I have not seen any evidence of it.

On this side of the house, we still think it was a mistake to axe the Motor Accident Commission. It was an independently constituted body, it provided good advice, research-based advice to the government, and out of that research we had some very good promotional activity that worked—and that was recognised nationally and internationally as having worked.

After 3½ years of this from the Marshall government, our roads are as unsafe as ever. On 15 July this year, the Liberals released their draft Road Safety Strategy to 2031. While this document did contain some good things—and I will get to those—it did serve to highlight the Marshall government's shocking record on roads since it took office in 2018.

The figures are absolutely clear. Under the Liberals, the previous downward trend in deaths on our roads has—

Mr Whetstone interjecting:

Mr ODENWALDER: Do not get me started on Kalangadoo—

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr ODENWALDER: Do not get me started on the problems—

The SPEAKER: Order, member for Chaffey! The member for Elizabeth will not respond to interjections.

Mr ODENWALDER: As I said—

Mr McBride interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for MacKillop!

Mr ODENWALDER: I am easily distracted, that's right—lucky it is only artificial intelligence on that side of the house. As I said before, in 2019, after 10 years of downward trend, there was a 42 per cent increase in the number of deaths on our roads from 2018. In 2020, again despite the significant reduction in traffic movements as a result of COVID, there was a 16 per cent increase on the 2018 figure. So far this year, 66 lives have been lost on the state's roads; that is an increase of more than 12 per cent on the same period last year. March this year was our deadliest month in nearly four years.

Clearly, since coming to government the Marshall government are not doing enough in terms of road safety. Not only have they abolished the Motor Accident Commission but they have also delayed recommendations from the experts on motorcycle licensing, entirely refused to reconvene the Motorcycle Reference Group and are now even looking at significantly increasing fees for government-operated motorcycle licence training under the name RiderSafe.

Comparatively, under the former Labor government the number of deaths on our roads was steadily trending down over the last 10 years of the Rann/Weatherill governments. In government, Labor funded the Motor Accident Commission to promote road safety and provide evidence-based advice to government. They increased penalties and fines for dangerous driving, passed new laws to impound and crush the vehicles of hoon drivers, introduced stricter graduated licensing for learner and probationary drivers, reduced the legal blood alcohol limit for drivers from .08 to .05 and, of course, introduced roadside drug testing.

The work the Marshall government has done, such as it is—and as is the case in so many areas of policy for the Marshall government—is simply to tinker on the edges of work already done by the previous government except, of course, supporting the Motor Accident Commission.

The draft Road Safety Strategy was released in July. I think it was full of some pretty laudable aspirations. I was particularly pleased that there seemed to be an implicit commitment to look at safe systems. That is, you take the approach that you accept that road use is an inherently risky activity, you accept that human beings are flawed and they make mistakes and that sometimes they behave in ways contrary to their own best interests.

The Safe System approach recognises human failing and instead focuses on the environment we operate in as road users. In the words of its proponents, it seeks to create a 'forgiving road system'. There are four areas that the Safe System addresses, and I read directly from the Road Safety Strategy:

1. People make predictable mistakes that can lead to road crashes.

2. The human body has a limited physical ability to tolerate crash forces before harm occurs.

3. A shared responsibility exists amongst those who plan, design, build, manage and use roads and vehicles to prevent crashes resulting in serious injury or death.

4. All parts of the system must be strengthened to multiply their effects; and if one part fails, road users are still protected.

This is a system that, rather than punish the mistakes or stupidity of people, designs a system that accommodates those people and makes them safer.

The road traffic system is not something we thought of yesterday; it is something that has evolved over 100 years, along with modes of transport evolving over 100 years. We have arrived at a system where, as much as we can retrofit safety around it, it is not a system you can imagine would pass any test were it introduced wholesale into society today. It is incumbent upon us now, as the inheritors of this system, to seek a safer approach.

Sitting suspended from 18:00 to 19:30.

Mr ODENWALDER: In the time remaining, I want to reiterate that ultimately we on this side of the house will be voting for this measure, and I will be voting for this measure because we certainly do need to address the problem of mobile phone distraction. It is a massive problem. The problem it represents is almost certainly under-represented in all the data, but that does not mean that this measure sits entirely easily with me and with others in my community.

We are talking of a very serious step here. As far as I am aware, this is the first time that we are allowing artificial intelligence, a very sophisticated computer program, to make findings—at least, preliminary findings—about the criminality or otherwise of certain behaviour. I am not saying that this is something we need to fear unnecessarily, and I am not scared of technology, but it is worth inquiring as to exactly what the procedures and checks and balances will be around the use of these machines. This apprehension is being expressed by ordinary members in my community.

Rowan is a constituent of mine. He is also a former CFS volunteer of more than 12 years and, as such, he has attended many road crashes in his time. He is not someone who would normally object to a road safety measure, but it is worth reading into Hansard some of his concerns about this technology and the way it has been used elsewhere. He starts:

Dear minister—

which is a good start—

I'm writing you this email this evening to express my concerns about Premier Marshall's Government directive to the Police Commissioner to research and implement Mobile Phone detection cameras onto South Australian roads…From the [outset] I am NOT against the use of mobile detection cameras—

and he reiterates the fact that he is a member of the One Tree Hill Country Fire Service, and has been for over 12 years, and has attended many road crash rescues. He reiterates that he has seen the end results of distracted driving, being either death or devastation to the other driver through acquiring serious lifelong injuries. The email continues:

The issues I fear are more to do with a) the technology itself and b) the systems/processes of recourse for accused offenders due to the potential failure of the Artificial Intelligence/Camera technology.

I am originally from NSW and all my family still reside there. NSW have rolled out these Mobile Phone Detection cameras across the state in either a fixed or mobile capacity, the mobile cameras look like typical road construction light trailers, instead they have two cameras on movable poles that sit over the lanes of traffic…The cameras are connected to an Artificial Intelligence software system that Automatically assesses any photograph that is taken to verify whether or not a defined Mobile phone offence has been committed and if an infringement needs to be issued.

This is where the system is flawed, there have been quite a few cases that have gone through the courts in NSW where the Cameras have taken photographs of a purported offence, but in actual fact the picture taken was not of a mobile phone, but rather another object such as a can of drink or in one case a black plastic box with a clear lid that 'looked' like a mobile phone. The reflection of a streetlight which gave the impression to the Artificial Intelligence software that there was a phone in the drivers centre cup holder/console when there wasn't and ended up [being used as] an infringement, this I feel would put the alleged offender at an immediate disadvantage.

This is where the issue regarding systems/processes of recourse for alleged offenders comes into question.

He goes on to say:

This bureaucracy…can cause issues for the alleged offender as the process of reviewing can take anywhere over a week or longer meaning that for a driver that may have three points or less left, or is on a 'good behaviour' agreement with the magistrate with one point, would potentially end up having their licence unfairly either suspended or cancelled because of the flaw in the Artificial Intelligence/Camera system…

Without reading the rest, in the time available I want to say that we support this measure. There are concerns within the community about the creep of artificial intelligence into the job of the police. I do not necessarily resist that, but I do think it is something we need to interrogate properly and I intend to during the committee stage.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay) (19:35): I rise tonight to speak on the Statutes Amendment (Budget Measures 2021) Bill 2021. This is a bill to amend the Land Tax Act 1936, the Mining Act 1971, the Motor Vehicles Act 1959, the Payroll Tax Act 2009 and the Road Traffic Act 1961. Let me start by talking about the land tax amendment. The amendment to the Land Tax Act will reduce land tax assessments by 50 per cent, where a building is constructed after 1 July 2021 and is used for a build-to-rent property.

When I started to write some comments about this, I thought it would be important to understand what is exactly meant by build-to-rent. Build-to-rent, referred to as multi-family housing, is a relatively new model of urban housing development. Build-to-rent apartment complexes are designed and constructed by a developer who retains ownership of the building when it is complete. The apartments are then rented out to tenants by the developer, which also manages and maintains the complex. Often, developments have the backing of an institutional investor, like a superannuation fund.

It goes on to say that build-to-rent is a long-established phenomenon in Europe, where it made up nearly one-fifth of the entire commercial market as early as 2020. In Australia, the sector is still relatively small but looks set to grow in the years to come. They say that there are about 10,000 build-to-rent apartments currently in the pipeline in Australia. There are some benefits for it in the fact that you can have longer terms with different renewal conditions, lower no rental bonds and ownership of things like pets and decorating.

I find that this is a very interesting ambition. I know that the Property Council raised this with the Economic and Finance Committee. We support this amendment to the budget measures bill; however, it is important to consider this amendment as part of the government's housing policy. It is to provide incentives for developers to build more rental properties, and it is particularly important, given the current housing crisis here in South Australia. We should be in no doubt that we are in the midst of a housing crisis. In some ways, it is a perfect storm, some of the government's own making and a misfortune of timing and events.

COVID has seen many people return from interstate and overseas to South Australia as flexible working arrangements and remote working become the new normal. With housing prices at a record high, many private investors are taking the opportunity to sell their rental properties whilst the going is good. My electorate office has heard from many tenants, some who have rented property for more than a decade, suddenly having their leases not renewed because the owner plans to sell and, all of a sudden, they need to find alternative housing. The private rental market is currently so competitive that couples who are both working full time are struggling to secure a home.

Whilst continuing to sell off old public housing stock, the government is not investing anywhere near enough to rebuild new stock to replace it, so we are also facing a massive public housing shortage. All measures to improve housing stock and ease pressure on the private and public rental market are positive steps but, when we consider the bill, the guidelines defining what criteria a build-to-rent property would look like are yet to be drafted.

The bill notes the following. There are a minimum number of build-to-rent dwellings or units within a property, and if you look at the New South Wales build-to-rent, that says you must have 50 units to participate in build-to-rent. That is very concerning to me because those who represent regional areas know that it is probably unlikely that you would have an apartment building with 50 apartments.

It seems to me that this is very focused around the CBD of Adelaide and I am concerned that that will limit the number of people who will access it. The minimum lease conditions that must be offered to tenants of the build-to-rent property are unclear and yet to be drafted. There is a lack of detail regarding the nature of ownership and management of the building and the land on which the building is situated.

Any undertakings that the owner may be required to give in relation to the building and the land on which the building is situated needs to be clarified and, within that, consideration of the development of affordable housing. Where does this fit in to build-to-rent? I do not think that the government thinks this is going to take off in any great way because they have only put aside $50,000 in 2023-24 for this land tax rebate and $100,000 in 2024-25. So while we welcome it, and look forward to further details, it is something that is done with little enthusiasm. It is a bit disappointing.

As you can appreciate, Mr Speaker, this gives the Treasurer a very broad remit of terms of what might fall under the category of build-to-rent. Whilst the 50 per cent reduction in land tax is a decent incentive, with such vagueness around which properties will be eligible to apply it is difficult to see how this legislation will have any meaningful impact on the current housing crisis.

Let me now turn to the Mining Act amendment. This amendment seeks to close a loophole in the existing act that allowed tenement holders to pay lower royalties by contracting at less than market value. The amendment will mean that the value of minerals will be market value at the time of sale, regardless of whether they are purchased direct or via a contractor. I understand that there are no examples of this happening to date in South Australia, although there have been examples interstate, and this amendment may be preventative in nature rather than addressing any current concern.

Let me now turn to the payroll tax amendment. The 2021-22 budget announced the government's intention to abolish the film production payroll tax exemption, an ex gratia scheme, and redirect the average annual cost of those schemes to the South Australian Film Corporation's Screen Production Fund. South Australia has a proud history of film production and in recent years has attracted international productions including Hotel Mumbai, Storm Boy, and Mortal Kombat, a movie we have heard about a lot in this house.

Historically, the payroll tax exemption and ex gratia schemes have cost $1.6 million in total per annum, with the breakdown between the cost of the two individual arrangements varying by year. This measure represents a significant shift in film funding, pivoting to resourcing the South Australian Film Corporation to invest in local film production. With international borders closed, there is some rationale for returning to locally produced content. However, it would be a real shame, once we emerge from restrictions and international travel resumes, if the removal of this incentive results in other states or territories attracting international film production instead of South Australia.

The government's own Growth State agenda knows that South Australia is internationally renowned as a premier destination for quality film production. Filmmakers are drawn to the state for multiple reasons: world-class crews; purpose-built, state-of-the-art production facilities at the Adelaide studios; Australia's most competitive suite of government screen incentives and rebates, which can be coupled with Australia's commonwealth incentives; and easy access to diverse and stunning locations.

From blockbuster movies and hit TV shows to apps and console games, screen content produced in South Australia are watched, played and purchased by audiences around the world. The bang for buck generated in terms of jobs, industry development and skills retention by international blockbusters is something we should be striving to retain. While we will support this amendment to this bill, I think we should be willing and ready and agile to move when those borders open again.

I turn now to motor vehicles and the Road Traffic Act amendments. This provides the legislative basis for South Australia Police to roll out new mobile phone detection cameras by making amendments to the Motor Vehicles Act 1959 to ensure consistency of definitions resulting from amendments to the Road Traffic Act 1961 to implement the mobile phone cameras initiative.

The bill also makes amendments to the Road Traffic Act 1961 to allow for the detection of offences that involve use of mobile phone devices while driving using safety cameras which will be installed at high-risk metropolitan sites. These high definition cameras will target drivers illegally using a mobile. Distraction, especially due to using a mobile phone, is one of the key causes of fatalities and serious injuries on our roads. Using a mobile phone while driving can significantly impair a driver's reaction time, visual search patterns, ability to maintain speed and position on the road, and the ability to judge safe gaps in the traffic. It also impacts general awareness of other road users.

We know that research shows that using a mobile phone while driving increases the risk of crashing by at least four times. In 2020, inattention or distraction was attributed as a contributing factor to 56 per cent of crashes involving the loss of life. There is no doubt at all that the opposition supports this amendment. We understand that we must continually raise awareness about distractions that prevent us from driving safely that can impact our own lives and the lives of others.

However, we do note that this is a significant revenue raising opportunity and the question is always: is this balanced equally as a road safety measure or should road safety be the main emphasis of why we introduce new rules? We know that expiations alone do not significantly reduce dangerous behaviours like driving whilst distracted on our roads. I would encourage the government to continue with education and marketing campaigns. We know that there are various ways of educating young people. If I remember, there is the RAP program that goes into schools for year 11s and 12s. I think when we introduce something as significant as this, it must be also together with increased marketing and education.

Of course, we raise the issue of it being a revenue raising opportunity, and this government has form in regard to increasing costs for South Australian motorists. In addition to reaping $15 million in mobile phone fines, they have also slugged taxpayers with $10 million in higher victims of crime levies, $14 million in higher speeding fines, $2.9 million in higher registration costs in outback areas like KI and Roxby Downs, and $24 million in higher administration fees on rego bills and transport transactions. In addition, we have had a $12.7 million increase in higher registration costs. This is all before the government's proposed new highly unpopular electric vehicle tax. Promising lower costs and better services for South Australians at the last election, this government has proven these are hollow words, and broken promises have been shown over successive budgets.

It is anticipated that the South Australian government will ping more than 100,000 motorists between 2022 and 2025 with this new ability, using artificial intelligence. Let us just go through what that means. The current expiation fee for using a mobile phone while driving is $554 plus a $92 victim of crime levy. Therefore, if there are 100,000 drivers at $646, that is about $64.6 million in revenue. However, the budget estimates only forecast $46 million.

When the Treasurer was asked to provide an explanation, he said that some people would struggle to pay. It is worth considering, if this is what we have at the outset, whether it is a good economic practice to write off nearly a quarter of estimated revenue that is generated by an expiation, based on the assumption that many people will be unable to pay. If the Treasurer believes the expiations are too expensive for a third of drivers who are going to be pinged, it brings into focus a question around what behavioural impact the government believes these expiations are actually going to have.

Increasing fees and charges are a blunt instrument in tackling an important road safety challenge in relation to driving while distracted. All of us are increasingly reliant on mobile phones for everything in our lives, including banking, conferencing, retrieving documents, diary management and more, meaning that this dependence is ever increasing. We know the temptation to access your mobile whilst driving also increases. Financial penalties via expiations do have an impact but they are the bluntest instrument possible. For those who simply cannot pay them, they probably do little to deter risky behaviour.

Let us remind ourselves how using a mobile phone while driving distracts you in many ways. It is a physical distraction, handling the phone while driving, taking your hand off the steering wheel to dial a phone number or to answer or end a call. It is a visual distraction, taking your eyes off the road, and it is a cognitive mental distraction by doing two mental tasks at the same time, like having a conversation and driving.

The Towards Zero Together website is a great resource of information about the hazards of dialling and talking on a mobile phone. It talks about riskier decision-making. Deciding whether it is safe to turn in traffic is a complex task. Using a mobile phone while driving affects judgement and concentration and you may fail to choose a safe gap. When making a decision to turn across oncoming traffic, you also tend not to consider the environmental conditions such as when it is raining or the roads are slippery. If you do not make safe turns, you could crash.

There are slower reactions. You generally react more slowly when using a mobile phone, particularly when you are deep in conversation. You may take longer to respond to traffic signals or completely miss them. There is also slower and less controlled braking. During a mobile phone call, your brake reaction time is slower and you brake with more force and less control, which results in shorter stopping distances available between you and the car in front. Wandering out of your lane easily happens if you are on a mobile phone and you are not being alert to your surroundings. You spend less time checking your mirrors and what is going on around you. This affects your ability to monitor and negotiate traffic safely.

This budget measures bill covers a diverse range of topics: land tax, build-to-rent, the Mining Act, the increasing use of artificial intelligence and the increasing of fines. It also has payroll tax and Road Traffic Act implications. We will be supporting this amendment bill, but tonight we raise certain concerns. Build-to-rent seems to be something we are doing but not with much enthusiasm.

Of course, we will raise our concerns on the side of road safety, concerns about the fact that we are already going out saying that potentially up to a third of people cannot pay. It is incredibly concerning and not necessarily the right balance to have in public policy. I commend the bill to the house.

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (19:55): I rise to speak in relation to the Statutes Amendment (Budget Measures 2021) Bill. As keen followers of parliament would know, for every budget there is an associated Appropriation Bill and also a budget measures bill, where various amendments to different pieces of legislation are included. This is where the government of the day often seeks to make particular changes to implement their vision for the budget of that year and the changes they want to see as part of that appropriation.

Consistent with the pretty lacklustre approach we have seen from the state budget this year, this is also a relatively lacklustre budget measures bill. As I have noted in the parliament before, this is the last budget, thankfully, for the Hon. Rob Lucas, who was elected to parliament slightly before I was born and who has been Treasurer in the 1990s and now in the 2020s.

We can really see that this is a budget that is just going through the motions. I have to say that if the member for Bragg had been the Treasurer—as she has apparently mooted her desire to be if the Liberals are re-elected—I am sure there would have been some of her noted social reforms in this budget measures bill. This is not something we see significant reforms in; this is a pretty lacklustre set of measures the government is promoting.

There is one area, though, where I will make significant comments and that is in relation to road safety. This is an area in which I, and I am sure many other members, are passionate that we need to improve our performance in South Australia. I am sure that any of us who represent communities across the state will have met with family members who have been devastated by the loss of loved ones in road fatalities but also—which cannot be forgotten—of people who have sustained serious and lifelong injuries in road crashes across the state.

Those crashes can really upturn people's lives, even if they are not included in the most common road toll statistics. Those crashes are often not reported in the media, but they can have devastating consequences for people. Sadly, I have met many of those families in my electorate and I know the devastating impact it has had on them. With that in mind it is important that we do everything possible to improve road safety.

Just before the last election I was lucky enough and honoured to be road safety minister for the last six months of the previous government. It was an honour because it really is an important area of public policy. It is an intersection of a whole range of areas to make sure that we can improve safety for people on our roads.

Unfortunately, we have seen a significant reduction of that effort under this government since they were elected. It started from day one, when the position of road safety minister was abolished. There is no road safety minister anymore. There are shared responsibilities across a number of ministers who look after road safety issues, but we no longer have a minister dedicated to the task.

That was an important role because you got to sit down with the key agencies—SA Police, the Department for Transport, as well as the Motor Accident Commission, which, when I was minister, had a key role in providing road safety policy as well as road safety promotional campaigns—to work through those issues. There would be different perspectives, there would be debates, you would listen to outside experts and have discussions with the community about how we could lower the road toll, lower the impact of fatalities and serious injuries across our state.

I think abolishing that ministry position has been a retrograde step. I think that it is absolutely important that that should be a ministry in the future. I know that from our team the member for Elizabeth has been doing excellent work in this area, and it is something that we want to see really brought up and improved upon.

Another area where I am significantly concerned by what we have seen is in relation to one of those agencies I would deal with and meet: the Motor Accident Commission. The Motor Accident Commission was an agency up until this government was elected. It was an important agency which provided policy advice and campaigns—independently and with its own independent board and, I think importantly, separately from the police and the transport department—and which could focus on how we could improve road safety as its number one mission.

This gave them a level of independence that I think was very important. I think that they put up campaigns that were very innovative and ones that a normal government agency might have scoffed at and said, 'Maybe we shouldn't have this sort of campaign.' They used the best advertising and research evidence to come up with the best possible campaigns. They also had the ability to draw the best possible evidence from Australia and around the world in terms of road safety and put that in front of the minister with that level of independence that was provided to them from not being the police, from not being the Department for Transport and from having an independent board that was in place.

Unfortunately, one of the previous budget measures bills, I believe, abolished that office and we no longer have that independent role. Those responsibilities have been shuffled between the Department for Transport and the South Australian police. In particular, I do want to shout out to the South Australian police, who play an incredible role in our state, as I have noted many times before, and in particular in road safety. I would like to thank those hardworking officers on the frontline who are the ones who have to deal with the consequences of these fatalities, these crashes on our roads, which in many instances are an absolutely harrowing experience for them.

When I was the minister, I was lucky to go and meet with our police who are dedicated to traffic offences and also the police who investigate road crashes. They do an absolutely fantastic job. I believe very strongly it was a role for an outside agency to provide that different independent advice in relation to the campaigns that we would run.

I think that we saw a significantly greater focus under the previous government in relation to promoting those campaigns, making sure, as the member for Lee noted before, that as we led into public holidays and the like there would be a huge emphasis and a decision to ensure that all the media and all the airwaves were bombarded with messages about road safety. Unfortunately, ministers in the current government have not had that focus, and I think we have seen road safety take a step backwards over the past three years.

Where they have taken a step forward is in relation to what they are charging motorists in terms of fees and charges. That has been the one area in which they have gone further. It has been a Treasury-led exercise and they have been able to say that of course that helps to be a deterrent, but this is also an opportunity for the Treasurer to raise additional revenue, as we are seeing through this budget measures bill. It is important to recollect that this government were elected on a platform of lower costs to South Australians, and we have seen the exact opposite upon their election. This legislation is yet another measure that is breaking that promise.

What we have in this legislation is to increase very substantially what they are going to be charging South Australians in terms of fees for people using mobile phones while they are driving. This is obviously something that is a significant factor in terms of road safety and it is obviously a concern to everybody, the distraction we see on our roads that can lead to very significant consequences. From that measure, it is to be welcomed, but the only measure they are taking is in relation to where they can charge people more.

So people will be aware that this government have already previously increased the charges for fees in relation to using a mobile phone while driving a vehicle—that is now up to $554—plus they have also increased the victims of crime levy, and that is now up to $92. The fine in place for this offence is now $646. What this legislation does is allow an additional measure to be used for mobile phone detection cameras, which will essentially allow a very significant increase in the number of people who are caught doing the wrong thing.

This is really an area where the government have set a clear target, and their budget is reliant upon reaching that target of catching a certain number of people. This is not, 'We are doing this for road safety and maybe no-one extra will be caught.' We know very clearly how many extra people they think they are going to catch.

In 2022-23, they think they are going to catch 35,000 people, and that is going to rake in an additional $15.688 million from South Australians. Then that increases the next year to 37,230 additional people and the government will rake in $17.1 million of additional revenue. Then in 2024-25, 28,100 additional expiations will raise an additional $13.2 million. So this is very clearly the government setting a target of how much additional revenue they are aiming to raise through the adoption of these measures.

The figures provided by the Treasurer's office to the shadow treasurer show that across those three years it expects there to be 100,000 fines issued across those years. The total amount of those fines to be issued would be $46 million from South Australians across those three years. Of course, if you add up the $646 from the 100,000 fines across the three years, that would be in the order of $64 million extra.

Apparently, the difference between those is that government do not anticipate that all motorists will be able to pay those fines. There will be a significant difference between those fines and what they are actually going to raise in revenue. We know there is little deterrent effect from these fines because in the third year of operations there are still over 28,000 fines being handed out. So they are projecting a very small decrease over the course of this measure from when it is being implemented.

This is just one of many measures the government have brought in where they are increasing fines and charges for South Australians. In this current year, across the 2019-20 state budget and the 2020-21 state budget, they are increasing motor vehicle registration above indexation, $12.2 million; Motor Vehicles Act administration fees, $23.2 million; the outer areas concession for motor vehicle registration, $2.8 million; increases in expiations for high-risk offences, $14.1 million; and the victims of crime levy, $9.1 million. That is just this year, and then add these additional fines onto next year and you have very significant increases in fines and charges that this government are collecting from the motorists of South Australia.

We are very concerned as well that some of the measures in relation to road safety that were underway under the previous government have stalled and been delayed under this government. None of those is a greater issue than the huge delay we have seen in implementing a graduated licensing scheme for motorcycle riders in getting their licence. When I was the minister we sat down with the motorcycle riders groups, the Motorcycle Reference Group—all the various different groups: SAPOL, MAC, the department, the riders groups—and we sought and reached agreement on the need for change in this area.

That change was drafted. It was put out for public consultation before the election and then it was delayed year upon year, with no implementation under this government until just very recently. Sadly, I think that delay has had an impact in terms of very significantly delaying those changes that are needed because we know that there are very long lead times in making sure that if we pass something in this parliament for it to have an actual impact on the ground is going to take years and years. Those delays that this government had upon their election have had an impact and we are sadly seeing the effect now.

I was just looking at the statistics in terms of fatalities on South Australian roads at the moment, and they paint a worrying picture of an increase in fatalities that we have seen. Already this year, sadly, 66 people have lost their lives on South Australian roads, whether as drivers, passengers, motorcycle riders or pedestrians. At the same time last year, there were 61, so we have seen a significant increase since then.

If you compare that with 2018, there were 49 at the same time of the year. There has been a significant increase between 2018 and 2021 on our roads. At the same time, you could argue that, particularly with various restrictions, there has probably been a reduction in the amount of traffic on our roads over that time. None of that has pointed out even more than when you look at the fact that last year, in 2020, there was a 16 per cent higher fatality rate on our roads compared with 2018. Even when you account for the fact that the traffic on our roads was significantly down last year because of the impact of COVID-19, restricting travel and restricting movement through much of the course of last year, you would have expected fatalities to go down but, rather, they went up compared with 2018.

We have not seen enough action on this issue. This government has not taken this issue seriously enough, except where it has involved a measure led by Treasury with very specific targets about how much additional revenue they can get to prop up the budget. This needs to be a comprehensive approach across all areas of government, across all policy levers, not just using this one lever to achieve the outcome, because the government's approach so far has not been working.

Lastly, I would like to speak in support of the proposed amendments that have been tabled by the member for Lee in relation to establishing a parliamentary budget advisory service. This is now in place in many states and territories across Australia and the commonwealth government, as well as in many countries around the world. It is for the betterment of government, and it is for the betterment of our system of government and democracy to have the best possible costed policies and to have the best possible debate about what those policies should be, no matter who is in government or who is in opposition in the future.

This is something that we are proposing the parliament should adopt to make sure that in the future, not just this election but the election after that and 10 elections down the track, we have the best possible policies that are costed in the best way to make sure that when people are elected we do not see the sort of thing that happened when this government was elected, where they promised a right-hand turn of a tram costing in the tens of millions of dollars, and that figure ended up being a nine-digit figure once the proper costings of that measure came out, as to what a right-hand turn of the tram just out the front of this building would cost.

Those are the sorts of things that can be avoided if proper information is provided across not just the government and opposition but minor parties and Independents as well to make sure that there is a grounding and a common understanding of what the costs of different measures are. Then we can have the debate and we can have the proper discourse of ideas but not end up with what happened last time, when this government were elected—their costings were way out on a number of projects and things had to be cancelled or significantly changed or costs blew out.

We do not want to see that happen again. This will be a long-term improvement for the state of democracy and for voters, ultimately, in having the ability to make their decisions on all the different policies: government, opposition but also, importantly, minor parties and Independents. If you are Independent, you have essentially got very few resources to be able to undertake this work. If this policy is adopted—if the parliament adopts this—it will make sure that resources are available for them for the best possible debate of ideas.

Ms COOK (Hurtle Vale) (20:15): I will be providing a contribution to the Statutes Amendment (Budget Measures 2021) Bill. This bill makes amendments to the Land Tax Act 1936, the Mining Act 1971, the Motor Vehicles Act 1959, the Road Traffic Act 1961 and the Payroll Tax Act 2009.

Just briefly, the Land Tax Act changes relate to a new scheme where developers or homebuilders can benefit, if they build homes for rental purposes. Of course, in this environment we welcome anything that is going to provide more housing, but this is a very tiny measure. There is a tiny measure: a provision for a land tax discount in this case. In the second half of 2019 it is worth remembering that parliament considered changes relating to their Land Tax 1936.

There was a degree of surprise regarding the proposed changes and, while the changes hoped to raise an additional $40 million, with further investigation it was understood that over $100 million a year would be the result of the proposal, so there was a commitment to other measures to offset this proposal, which was set, really, to impact property owners and many who do not have the disposable income that would be able to pay for this.

Indeed, those few individuals with property having in excess of $1 million of taxable land were at the end of significant tax cuts, and, as you would expect, of course, the larger volume of the residential and commercial property owners were on the other end and required a much larger outlay of money—seriously.

We see the member for Dunstan fails to remain committed to the promises made in the election period of the 2018 election to lower costs, particularly in this regard. In order to gain the support of the crossbench, commitments were made regarding public housing and the reduction of power bills by introducing more energy efficient technologies and other initiatives. The ABC reported on that deal with the Greens at the time:

It includes more than $7 million a year for maintenance and upgrades to existing public housing, $2 million a year for emergency accommodation and transitional housing for people in need and a five-year trial of land tax exemptions for private houses rented as affordable housing.

The Greens also secured solar panels to be installed on 75 per cent of all existing public housing, and solar panels and batteries to be installed on at least 75 per cent of new public housing.

That is public housing new builds. When you go to the Greens website, they provide the following claims:

1. An additional $7.5 million per annum from 2020/21 for upgrades and improvements to existing public housing stock;

2. An additional $2 million per annum from 2020/21 to increase the provision of emergency accommodation and transitional housing for people in need. This includes women and children affected by family violence and people experiencing homelessness;

3. A 5 year trial for a scheme to provide a land tax exemption for private houses that are rented as affordable housing while they are managed by a community housing provider (c.$400K pa for 5 years);

Then there was:

4. Mandating 'universal design' as a building and design standard for 75% of all new public housing.

Then there is:

5. Installing solar panels on a minimum of 75% of all suitable existing public housing;

6. Installing batteries together with solar panels in a minimum of 75% of new public housing;

7. Legislating that land subject to heritage agreements under the Native Vegetation Act is exempt from Land Tax.

What we need to remember is that this government has made an art form of stuffing up the spin and substance of their housing policies. When there are claims that an extra $7.5 million per year for upgrades and maintenance is happening, you have to remember that the minister claimed that maintenance spending was $130 million per year when they tendered the new contracts earlier this year, but in a press release $115 million was the quoted number just months earlier.

If you look in the annual report, which was signed off by the chair of the Housing Authority and the chief executive, you find that the actual spending as audited by the external agencies is closer to $105 million. Where is the truth? We have $130 million, $115 million and $105 million. This is not like Pick a Box; this is what we should be telling people as truth about the expenditure.

When the minister is questioned on this, the answers would make our greatest Olympic gymnast proud—'Go for gold.' In fact, when I listened to some of the commentary around housing, I think Roy and HG would have a good time. You would have the 'battered sav' and the 'hello boys' and all those different routines that they like to commentate on at the Olympics in some sort of parody. That is what we see sometimes here. We are seeing such confusion.

When you go back to what I spoke about before on point 1, this additional $7.5 million per annum, they are already wobbly on this. This is wobbly. The alleged $2 million per year extra for emergency accommodation is another furphy. The motel budget has been demand driven for years. If people need a roof over their head, they have to get it, and that is the way it is, but the measure has blown out completely over the past two or three years. It has gone from $15,000 in the nineties—so 25 years ago—to $7.5 million and more now. This last year, I am sure our eyes are going to water, and of course it is COVID driven to some degree.

The five-year land tax exemption for private owners who allow their properties to be used as community housing just gives the owners the same benefit that already applies to community housing. There is really nothing extra here at all. The mandate for 75 per cent of new public housing to meet universal design criteria has been part of the Housing Trust guidelines for more than a decade. When Labor was in power, the actual rate delivered was often closer to 90 per cent. If this government only achieves the 75 per cent, it is actually a step backwards.

When we talk about solar panels on 75 per cent of existing public housing, it has a huge caveat. The government has to deem it suitable. It does not have listed public criteria. There is no apparent audit or accountability being applied to this, it just has to deem that it is suitable. I know the Greens did mean well, and many of these measures, if they were actual truth, would be good, but I think, sadly, they were served up a game of smoke and mirrors and they swallowed it whole.

When the Liberals talk housing stimulus, they mean a shell game with a couple of $2 coins under cups. When Labor does a housing stimulus, it means hundreds of millions in new investment. The last Labor stimulus gave us the UNO apartments, and that included Youth110 homelessness services, which was really important.

But what is really important now? What needs to be addressed? Let's talk about the housing affordability impact, which is what is supposedly being addressed in part by this measure. Build-to-rent projects commenced from 1 July 2021, and there is an introduction of a 50 per cent land tax discount for eligible new build-to-rent properties. So we are talking about a tiny stimulus and revenue measure from a government that is celebrating dropping numbers on Housing Trust waiting lists to 16,000.

How did that number drop so quickly? You look at the numbers that have dropped and you look in the RoGS and we have serviced fewer people. It does not match up. We are helping fewer people get into houses, but we have had a massive drop in people on the waiting list; it does not make sense. There is a rental crisis, with tens of thousands of South Australians desperately searching for private rental properties. In this measure, in the first year the government committed $50,000, which is almost laughable. In the years following it is $100,000—it is a blip.

For those trying to find a home to rent, which is a considerable issue, how many properties will this equate to? It is fundamentally contentious, enough for a media release but nothing more. The government has made more pirouettes and twists in housing than you would find in the Nutcracker Suite. You have seen flipping and flopping, as I discussed before, that Roy and HG would be proud of. We have fewer staff, fewer homes and fewer customers, but extra executives.

While we have a dire need for public and community housing, a demand for affordable rental properties well outstripping current availability, will this build-to-rent actually do anything? Will this stimulus inspire developers? Will the scheme be used? Will it make a difference? What we want to avoid is the current government's notion of an upgrade to a property—and let me tell you about that. No-one would deny the need for upgrades in some of our public housing properties. For example, I visited several times a woman in Seaton whose Housing Trust property was falling apart around her. The termites had done such terrible damage that the door frames had fallen off. She was told not to go outside because it was dangerous, as a tree was going to fall down on her.

But the maintenance concerns finally were aired and they were ventilated in the media. We appealed to the minister on her behalf, and this woman is getting a transfer and will be moving into a brand-new home. That is a fantastic outcome for someone who has battled all her life and, through no fault of her own, has found herself in a property that is falling down around her ears.

It would be encouraging also to see the minister commit to a real increase in actual stock numbers, rather than celebrating the loss of properties and leaving residents to live in properties that are falling down around them. But the real damage is done to the community when the minister commits to upgrading areas, literally across the road from this woman, where 35 properties are turned into 105. Whilst that is a good thing in theory, the Housing SA properties are not being replaced at the same rate.

Of the 30-plus Housing Trust properties—and I believe the member for Lee might have spoken about this, as he is really fired up about it—the best the minister could do with the land was to replace it with four public housing properties, 12 community housing properties and 51 affordable housing properties. We are not sure to whom, but I can point out that, in the glossy brochure that has been marketed for Seaton, they were kind enough to show these people seeking accommodation in affordable housing cars that were completely unaffordable. There was a Porsche and a Range Rover SUV in the brochure. I get aspiration, but that is ridiculous. Not just in that neighbourhood but in most neighbourhoods in most parts of Adelaide, that is not an affordable vehicle.

Also the brochure was kind enough to point out that there will be parking on only one side of the street, so a yellow line was painted down the brochure on one side and a white line on the other, just to point out how particularly narrow the streets are, because there is no chance that you will be able to park on both sides and get a car through—such awesome attention to detail. We have numbers all over the place, we have prestige vehicles, and we have parking control. The government's priorities are all wrong.

Given the limited commitment to revenue by Treasury, only a small number of properties will benefit from that measure, only a small number of people. I think it speaks again to the public housing program that the Treasurer oversaw in his previous iteration. I want to unpack the Liberals delivering the biggest ever cut to social housing, because I am sick to death of hearing this 'Labor flogged off public housing' thing. I will explain the numbers that are given.

The elections were held on 11 December 1993 and then on 9 February 2002. At 30 June 1993, several months before the election, total public housing was 63,014. At 30 June 2002, several months after the election, total public housing was 49,543. That is a reduction in nine years, by the Liberals in their previous iteration, of 13,471. In eight years and two months, 13,000 gone. Even if we take the starting point in 1994, which was seven months after the election, the stock was 62,322, so we saw the reduction be 12,779 over eight years. That is 1,500 fewer homes per year on average, with a whopping 2,991 between 1999 and 2000. The Liberals flogged off public housing at triple the rate, and would have continued.

During Labor's term in office, Labor established the Nunga loan to boost Aboriginal home ownership. The Liberals promised to bring it back, but broke the promise. Labor secured more than $290 million for remote Aboriginal housing and delivered hundreds of new and upgraded homes in what an independent report labelled as 'the best value for money in Australia'. Labor secured more than $430 million in Nation Building Economic Stimulus funding that delivered more than 1,000 new homes and even provided for the purchase of land.

The majority of these homes were transferred to community housing providers or used for special programs like mental health housing. In contrast, the Liberals are building homes, 1,000 of them, on public land and then selling them off for profit, while they have $900-odd million in the bank, mind you, that they are not spending, that they can access. All the while, they are calling these houses affordable. These homes are not going to the community sector either.

Labor delivered the Affordable Housing Innovation Fund. It delivered hundreds of new homes under a partnership with the community sector. We delivered the equity start home loan. It helped 1,500 social housing tenants provide their homes. And do you know what? Those 1,500 homes are counted in the numbers that the Liberals bleat about getting flogged off by Labor. That is nearly a quarter of them. It is ridiculous.

We introduced the first ever inclusionary zoning in Australia for affordable housing. In contrast, in their last term of government the Liberals trashed public housing at a rate never seen before. Thank goodness they were kicked out. We need to do the same, otherwise they are going to do it again. The numbers are so rubbery it is hard to know what to think.

The Liberal government speaks of a neighbourhood renewal initiative, but it uses a starting figure of 101 properties in Felixstow, Blair Athol, Woodville Gardens and Seaton. What it denies is there were actually houses there that were knocked down some four years ago, ready for a building program. They do not even talk about the correct base number. They fudge the numbers using a crazy marker, and they hope no-one thinks to ask how they arrived at the number zero as a starting point.

I asked questions. Of course, 'Labor, Labor, Labor'. You can google the word through the speeches, but you cannot proudly boast about the input of 101 properties to have an outcome of 146 properties and use this maths for an example when you ignore the fact that there were dozens and dozens of public homes on another piece of land within the same bunch of developments.

Given the limited commitment to the revenue by Treasury, only a tiny number of properties are going to benefit from this tax exemption on the build-to-rent program: 50,000 one year, 100,000 the next, hardly anything. I only hope that the Liberals have considered that they will need materials to build these homes. Mind you, I have to say it is not quite as bad as another party that has committed to 40,000 public homes over four years or something. I do not know if you have done the maths on that or tried to find the wood.

With that, we have questions on the other components of the bill, but close to my heart and important is pointing out the reality of the challenges of housing and social housing. With that, I commend the bill to the house and look forward to questions in the committee stage.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens) (20:35): This is my 23rd budget measures bill and can I say it is probably the most underwhelming I have seen. Budget measures bills are a great way to measure a government's ambition, to measure a confident government, a timid government, a government that is seeking re-election, a government that is outward looking and is confident about its future, but I look at this budget measures bill and I see a government that quite frankly is not quite sure why it exists.

They are making some amendments to the Mining Act and some sensible amendments to the Road Traffic Act; they are making some sensible amendments to the Land Tax Act and the Payroll Tax Act, even after they have done extraordinary damage to the Payroll Tax Act over the last four years, but, unfortunately, here we are with an underwhelming, boring budget measures bill that really should be about the next four years rather than the last four years.

One reform that I am interested in is the amendment to the Mining Tax Act. The bill introduces an amendment to the Mining Act to allow the use of what is called an observable market index price. It is set to take effect from 1 July 2021, and I am not quite sure why there is no retrospectivity to this measure given that I imagine the argument is that if this has occurred in South Australia—and I understand there is no evidence of it having occurred in South Australia—it is a measure that is designed to pick up any activity that may occur in the future but that is not currently occurring. It will be very interesting to know when we get to the committee stage if this is actually factoring in any extra revenue given that the department has told us that there is no record of this activity occurring.

I also want to talk briefly about the Parliamentary Budget Advisory Service. The member for Lee is moving an amendment to introduce a legislative scheme to allow for accurate Treasury advice on the basis of the costing of policies. This measure is a sensible move. We did this at the last election as a result of the agreement with the member for Frome on entering government. Treasury would offer independent parliamentary budget advice to political parties on a confidential basis to allow them to cost their policies accurately.

The Parliamentary Budget Office is a service that, for example, is an operation in a different form in our nation's parliament in Canberra. This service has given Australia exceptionally good service because the government is only as good as the advice it receives, and oppositions are no different. Why would anyone stand between an independent service which allows parliamentarians when going to an election to receive costings for their policies so as not to unnecessarily make pronouncements about cuts or increases in taxes, or cuts or increases in services, but which enables them to accurately plan for policy and measures over the next four, eight or 12 years? The only reason I can think that the government would be opposing this measure is purely partisan, purely political, because they think there is some mileage in their ability to come out and attack the costings of the opposition.

We saw a bit of that today, when the energy minister attempted to discredit the opposition's hydrogen energy plan—in a disorderly breach of standing orders, quite clearly for anyone paying attention, debating an answer four times in a row. The opposition needed no point of order to prove a couple of points: one that the government behave disorderly all the time in the parliament in question time and they are never called up, but, surprisingly, in the opposition if someone coughs they are expelled for 15 minutes. That is not to reflect on the Speaker because he is suffering now and I do not want to make it any worse for him.

But I will say this: the PBAS initiative is a measure that will serve the parliament for generations. The examples that the shadow treasurer gave I think are poignant. The current government claimed that they could build their Yorke Peninsula bypass for about $25 million. They also claimed they could do a right-hand turn for their tram. They also claimed that their tax cuts will create a certain number of jobs, and they also claimed that there would only be a certain level of debt incurred over the forward estimates. Every single prediction they made from the last election has been incorrect in terms of economic outcome, job creation, debt levels and capital costs—all wrong, all of it.

A PBAS, where Treasury can politely, constructively inform the opposition or the government or a crossbench member or whoever has a balance of power the true cost to the taxpayer and the budget of the measures that they wish to legislate, implement or champion, can only give the public a better outcome policy-wise. There is no real argument against it other than the partisan one, which is this attempt at gotcha politics which, quite frankly, does not work. We saw it on Sunday.

The government go away and they use either the department or the minister and his staff to come up and claim that Labor has got its costings wrong on the hydrogen policy. We use the same economics agency, modelling firm, that Angus Taylor uses, that AEMO uses, that the Australian Energy Regulator uses, and that the New South Wales government uses, to come up with an alternative position, and the government achieved no political benefit whatsoever other than pleasing themselves that they were able to get a 'he said, she said' story in the paper. Does that really serve the taxpayer?

What really serves the taxpayer is the ability of parliamentarians, who have a constitutional responsibility either to be shadow ministers or ministers, to get accurate costings for their policies. How could that possibly not be in the public interest? How could that possibly do any harm to our democratic process? We are not talking about a PBAS for political use, where we can have a Treasurer say something in a budget speech and then go to the independent PBAS agency and get a costing and get a different number so we can embarrass the government.

What we are after is a system that we implemented, where that information could not be used in a partisan way. The PBAS would not be operational for the entire time of the parliament—just the last six to eight months of the term—to allow a conscientious, diligent parliamentarian to get accurate costings from our independent Public Service about the true cost of their policy positions.

I have been here since 1997. The first time I was here, it was a minority parliament; the crossbench had the balance of power. From 2002 to 2006, the crossbench had the balance of power. From 2006 to 2010, it was a majority government—one term of the three I have been here. Minority government, minority government, and now the current government is a minority again.

Majority government in South Australia is not the norm; it is the exception. So, given that we have crossbench members who hold the fate of the treasury bench in their hands, why would we not give them the tools to make responsible commitments? Why not? What is the public harm, other than an insecure, childish government that is fearful of parliamentarians having information.

As I said, this is my 23rd budget measures bill. It is timid, it is fearful and it is a government that is attempting to be a small target but cannot help making itself a large target—a government that won a clear majority at the election and now is in a minority. Staggering stuff, yet here we are and the best it can come up with for an agenda over the next four years is a land tax amendment, a mining tax amendment for something that does not occur and probably will not occur, sensible changes to the Motor Vehicles Act and sensible changes to the Payroll Tax Act.

This is rats and mice reform. Important, yes, it is, but hardly something carving out an agenda for the next four years. In fact, when you look at the budget measures bill you ask yourself: what is the agenda? What is the plan for the next four years? What is the plan post COVID? What is it? If it is simply addressing road traffic congestion, okay, sure, that is the business of government.

What is the new agenda? We want to tax electric vehicles—that is apparently one new agenda that has come out of the budget process. Other than that, I cannot think of much more that the government is doing. It concerns me that when sensible amendments are put up to the government to try to assist members of parliament who might have a vision for the next four years, who might have a vision to try to generationally change South Australia for the betterment of the state, the government wants to take away the tools that empower those parliamentarians to come up with that policy position. That is just a frightened, inward-looking government looking backwards, rather than a government that is looking forwards.

Minority government can have its benefits. It is not my preferred option for governance. I think a majority government often does work better, but I do remember former Premier Rann saying that when, in minority government between 2002 and 2006, Karlene Maywald and Rory McEwen joined, it was like having guests over: you are always on your best behaviour.

Minority governments with minority members in the cabinet often bring out the very best in governments, and it was indeed a very good government, but it was not timid and it was not inward looking. It was adventurous and it had an agenda and it attempted to change the state. One of those things that it attempted to change the state was with mining. It had a very aggressive agenda to try to grow mining and build a third tier of the economy for South Australia to try to create some resilience rather than being solely reliant on agriculture and manufacturing.

The catchphrase today is 'sovereign capability'. In this budget measures bill, a budget that is spending $21 billion of our money, I see nothing that builds our sovereign capability to produce more vaccines, to do more investment in machine learning, to invest in new technologies, to create new fields of endeavour, or to invest in our universities and our schools. All I am seeing from this government is the same old tired rhetoric that is, quite frankly, devoid of any vision.

Giving land tax discounts for new eligible build-to-rent properties is not an initiative the government came up with because it believes it is important. It is an initiative it came up with because it is bleeding with a certain constituency because it made land tax changes and because it cut revenue so dramatically when it came to office that Treasury advised it on how to make up some of that lost revenue. So it brought in aggregation laws that the former Labor government, when I was Treasurer, knocked back eight times.

At every budget, at every Mid-Year Budget Review, my response was, 'Don't be stupid.' Like Graham Richardson said of our opponents in 1993, 'They were stupid and stupid often.' Well, we will see if that motto grows again. As to the Mining Act changes, the government is arguing against itself telling us, 'This doesn't happen now. We don't think it's going to happen. We're changing it just in case it does.' Okay, fair enough, we will support that, sure—just in case it does.

The motor vehicles changes are a good and sensible piece of legislation we support. Thank goodness for our South Australian police. Haven't they served us exceptionally well over the last 18 months during the pandemic? Where would we have been without the leadership of Grant Stevens and his over 4,000 sworn officers who, quite frankly, have shown that they are the very best of us? They deserve our support and they deserve our thanks and gratitude.

As we go on through this inspiring budget measures bill, set to inspire people in the lead-up to the election, there is payroll tax. They want to abolish the film production payroll tax exemption and ex gratia scheme and redirect the average annual cost of those schemes to a South Australian Film Corporation Screen Production Fund, so moving around money for themselves to try to incentivise more production work here.

This has always been something I have struggled to come to grips with. I remember the detailed cabinet discussions we had about the incentives we offered on the basis of film production in South Australia, and it was almost a legislated entitlement: the more you spent, the bigger the discount was. It seems to me now the government is legislating to enshrine those changes, rather than form a policy. I would love to see the Treasury advice on that, but of course we never will.

Again, the idea that we should be incentivising film is a good idea. It is a good idea to try to get production internationally here in South Australia, but it is also a good idea to encourage local entrepreneurship and local filmmakers. We have a rich tradition of that here in South Australia. Some of the greatest Australian movies ever made were filmed here in South Australia—Mad Max, Breaker Morant, Storm Boy. Those movies were made in South Australia without largesse, and some of them were Australian made, and they were excellent productions and encouraged young Australian talent.

What I fear the government is doing is entrenching the idea of importing talent, subsidising their work here, then they leave, rather than promoting our own talent to try to get a head start. But I am sure that it will help in some way promote the local industry because, of all the industries that have been affected most by COVID, hospitality has been one of the hardest hit.

The arts community, which actually contributes a lot to the economic development of this state, which is why the former government put the arts department into state development because we believed so passionately that the arts sector is actually an economic driver and not just about artistic pursuit. I am not seeing much in this government to try to encourage more economic development in the arts sector.

Again, going through these changes, I cannot see much of an agenda, other than catching a mining company that might be inappropriately valuing the value of their mineral sale price when they sell minerals to themselves to try to minimise the taxes that they pay. I do point out that I understand that SIMEC does sell iron ore to itself at international prices, even though they get it out of the ground at a discount, and then do not pay a royalty on whatever feedstock they put into the steelworks at Whyalla. Transportation costs are lower, production costs are lower, yet the steelworks pays an international price for the iron ore it uses in its feedstock to build steel.

I wonder whether the government or the mining agency has considered that inequity to try to create and keep Australian jobs here. When we are compelling the steelworks to buy its iron ore from an iron ore mine just down the road at an international price as if it had been mined in Brazil or Western Australia and pay the same fees as it would be if it was coming from there, we should start questioning ourselves about whether or not we are truly supporting South Australian steel jobs. With those few casual remarks, and the enjoyment I have had watching you wince, sitting in your chair, from neck pain, I commend the bill—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: He is alright, he is tough, he can take it. I commend the bill to the house and look forward to coming up with some questions that will have Greg Raymond rushing through the budget papers trying to find an answer.

The SPEAKER: The deputy leader.

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (20:55): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I wish you well and hope you are travelling nicely, as do we all on this side of the chamber, I am sure. Evening sessions can be quite interesting and entertaining, can't they?

In talking about this bill, I would like to start where the excellent speech the member for West Torrens just gave touched on many times, this question of agenda. I believe we are in politics for such a short time—slightly longer when you are the member for West Torrens, but for most of us a relatively short time—and every day is precious, every budget is precious, every piece of legislation, because they slip through our fingers and then we are gone. That is true of every piece of legislation that comes here and that is true every year.

However, we are now in a time of extraordinary pressure on the certainty and confidence we have in our future. I was at a dinner just last night with various businesspeople from around Adelaide. They heard from the guest speaker and were very interested, and then one by one the questions came: what is it we can tell our young people about their future? These are well-heeled people. Their individual children will be financially okay, but their anxiety is for their children, their children's friends and their children's generation being able to feel confident about where South Australia is going.

There are many reasons that young people lack that confidence, lack that sense of, 'Yes, things are difficult but we are going to make it through. We've got the right skills, we've got the right ingredients, we can see a pathway.' There are many reasons. Some of them affect all the world and some of them are more concentrated in Australia.

Of course the pandemic has put particular pressure on us and made us anxious about the health of older and more vulnerable Australians, in particular, but actually about the health of everyone. It has made us anxious about the security of our economy, particularly the visitor, tourism and arts elements of our economy, anything to do with international engagement, including getting people who traditionally come from overseas to work in businesses. All that has put tremendous pressure on people's sense of being able to reliably predict what is to come.

On top of that, and separate to it, we have this big pressure of the planet being under strain. Climate change is bearing down on us, no longer in the future but here, and there is biodiversity loss, which we think about intermittently, often when a particular species is being discussed or there is a big fire and we see the loss of wildlife in that area.

Actually, it is not unrelated to the pandemic. One day maybe we will find out exactly where this particular one came from, but we do know that as we encroach more and more into wilderness, as we take wild animals and bring them into captivity, eat them, use their materials, we expose ourselves more and more to the risk of diseases that jump species. Those big pressures of climate change, of biodiversity loss, also press down and make us question what our future is going to be.

In Australia, we have a not unique but a particularly evident problem of an economy that is far too exposed on low complexity, high-carbon commodities, far too dependent on big coal exports from the Eastern States, far too exposed on growing things and digging things out of the ground and not value-adding, shipping them overseas.

You cannot afford to be that economy in this century. You cannot afford to be that economy that is high-carbon exposed, of course, but you also cannot afford to be an economy that is not complex, that is not doing value-adding. As we lose China and increasingly struggle to maintain China as our trade partner, as the recipient of so many of those commodities, and as we see the global economy contracting and going into a perilous stage through the experience of the pandemic and through global warming impacts, we see an economy that has had it good for a long time due to the very hard work of many Australians, but that has not transformed itself into the modern advanced industrial economy that it could easily have been and can still be and must be.

The lack of investment in this nation, in people, is what has let us down. We have coasted on good commodity prices for too long and chosen not to invest properly in education, early childhood, and every schoolchild—not just those who are well off—having a quality education. Crucially, with our further education and our higher education, we have pulled apart the training system, commercialised it and reduced its funding and we have made our universities go around the world trying to attract students in order to fund research that would make this country rich. When that tap got turned off with COVID, we have seen the struggles the universities have been going through, we have seen how they have shed staff, we have seen how they are contracting in research.

All of this is an act of choice by various governments over many years. Not every government has always done the wrong thing, and I say that because I am Labor and I am going to claim that we did a little bit better than the other side, but that is not the purpose of what I am talking about. Every government in Australia, to a lesser or greater extent, has failed to make this transition. They are big concepts and they are the ones that we should be grappling with as politicians in Canberra and in every state and territory jurisdiction. They should be the focus that we have for our future.

We have this budget measures bill. We have an opportunity to do things. We have an opportunity as we try to find what the post COVID or the 'living with COVID without many people dying' world looks like, what a nation that has warmed over a degree already looks like, what a nation that is struggling with its relationship with China looks like, but it is a wasted opportunity. I can criticise or question some of the elements in it—and I will—but more important than anything is that it is a document that does little, sitting alongside a budget that did little, sitting alongside now four years of budgets that have been timid when what is required right now is boldness and some degree of confidence in shaping the future.

We cannot keep pretending that everything is normal and fine and it just needs a little tweaking. This piece of legislation does exactly that and it is a piece with the attitude generally, I have found, of this government. There are four areas in this piece of legislation, and there are two that are worthy of a bit of discussion.

One is about the treatment of land tax to encourage developers to build for rental purposes. If you did not know the history, it looks a little odd. It looks okay, 'Yes, well, we certainly need more housing for people to rent,' and this is a way for government to use its controls to do something about that, but it is costing something like $100,000 in 2024-25. It is not doing very much, and it is not having much impact. So what is it doing here?

If you take the context that we all remember well of the extraordinary exhibition that was the land tax debate, that went from raising money to costing money to a pathway that managed to land a bill that had support from people in the upper house but still managed to make a lot of people who do development very angry, you find that there are all sorts of funny little efforts to make it look like the government is doing something on affordable housing and on social housing, and this appears to be one of those.

I noted earlier that the member for Hurtle Vale talked about what the Greens deal was to land, as the ABC reported, the land tax deal. It seems that they were convinced by this government that there would be an effort made to improve the quality of housing as well as the quantity of housing available.

I have a list from the Greens website: an additional $7.5 million per annum from 2020-21 for upgrades and improvements to existing housing stock; an additional $2 million per annum from 2020-21 to increase the provision of emergency accommodation and transitional housing for people in need; a five-year trial for a scheme to provide a land tax exemption for private houses that are rented as affordable housing while they are managed by a community housing provider; mandating 'universal design' as a building and design standard for 75 per cent of all new public housing; installing solar panels on a minimum of 75 per cent of all suitable existing public housing; installing batteries together with solar panels in a minimum of 75 per cent of new public housing; and also legislating that land subject to heritage agreements under the Native Vegetation Act is exempt from land tax.

That is a nice little bit that brings us back to the Greens' core, original purpose. In fairness, they have grown far beyond that original purpose in defending the natural environment. So all of those sound like something that ought to be done and that the government have agreed to do, but in this particular bill what they have done is say that they will bring in this land tax exemption—a discount, a 50 per cent discount for build-to-rent properties—not spend much money on it and not describe in this legislation what the criteria will be, how this will actually work.

There is no estimate in the bill—because the bill would not contain an estimate—on how many are expected, and there are concerns that we are hearing from some people who might be interested in availing themselves of this about whether it will be capped and how real it is. So there will be many questions, I think, that will be worthy of consideration when we reach the committee stage on this bill and I am sure that the member for Hurtle Vale, as well as the shadow treasurer, will be very interested to ask those questions.

A second element that is worthy of some note is this question of the facility to raise more money from people using their mobile phones while driving. As has been said by many people on this side, who could disagree that we should be discouraging people from using mobile phones while driving? Of course we should be discouraging them, but there are some elements of this that worry me or at least make me think that we ought to have a wider debate before we settle on one or a number of measures to address this concern.

One is whether we are seeking to be overly reliant on the deterrent that is represented by fines. The money being raised from this is not slated to go down over time so, if we were regarding it as a useful deterrent, we ought to expect that we would over time get less income from it; otherwise, it would not be working. It would just be another source of revenue. It reminds me of the dramatic increase, the 40 per cent increase, on the solid waste levy for materials that really ought to be recycled, that if they go to landfill you pay more money.

Labor did this in government as well, although we did not do this latest escalation of a 40 per cent increase that came after the local governments had already set their budgets, which was extraordinary. That is just a clumsy implementation in some ways, but you would think that there would be an expectation that, 'If we increase the cost by this much then we will see this drop-off in waste going to landfill.'

When I asked first of all in the estimates process, there had not been that sort of assessment. It really looked like it was just a way of funding, moving sand around on the beaches, which as we all know my electorate is not happy about and I am sure there is a better way that can make all electorates along the coastline happy.

With the waste levy there was an expected drop-off we found in the budget papers, an anticipated drop-off of 4,000 tonnes, so a reduction of 4,000 tonnes driven by this increase in the waste levy, but in fact it went up by 37,000 tonnes. There is a gap of 41,000. It went up 37,000 on the year before instead of down 4,000, so everyone paid a lot more both because they were charged more per tonne and because they threw away more. That is money in. That is not trying to change behaviour.

I worry that there is a trap in overemphasising fines for people using mobile phones and for other vehicle misdemeanours that actually becomes not about stopping it happening; it is about having money. What else could you do? You can educate people to behave differently. We all know that in June 2019 the MAC was discontinued. I looked it up on the website earlier and it just said it closed on 30 June 2019.

It has been brought into the police, as I understand it, and there is some effort done and you do see some billboards but I think everyone can agree how good some of those advertisements were when the MAC was a properly operating independent agency and how important it is that that effort is not just regarded as set and forget but is constantly being worked on, constantly seen as the newer generation comes through and start to get their driver's licence, what they need to hear, what they will respond to and by what method you can communicate with them.

That seems to me to be at least as worthy of serious consideration as, 'Let's just put up the mobile phone charges.' There is, of course, another problem with the mobile phone charges, as there are with any really steep fines, which is that the impact is disproportionate. It is not disproportionate for people who deserve to pay more. It is not like it goes up because you have done it more than once—although maybe it does. I do not know much about the fines, maybe you do get double the fine the second time, but I believe it is just a standard $646 for breaking the law. It is disproportionate because some people simply cannot afford that.

Much as you might say, 'Just don't break the law,' what about the kids in that family? A $646 bill suddenly arriving in many households—20 per cent, 30 per cent, possibly 40 per cent of South Australians would find that hugely challenging for their family budget. It would add pressure to the family and it would mean that choices will be made to pay that and to go without, or to pay for food, clothing and education needs. That is a huge fine for people.

I think we can very easily forget because we are so well rewarded for the work that we do, and we should be so grateful that the people of South Australia choose to pay us well to do this, but so many South Australians would find that a crippling bill to get, and it is not expected to go down. We are expecting to just keep raking it in, and that troubles me.

We do not oppose it, we want to dissuade people from using their mobile phones, but we are concerned—I am concerned—that we ought to be having that kind of debate as parliamentarians about how best to deal with the problem that is caused by mobile phones. I understand that something like nearly 50 per cent of deaths and nearly 50 per cent of serious injury cases involve distraction, much of which is caused by mobile phones.

I will just conclude with a reference to the PBAS, as it is called—the service that would help with costing. I cannot understand why everyone would not want that. People on that side are going to be on this side. We were on that side once. We came over here; we will go back. Independents will always exist. We are not going to not have Independents in this chamber, I would suspect, forever. Why would we not want everyone to at least have the same information, the same capacity to know a single point of truth for what things really cost? With that, I conclude my remarks.

Ms HILDYARD (Reynell) (21:15): This Statutes Amendment (Budget Measures 2021) Bill makes amendments to the Land Tax Act 1936, the Mining Act 1971, the Motor Vehicles Act 1959, the Road Traffic Act 1961 and the Payroll Tax Act 2009. In rising this evening to speak to this bill, I will deal with the proposed amendments to a number of the acts. I start with the proposed amendments to the Land Tax Act 1936 and, in doing so, highlight the total and utter inadequacy of this bill to in any way address the current pressing housing crisis impacting so many South Australian women, children and families.

It is of great, deep concern that every week and often multiple times per week I have community members approach my office, desperately worried about their inability to continue to have a place to call home and about the fact that there are so few affordable rental properties available and so very many people attending inspections and applying for those that are indeed available. On top of this, we also have many community members approach my office completely unable to afford private rental and desperately needing to secure a Housing SA property before they experience homelessness.

My heart goes out to each of these people and their families who find themselves in such desperately worrying circumstances. I thank them for so bravely sharing their stories with me and for asking me to advocate with and for them. What they are going through is utterly unacceptable. Having and being able to afford and rely on a safe place to call home is a fundamental human right. I greatly worry about those who struggle so hard to do so, and I deeply worry about the many women who come to my office who want to flee or who have fled domestic violence.

As they forge a new, safer pathway, free from violence, they absolutely need that safe place to call home. Too many of them have limited choices in terms of access to secure housing. Way too many question their ability to access a secure home as they contemplate their future. Sadly, this worry and questioning impact their decision. We know that economic security is imperative for women who seek to leave a violent partner or ex partner behind.

I am constantly frustrated that women continue to bear the brunt of men's violence and constantly frustrated and angry, as are many South Australians, that this government has failed to adequately invest in domestic violence prevention and early intervention to stop violence before it starts. It just has not. In terms of its failure to address the growing housing shortage, it has also abandoned those women who find themselves in crisis, desperately seeking a safe haven to rebuild their life.

In the government's recent Women's Leadership and Economic Security Strategy 2021-2024 it was absolutely disappointing that there were no clear actions to address women's economic inequality, and it was absolutely devastating that the statement failed to go anywhere near addressing nor to adequately address in any way the number of women engaged in insecure work and who, as a result of being engaged in insecure work, are experiencing economic inequality.

The utterly tiny proposed changes in this bill for eligible new build-to-rent properties are entirely inadequate. They are minuscule. I am sure it is not just the lateness of the hour that means you could miss them if you blinked. They are small, they are not visionary or courageous and they go nowhere near positively addressing the rental housing crisis our community continues to confront.

By Treasury's own estimate, this measure will impact only a small number of properties. Again, they do next to nothing to increase supply and ease the rental crisis. That is because this bill is all about the Treasurer trying to mend the fences with industry and with the many families that he simply disregarded with this government's strange approach and changes to South Australia's land tax regime. There are many, many South Australians and organisations that will never forget this government's changes to aggregated land holdings and to land held in trusts as part of its 2019-20 state budget.

Those opposite introduced these ill thought-out changes without knowing how many properties would be impacted. They introduced them without consideration of how much revenue would be raised. They introduced them without knowledge nor a plan of how the changes would be implemented. They introduced them without having any regard whatsoever to the individuals and the families impacted, to the individuals and families who packed out forums across the state, expressing their utter bewilderment at what was being proposed.

On this side of the house, we listened to those people: those opposite did not. In refusing to listen, they managed to get many of their own supporters offside and left others utterly perplexed by their disastrous approach. It was such a strange decision, one that delivered a regressive, retrospective tax on these community members—a spectacular own goal if we have ever seen one.

As mentioned, at the time, we on this side of the house listened to the many people who were rightly aggrieved by this government's decision-making and perplexed by its motivations—the mums and dads, the grandparents, the self-employed and the retirees, moderate investors targeted by the so-called reforms for the benefit of the big end of town. What about these families, the families and small and medium-size businesses that were targeted by this cruel cash grab? This deal was focused on being a revenue raiser for this government, a deal which ended up costing the budget millions in the years after their wheeling and dealing was complete.

Also giving rise to questions about this bill are the proposed Motor Vehicles Act 1959 and Road Traffic Act 1961 amendments, which will enable SA Police to roll out new mobile phone detection cameras. Measures to detect mobile phone usage whilst driving are supported by the opposition, as distraction on our roads, especially through the use of a mobile telephone whilst driving, is tragically one of the leading causes of fatalities and serious injury accidents on our South Australian roads.

We wholeheartedly agree that driving whilst talking or texting on a handheld mobile telephone and the resultant risk from doing so is absolutely unacceptable. We agree that measures must be taken to prevent and end such behaviour. A range of thoroughly thought through measures that keep people safe must be fully considered. These amendments, however, are not thoroughly thought out. They are not inclusive of a vital education component.

These amendments, however, are projected to take $46 million out of the pockets of South Australian motorists over the coming three years. These changes were announced in last year's budget, but the draft legislation we understand was not readied so as to be included in last year's budget measures bill. Just like the 2019 land tax changes, these measures were inserted into the budget to generate more revenue for a government simply drowning in debt. There is little evidence of the deterrent effect of these changes, given the evidence of the number of fines the government anticipates will be handed out over the first three years of these cameras operating.

Given these startling numbers, it will be very difficult to convince the public that this is anything more than a revenue-raising exercise from a government that has plunged South Australia into record levels of debt, indeed a debt that will haunt future generations of South Australians and one that this government has absolutely no plan to pay down, a huge debt racked up by a party who liked to view themselves as economic managers but who have delivered record debt, service cuts and rampant privatisations.

Budgets offer governments an opportunity to express their values and their priorities, and this budget showed exactly what and who this government values and what and who this government does not value. The centrepiece of this government's $1.8 billion deficit 2020-21 state budget was a $662 million city basketball stadium. Meanwhile, the budget included a cruel $274 million in cuts to health funding by 2023, meaning 371 health jobs will simply be lost, and the new Women's and Children's Hospital will be delayed until at least 2027.

There was nothing in that budget to address gender inequality and to prevent the scourge of domestic violence. There were cuts to sporting grants and a redirection of funds that should have been directed to community clubs and sporting organisations, a redirection to private companies. There was little to address economic inequality, little to create jobs and little to support our desperately struggling arts events and hospitality sectors. The Treasurer's explanation that he does not anticipate that all motorists will be able to pay the fines is a remarkable concession and remark from a government that pays scant attention to detail, or who in so many instances is 'just not across the detail'.

So if we are not significantly decreasing the number of mobile telephones used whilst driving, then this measure must simply be about revenue raising. This government has made a habit of treating South Australian motorists as revenue raisers, despite their nonstop hollow slogans pre the last state election, loosely promising lower prices and better services, that clearly would do no such thing—very hollow promises that do not stack up at all when considering increases flagged for next year, including motorists paying an extra $15 million in mobile telephone fines, $10 million in higher victims of crime levies, $14 million in higher speeding fines, $2.9 million in higher registration costs in regional areas, $24 million in higher administrative fees on registration bills and transport transactions, and $12.7 million in higher registration costs.

All of this is before the government's new electric vehicle tax is rolled out—a tax which has the potential to deter motorists from changing to hybrid and electric vehicles. Everything that can possibly be done must be done to address the horrific prevalence of injuries and fatalities caused through motor vehicle accidents, accidents that tear families and communities apart, accidents that our incredible South Australian police and South Australian ambulance officers courageously deal with day in and day out, and I wholeheartedly thank them for that.

In this term of this government, we have seen funding for the Motor Accident Commission, an organisation that provided such valuable education and awareness-raising programs to deter people from doing the wrong thing, simply slashed. As the member for Port Adelaide pointed out in her words earlier, the MAC website now simply says that it closed in 2019.

As the member for Kaurna pointed out, we no longer have a dedicated road safety minister. Communities across the state, including those in the member for Mawson's electorate, have been crying out desperately for road upgrades, including on the treacherous southern stretch of Main South Road. Increased fines and fees for motorists, coupled with these cuts to funding and a lack of action on key areas, are not commensurate with doing everything that must be done for the sake of the safety of South Australian families and communities.

I now turn briefly to the amendments focused on changes to the Payroll Tax Act of 1936. As this house is aware, in its most recent budget this government announced its intention to abolish the film production payroll tax exemption and ex gratia scheme and direct the average yearly costs of those measures to the South Australian Film Corporation's Screen Production Fund. It is understood that revenue that may be raised as a result of this amendment, and the cessation of associated relief provided on a case-by-case basis for film productions that do not meet the criteria of the exemption in the Payroll Tax Act 1936 may possibly be used to increase the Screen Production Fund administered by the South Australian Film Corporation.

The Screen Production Fund enables the production of screen content for commercial release via theatrical, broadcast or digital content platforms that generate positive significant economic outcomes for the South Australian industry, with funded projects expected to be substantially produced in South Australia. To date, the payroll tax exemption and ex gratia schemes have cost approximately $1.6 million in total per annum, with the breakdown between the cost of the two individual arrangements changing year in and year out.

What is not clear is how any films or any screen content that may now be invested in will be selected. What criteria will be used? Is this a function that the minister for the arts will play a role in? Will the Minister for Innovation and Skills have a say in which films, which screen content and which companies are selected? These questions must be answered. Our arts community is already deeply frustrated that government leadership in the South Australian arts is diluted, with various aspects of it spread across departments and ministers.

As we continue to confront the pandemic and its ongoing impact, we need strong leadership that contemplates the entirety of the arts ecosystem, and we need to clearly understand how beneficiaries of this new arrangement will be selected and using what criteria. As the member for West Torrens said, the arts, hospitality and events sectors have been deeply hit by this pandemic. They need visionary government leadership. They need a government that understands the contribution of the arts to our community, to our economy and to our wellbeing.

In closing, I turn to the member for Lee's proposed amendments to this budget measures bill, and I commend him for bringing them to the house. Having a parliamentary budget advisory service has been adopted in various forms across the country and indeed in other parts of the world. It has been adopted elsewhere because communities are demanding that the information they receive prior to their participation in the electoral process is robust. Parliaments are responding to that call by setting up processes and services that provide independent and consistent costings and analyses of promises and policies that communities can consider prior to exercising their democratic rights.

The South Australian community want clear information that they can rely on. That is exactly what the member for Lee proposes to give them through his set of amendments, and they deserve it. As the member for West Torrens spoke about, they also deserve a government that is brave and prepared to support the setting up of this service. I thank the member for Lee for bringing these amendments to the house and I look forward to our debate upon them.

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart—Minister for Energy and Mining) (21:35): I thank all those who have made contributions to this budget measures bill. I will be very brief. Let me say that I have heard a lot of things this evening, some of which I think is reasonable and much of which I think is unreasonable, but this is the parliament and everybody gets to put their view forward.

I have also heard a lot of repetition this evening—people coming down with essentially speech after speech, which are all quite similar, and that is everybody's option and everybody's right as well. I believe that we will be going into committee on this bill now, and I commend the bill to the house on behalf of the Treasurer.

Bill read a second time.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee) (21:36): I move:

That it be an instruction to the committee of the whole house on the Statutes Amendment (Budget Measures 2021) Bill that it have the power to consider a new clause relating to an amendment of the Public Finance and Audit Act.

As I foreshadowed in my second reading contribution, the opposition has filed an amendment to require the budget measures bill to include an amendment to the Public Finance and Audit Act and that is, essentially, to establish a parliamentary budget advisory service. This is the same regime that was established before the last state election, and one which served the parliament and the people of South Australia quite well. This is a similar regime to what occurs with the commonwealth parliament and also the Victorian parliament.

It is of course in the public's interest that an independent service is available to all MPs and to all registered political parties so that in the formulation of policies, initiatives, programs and commitments that have been made in an election period, the public can have some assurance that they have had the ruler run over them by an independent service that has all the resources available at its fingertips of the Treasury department and other agencies with which the Treasury department might consult in assessing those initiatives. This is a reasonable initiative.

At the moment, this parliament has an almost unprecedented number of Independent and crossbench MPs. At the moment, we have five here in the house and, of course, we have our usual complement—if I can refer to them like that—in the other place. We have six crossbench MPs. We have a situation in this place where even the Liberal Party does not have a majority at the moment on the floor of the house and has to rely on commitments from Independents in order to maintain the confidence of the house, and that is likely to be the case as we head towards the election period.

It is not unreasonable that the government will facilitate what is required by the amendment that this motion foreshadows. I am advised that it is required to be moved in this manner because the long title of the current bill does not contemplate an amendment to the Public Finance and Audit Act.

What I am seeking to do is not have the amendment moved and considered by virtue of this motion but in a procedural sense to allow the committee, once we get to it—presumably, at some stage later this sitting week—to consider the amendment. Just to be clear for those members opposite and for those other members and people who might be listening in closely to this debate, a vote on this motion does not accept the amendment. A vote on this motion merely enables the committee to contemplate the amendment that the opposition has moved in this regard. I strongly encourage all members to support it.

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart—Minister for Energy and Mining) (21:40): Certainly, the government opposes the motion, as it opposes the amendment that the motion precludes. We see no reason for this to happen, and there are quite a few reasons for that. If we get to debating the amendment itself, then we will go into that in a lot more detail. For now, suffice to say this is something that has been in place previously and, speaking from experience, was of no value, of no use to the opposition. This is not about the government trying to hold the opposition back, whether they be Labor Party members of the opposition or Independent members of the opposition, keeping in mind that, while there is that Labor and Independent distinction, they are collectively the opposition.

The budget measures bill has some very clear initiatives within it. We have heard for several hours today and this evening about those initiatives, so I will not go back over them. That is the government's agenda within the budget measures bill. Of course, the budget has a lot more in it than that. To try to bring in the Public Finance and Audit Act as part of the budget measures bill is an opportunity that is open to the opposition, but the reason for doing so, in my view and in the government's view, is entirely inappropriate, unnecessary and unproductive, so the government opposes this contingent motion.

The house divided on the motion:

Ayes 17

Noes 18

Majority 1

AYES
Bedford, F.E. Bettison, Z.L. Bignell, L.W.K.
Boyer, B.I. Brown, M.E. Close, S.E.
Cook, N.F. Hildyard, K.A. Hughes, E.J.
Koutsantonis, A. Malinauskas, P. Michaels, A.
Mullighan, S.C. (teller) Odenwalder, L.K. Picton, C.J.
Stinson, J.M. Wortley, D.
NOES
Basham, D.K.B. Chapman, V.A. Cregan, D.
Ellis, F.J. Harvey, R.M. (teller) Knoll, S.K.
Marshall, S.S. McBride, N. Murray, S.
Patterson, S.J.R. Pisoni, D.G. Sanderson, R.
Speirs, D.J. Tarzia, V.A. Treloar, P.A.
van Holst Pellekaan, D.C. Whetstone, T.J. Wingard, C.L.
PAIRS
Bell, T.S. Pederick, A.S. Brock, G.G.
Gardner, J.A.W. Gee, J.P. Luethen, P.
Piccolo, A. Power, C. Szakacs, J.K.
Cowdrey, M.J.

Motion thus negatived.

Committee Stage

In committee.

Clause 1.

The CHAIR: I thank the minister's advisers, who have had a particularly long day waiting for this very special moment. We have 14 clauses to deal with and a title, and there are two amendments on file which seek to amend clause 2. Are there any questions on clause 1? There are no questions on clause 1.

Clause passed.

Clause 2.

The CHAIR: The Minister for Energy and Mining has two amendments in his name. Would you like to move them concurrently?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: Yes. I move:

Amendment No 1 [EnergyMin–1]—

Page 2, line 9 [clause 2(3)]—Delete ‘and Part 5 are’ and substitute ‘is’

Amendment No 2 [EnergyMin–1]—

Page 2, after line 9—Insert:

(3a) Part 5 comes into operation on 1 July 2022.

I hope this is pretty straightforward. There was going to be the adjustment with regard to payroll tax and then the money essentially provided to do similar work but in a different way. The timing has not been quite in kilter so the impact or the implementation of the payroll tax deduction being removed is delayed, but the implementation of the provision of the money towards the screen production work in the other way remains, so essentially there is a one-year slippage from the government's perspective but that seems to be quite appropriate from an industry perspective.

The CHAIR: The minister has moved amendments Nos 1 and 2 in his name. Does anyone else wish to speak to that?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Perhaps not speak to it but perhaps ask questions. In effect, this changes the commencement arrangements for different elements of the bill, if I understand the minister's explanation.

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: Just one element.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Just one element, which is for the mining royalties and payroll tax; is that correct?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: Just the payroll tax.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: It seems that the bill was worded in the event that it might be passed and assented to before 1 July. So the practical effect of amendment No. 1 is that it comes into effect from the date on which it is assented to; is that correct?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: I will try to deal with both things at once. The first amendment means that only part 3 comes in on 1 July this year, and the second amendment means that part 5 comes in on 1 July next year. Essentially it is saying that there were two things that were expected to happen simultaneously. It has not been possible and, in the bluntest of terms, the benefit of the payroll tax deduction will continue for an extra year but the benefit of the additional funding that was going to come in on 1 July this year will still come into effect from 1 July this year.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: So payroll tax will essentially be in effect from 1 July this year, or the other way around—mining royalties?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: No change to payroll tax until next year. It was certainly intended to be 1 July this year but that was not possible, so it has been delayed until next year.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: My only other question on the amendment is: have any applications been made to the government or any agreements been entered into regarding those payroll tax arrangements for screen productions from 1 July that would otherwise have benefited from the change in legislation?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: If I understand your question, everything is as we would both expect it to be. The $1.6 million has been moved to be provided with effect from 1 July this year for the Screen Production Fund. The money that would have come from the increase in payroll tax has still flowed through.

The reduction in payroll tax remains, and I am advised that nobody has been inadvertently harmed with regard to missing out on the 50 per cent reduction in payroll tax that they would normally have expected the bill was going to put into place from 1 July this year but that will now be 1 July next year.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: No applications or similar approaches to government have been made since 1 July until now?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: I am advised that whether there have been any particular applications that might have been dealt with outside of the way this amendment would suggest they be dealt with needs to be taken on notice, but we do not think so. As you would understand, different companies pay payroll tax in different ways, but essentially there is a monthly assessment for most, and I am advised that we believe payroll tax has been paid as it would appropriately be under the amendment, because that is exactly the same as it would have been without this bill at all. Until this bill passes both houses of parliament, there would not actually be a change in the way that RevenueSA goes about things.

Amendments carried.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Does the government have a date by which it hopes the proclamation may occur for subclause (4)?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: September 2022.

Clause as amended passed.

Clause 3 passed.

Clause 4.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: New section 7A(1)(c) talks about the commissioner being satisfied that the building is being used for a build-to-rent property in accordance with the guidelines approved by the Treasurer, and in paragraph (d) that 'an application for the reduction is made in accordance with this section'.

Can the minister provide to the house an explanation about, firstly, how an application would be made by somebody seeking to avail themselves of this regime and, secondly, how the commissioner would be satisfied that the building is actually being used for that purpose. So what form must the application take and how will it be assessed, and once the building is built how does the commissioner go about making sure that it is being used as it was promised?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: Member for Lee, I will not be able to give you the information that you are seeking at the moment, but it is already known that the Treasurer's guidelines are yet to be determined and shared. No doubt the Treasurer knows exactly what he wants to do with regard to this, and so there is an opportunity perhaps to seek more information between the houses or perhaps in debate in the other chamber.

The simple answer to your question is that the Treasurer will provide his guidelines. The specific answer to your question is that the commissioner will make assessments on the two things that you have asked in line with those guidelines.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Thank you, minister, for providing that information. When I was briefed, I was advised that the basis for guidelines to be developed would be the New South Wales build-to-rent guidelines, which I understand have been in effect for some time. My question is to the Treasurer: in developing those guidelines, are they to go out and be consulted on for feedback from industry and the community or are they just to be developed, effectively, internally and then promulgated?

When this scheme is in operation and the commissioner seeks to be assured that properties are actually being used for what they were promised to be used for, what actual effort is being planned for the commissioner to undertake that sort of compliance activity? Are there additional staff or resources that are being provided to RevenueSA?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: With regard to the Treasurer's guidelines, it will be up to the Treasurer, as you would understand, to determine exactly what they are. I am advised that normal practice includes consultation. I am not in a position to make a commitment one way or the other on behalf of the Treasurer, but it is normal practice that consultation would be included.

With regard to the commissioner's resources, that will be a matter to be discussed between the commissioner and the Treasurer. It is expected that the commissioner's existing resources will be more than sufficient to undertake the work that is required, but if that turns out not to be the case—if the commissioner hypothetically decides that he has a different view—he is probably better placed than most to engage with the Treasurer to seek additional resources, if they are necessary.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: If a developer successfully avails themselves of this scheme and they manage to come up with a development that satisfies the guidelines that will apply to the scheme—the minimum number of dwellings, for example, and an appropriate rental rate, for example, and the fact that it will be rented—does the scheme continue to apply? Does the land tax discount continue to apply to that property if transfer of the ownership occurs yet all the other criteria continue to be met? Can a developer develop one of these properties and then sell it on but on the basis that the new owner still maintains it as a build-to-rent property?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: It is expected that the guidelines will include a requirement for a reassessment to be made if a property is transferred. Certainly, the commissioner would assess the circumstances under new ownership, the circumstances in their entirety under new ownership. It is anticipated that the guidelines will include a requirement that if a property owner who has met all those requirements you described sells it on to another owner, then at that point in time an assessment or perhaps a reassessment will be made.

The CHAIR: I will allow one more question.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Thank you. New section 7A(2)(a)(ii) talks about minimum lease conditions. Has the government considered yet what sort of range of rent would be considered appropriate for this scheme?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: I am advised that the Treasurer's guidelines will include that sort of information, but it is certainly anticipated that they will be very clear with regard to whether minimum tenure is offered to qualify, whether potentially, hypothetically, percentages of market rent are included. Those are just hypothetical examples, but it is very clearly expected that the Treasurer's guidelines will make those minimum lease conditions very clear.

Clause passed.

Clause 5.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Sir, I understood that I might have a colleague that had an interest in this particular area, so I draw your attention to the state of the house.

The CHAIR: My attention has been drawn to the state of the house. I am counting and noting that a quorum is not present, so please ring the bells.

A quorum having been formed:

The CHAIR: We have questions on clause 5.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: It seems I have been left at the altar, so to speak, Mr Chair.

Members interjecting:

The CHAIR: Order! That's of no matter.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Always the bridesmaid I am, sir. With regard to part 3, clause 5, I asked a couple of questions during the briefing that officers were good enough to provide to me about why this amendment is being sought. The advice provided to me was that there had not been a problem with this or there was not any concern about this, so I guess for the benefit of the house and also to hear from the minister himself, could he explain why we are pursuing this change if there has not been a problem in this area to date?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: The fact that this has not been a problem in the past is not a reason not to look for improvements where we can find them. The current situation is that royalties would be based on contract prices. In an ideal world contract prices will be 100 per cent reflective of the market, but we do not live in an ideal world, and we know that contract prices could be arranged so that they are different from the market, particularly when you have companies that potentially have both vertical and horizontal integration.

In fact, I am advised that it was industry that came to the government and said, 'Look, we understand a contract price, so if I were to inflate or deflate my contract price with a willing partner, whether that partner was a brother/sister company or whether it was a more arms-length relationship but with a very positive working relationship, we could adjust the price upon which you would base the royalties?' The answer, of course, was yes. So it was industry that came looking for that clarification.

What we are doing is taking this opportunity to make it very clear that, if ever there is a situation where a contract price does not accurately reflect the true market price at the time, then from a royalty calculation perspective it will be the true market price at the time that determines the royalties rather than the contract price.

Let me just finish by saying we would all be aware of companies that are broken up into various divisions, and they have their internal transfer pricing, and sometimes it is even external transfer pricing but between two closely related organisations. They might have perfectly sensible and perfectly legal reasons for setting the transfer price for the product between those two different organisations at something other than the market price. They might have a very good, sensible, legal and aboveboard reason for doing that, but we want to make sure that the royalties that we charge are at the market price, not the contract price, if ever there is a difference between the contract price and the market price.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I am grateful for the minister's advice that it was not necessarily a greedy government chasing down extra revenue. It was, in fact, perhaps something that can restore our faith in what can be sometimes the darkest habits of capitalism—that in this case the company has approached the government and said, 'Do you know, I have been tossing and turning in bed at night. It's worrying me that I'm not paying my full tax obligations to the state government, and I really think you should change legislation to make sure that, in the event that there might be an arrangement that I currently have, you are extracting the greatest amount of royalties from me and the minerals that I uncover.' I have to say that that is heartening to hear.

The Hon. D.C. van Holst Pellekaan: Good government.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: It is not expected. The minister might be right: it might be reflective of a good government that a company would come and do that. Can I ask which company it was?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: Let me start at the end: no, I am not going to disclose the companies, but for the benefit of the house and that of the member for Lee let me also share the very real possibility that it is not actually about a company offering to pay more royalties. It could potentially be about any company that for its own reasons, perfectly legal, perfectly aboveboard, has a desire to sell raw material from one of its arms to another one of its arms, perhaps at a higher price, and does not want to be caught paying royalties on a higher-priced contract which it may have for some reason or other. So it is not necessarily a low contract and offering to pay more royalties. It might actually be a high contract and seeking to pay lower, market-based royalties.

But let us put all those hypotheticals aside. My suggestion to the house is that we agree that the market price is the price upon which royalties should be paid, and if a company has a sensible, aboveboard, legal reason to enter into contracts different from market price—and there are good reasons why a company might choose to do that—that is their business. If they choose to do that, though, we will charge royalties based on the fair market price.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I am grateful to the minister even more for his response, because, rather than a company willing to come to the government and fess up that they are not paying enough tax, what actually might be the case, based on the minister's response, is that a company might be locked into a contractual arrangement, where it might be selling the minerals that it has mined at a high contract price, but the actual market price, daily price or an ongoing price for that mineral might be lower. That means that, if they did not have that high contract price that would attract a high royalty rate, if they have perhaps a floating price or a fluctuating market price, they will pay a lower royalty.

A company might say, 'Despite me having contracted a higher price, which is quite lucrative for my company, I would like the opportunity to pay a lesser tax rate on the daily market basis of that.' I think that is probably closer to the mark of what the incentive behind this is, but I live in hope that the previous answer was in fact the correct one and that we are entering into a new age where companies may be willing to prostrate themselves to the government and cough up as much revenue as they could possibly imagine.

When it comes to assessing the difference between a company's contracted price for the sale of its minerals and the daily market price, who in the department will be making that regular, perhaps even daily, assessment for the royalties? What level of resourcing is going into that?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: There are a couple of things in the member's statements and questions. Most recently, he has tried to say that this is mischievous because people might pay not enough royalties. He has tried to say it is potentially mischievous because they might pay too much royalties. What I am saying very clearly is, whether it might, because of a contract, be too little or whether it might, because of a contract, be too much, our government intends it to be the market price. Regardless of all of those hypotheticals, we think that that is the right place for it to be.

With regard to the question about how the market price is set, that is something that the Treasurer and the Department of Treasury and Finance would do. But I have extraordinarily high confidence in the key people in the Department for Energy and Mining who would give advice to the Treasurer with regard to what the fair market price might be, if the Treasurer sought that advice or if they thought it was important to provide it regardless. The Department for Energy and Mining has a great deal of information about this and would support the Treasurer in any way possible.

I have also been given a very good example by my adviser: it is no different to stamp duty on property. The principle of what we are doing is no different to stamp duty on property. There might be reasons why somebody might contract a price away from the market price, but at the end of the day, if it is deemed that the stamp duty applicable on the contract price is not appropriate because the market price of that property is different to the contract price, then the stamp duty applies to what is deemed to be the fair market price of the property. It is exactly the same principle here with the minerals.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I guess, just to almost re-put my previous question—

The CHAIR: A point of clarification.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: A point of clarification—I am grateful for your wise counsel as always, sir. My previous question was about how the assessment will be made between what a contract arrangement is and the royalty rate that should apply to those contractual arrangements and the market price.

Your response was that the Treasurer will determine what the market price is. Usually the market would do that and it would get published in some sort of journal, like the Financial Review, or whatever the mining equivalent of that is, but nonetheless the Treasurer, as omnipotent as he is in this government, will set the market price or determine what he believes to be the market price, but who will assess the difference between the market price and the contracted price to which royalties are applied, assess whether or not there is a difference and take some corrective action?

My question was about resourcing. Who is doing that task and what level of resourcing is there to undertake that task?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: I have been provided with some very thorough information to share with the committee and the member opposite. With regard to identification of market pricing, the Treasurer has recognised the following mineral markets for the purpose of that section of the bill:

the London Metal Exchange, as a recognised market for the purpose of determining the market value of copper, aluminium, zinc, lead, nickel, tin, steel and cobalt;

the London Bullion Market Association, as a recognised market for the purpose of determining the market value of gold and silver;

the Platts Daily Iron Ore Assessments, as set out in the publication titled SBB Steel Markets Daily, published by S&P Global Platts, as a recognised market for the purpose of determining the market value of iron ore; and

the prices as published by independent market consultants UxC and TradeTech, as a recognised market for the purpose of determining the market value of uranium.

In answer to the second part of the question from the member, which was who will look deeply into these things in addition to being able to assess the public indices that are available: no different from what happens currently. Royalty management administration is undertaken by the Department for Energy and Mining royalty team, and none of the changes will increase any work level activities for the proactive management of royalties for the state.

It was the proactive work of this team that has led to the changes that close out and ensure that royalties paid to the state are fair and based on market prices at the time of the sale. The royalty team is made up of a team of three auditors/compliance people, one market analyst, systems and forecasting specialists, two accountants, who administer the payment processing and all follow-up activities regarding returns and payments, and one director leading that team—a total of 6.5 FTEs, who managed this year a record of $323 million in royalties from approximately 320 royalty payers over approximately 1,500 tenements.

This is a professional team of accountants and economists focused on the fair and correct receipt of royalties for the state. Compliance is a focus of the team, and on average between 45 and 60 audits are undertaken each year. Over the last five years, the audit program has recovered over $10 million in royalty recoveries from the audit program.

An important and constant focus of the team is monitoring the commodity prices, exchange rates, company announcements and production information for the producers in SA. This is important as the royalty team of the Department for Energy and Mining prepares and undertakes the royalty forecasts for the state as part of the budget papers. The amendments being proposed will help to ensure that the focus on the recovery of the fair and correct royalty payments for the state is maintained and that any identified loopholes or opportunities to minimise market price declarations, and hence royalties, are minimised.

I have to say that in my short, but not brief, 3½ years roughly as Minister for Energy and Mining I cannot speak highly enough of that team of people. They do an extremely good job. They work very closely with Treasury with regard to their forecasts. They are very proactive as well with regard to their engagement with royalty payers and coming up with some very smart, very clever and very flexible and productive ways that those royalty payers can work with the state government.

They do that because they know that these royalties, the royalties paid by these mining companies to the state, actually go towards the building of hospitals, the building of roads, the building of schools, the provision of disability services, police, nurses, teachers, on and on. I hope that is enough detail for the member opposite. Let me just say again: that team that does that work is well resourced, that team that does that work does not expect to require any further additional resources because of these proposed changes and that team does an outstanding job.

Mr MALINAUSKAS: Mr Chair, I draw your attention to the state of the committee.

A quorum having been formed:

Clause passed.

Clause 6 passed.

Clause 7.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I think we established via the government's amendments that the mining changes in the budget measures bill will come into effect from 1 July next year.

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: Sorry, is that a question?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: No, it was a statement preceding a question, but if I have that wrong I am happy to be corrected.

The CHAIR: No, I think we dealt with that in relation to the amendment.

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: Just for clarification, it was the adjustment to the stamp duty deduction that was delayed a year. The changes to the mining royalties are not delayed.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: With regard to clause 7 and transitional provisions, this will in effect apply from 1 July this year, from 2021. The transitional provision in subclause (2) talks about 'a recognition or declaration of the Treasurer made by notice in the Gazette' under a particular section of the Mining Act. Could the minister walk me through that process and what it refers to?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: What I would like to do is take that question on notice and provide an answer to the opposition between the houses.

Clause passed.

Clause 8.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: This might be easily clarified, but we are now into the changes to the Motor Vehicles Act for the purpose of, I understand, rolling out the mobile detection cameras. Can I ask what the purpose is of the additional definition of 'series of photographs'? Is that not currently contemplated by other traffic camera-related legislative provisions that we have?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: I am advised that this is about trying to be sure that this definition provides flexibility with regard to what is admissible as evidence, given that this is new technology and, in fact, potentially evolving technology. We would all understand that different types of cameras and things like that get better and better and can do more and more things over time. The choice of definition of 'series of photographs', which includes 'film, video or other continuous visual recording', is essentially a bit of a bit of a catch-all so that as the types of equipment that take these recordings improve, the recordings they provide can still be admissible as evidence.

Clause passed.

Clause 9.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: On my reading, and I am happy to be corrected, it seems that we are seeking to change some wording of the existing act to move away from a singular photograph to what might be a series of, presumably, sequential photographs. Can I ask why that is necessary?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: I am advised that the answer to this question is very similar to the answer to the previous question. Accepting the fact that the technology and equipment used will almost certainly evolve over time, we want to be sure that whatever that evolving technology produces is useful and is captured under these proposed changes. Whether it is a still shot, a series of still shots or some other type of ongoing digital technology, whatever that might be, whatever the continuously improving technology for this purpose can produce, it should be useful and productive in this context.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: It might strike you, Chair, and you, minister, that the question I am about to ask is a bit odd. As members of parliament, we all from time to time get aggrieved motorists writing to us with some sense of frustration seeking to overturn a traffic infringement, sometimes one which has been issued after photographic evidence, or not. There are all sorts of circumstances in which entreaties are made that, in the constituent's mind, should perhaps mean that they should not receive a fine or penalty for their driving behaviour.

Perhaps the member for Bragg will remember this better than the rest of us: when speed cameras were introduced, there was a long debate around what 'sufficient' evidence was in order to ensure that somebody had been detected speeding, breaking the speed limit, and there were all sorts of additional provisions which were placed I think at the insistence of the late Hon. Mr Such to ensure that cameras were calibrated, etc.

Rather than have a singular piece of evidence which shows that somebody is contravening the law in this case—i.e. using their mobile phone when they should not be—we are talking about a series of photos, according to the wording here, which together and collectively might demonstrate that somebody is breaking the law, but if one was selected, or even a number were selected, out of sequence or out of the total but non-sequentially, it might not demonstrate it.

Has the government thought through how wording this provision in this way, using a series of photographs taken to be together, is sufficient in order to demonstrate proof of the offence and will not in fact provide grounds for a clever appellant, if I can put it like that, a motorist, to get out of the fine or the charge, given the lengthy history that many of us in the courts have had with people successfully challenging these sorts of matters?

The CHAIR: It is quite a long question, member for Lee. Can I summarise it by saying that you are asking whether a series of photographs will be accepted as proof?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I think that is what the clause is saying. My question was: if a series of photographs is now able to be used to demonstrate proof of the offence, must the whole series demonstrate the offence, or will the police or other authority try to rely on samples of the series, or will the fact that we are now talking about a series enable the flipside, where the defence can try to say the government is unable to prove which singular piece of evidence demonstrates the offence?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: Thank you, Chair, and thank you for your clarification of the question as well. It will be no surprise to the member for Lee that I, as the member for Stuart, am familiar with the people who come to me regularly, being such a large electorate with a wide range of people, some of whom are commuting to Adelaide from Kapunda every day for work and others who are travelling hundreds of thousands of kilometres around the Far North of the state on a regular basis.

I do take the member's question very seriously, it is an issue and, yes, I was in parliament with the late Dr Bob Such as well, so I am familiar with those types of challenges. The advice that I have been given, I suppose, is in three parts, to answer the question. One is, similarly to what I said before, we want a definition that can cover as many possibilities of where the technology can go so that when a new type of camera is invented we do not have to come back and create another definition.

The next part is that we expect that the technology that will be available, or that will actually be used for this, will be in a series of photos rather than just one photo. Then the third part is with regard to the very fair question about whether this is going to be robust enough to hopefully make sure that people who are captured through this actually were committing an offence and there are not legal loopholes and all that sort of thing.

So the advice on that third part is that to the very best of not only the drafters but the key people who have been developing this legislation, to the very best of their ability, it does capture that. But the tail end of that third part of the answer to the question is that, while the government and everybody believe that it does it as well as possible, it does have to be said that you never know for sure until somebody tries.

So we do not want to remove the ability of somebody who believes that they have been caught unfairly in this type of situation to be able to claim their innocence. We do not want to remove that. That is a very important foundation for us. We believe that this captures it as well as it possibly can, but it will not be until we have it tested in real life that we will know for sure.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I understand these cameras have recently come into use in other jurisdictions. Is this how provisions are worded in those jurisdictions?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: I am advised that the specifics of how this provision is worded in other states is something that we would be very happy to provide between the houses. But perhaps, more importantly, exactly which cameras will be used here in South Australia has not been determined yet. Other states, as the member quite rightly says, are using a range of different cameras and they are using them in a range of different ways.

It is not right to say that exactly what is happening in other states is exactly what will happen in South Australia. Exactly what cameras, what equipment, and exactly how they will be operated is still being determined. First of all, I am happy to get all the definitions and the similarities or otherwise from other states for the member between the houses. Secondly, whether they are exactly the same or whether they are different is not necessarily relevant because we have not determined exactly which cameras we will use in South Australia.

Clause passed.

Remaining clauses (10 to 14) and title passed.

Bill reported with amendment.

Third Reading

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart—Minister for Energy and Mining) (22:51): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time and passed.

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