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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-11-30 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

Attorney-General

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (15:35): There can be no denying the fact that at the very moment that South Australians are looking for certainty in their government they are witnessing an unmitigated circus. There is no state parliament around our great country right now that is in more turmoil than the one the government has provided in this house, the house of the people, during the midst of a declared emergency that is being felt by every last citizen of the state.

At the very time that South Australians want to have confidence that this government and its ministers of the Crown are walking into the house telling the truth, giving them guidance, we have a Premier who is more than comfortable with having an Attorney-General of the state, the first law officer of the state, knowingly mislead the people of South Australia in none other than their own parliament.

It is worth contemplating the significance of this. It is worth contemplating the counterfactual to the parliament not acting today by suspending the Attorney-General. We now have a Premier who has sent a message to the entirety of his front bench that they should feel comfortable with walking into this house and misleading it with impunity because as far as he is concerned there will be no consequence for that action.

How can South Australians tuning in to question time today or their parliament's proceedings at any point into the future have any confidence that the words coming out of the mouths of the executive branch of the government are truthful if the Premier will not admonish those who knowingly mislead the house?

Mr Speaker, I invite you and every other South Australian to contemplate if, 12 months ago, we foresaw a circumstance where the Attorney-General of the state would make a substantial decision in regard to a substantial investment decision, have a direct pecuniary interest associated with the outcome of that decision, then not declare the conflict associated with that decision, then come into this place and mislead it about her pecuniary interest and the lack of declaration of a conflict and then be found by a committee to have misled the house on that exact fact.

Then the Premier decides that the Deputy Premier was 'going nowhere', and then, days later the South Australian public turn on their television set and find out that the Deputy Premier is indeed going somewhere—that is, losing that position. Why? Because she was conflicted as the Attorney-General having oversight of the Ombudsman.

We then find out that she was resigning the Deputy Premiership and her other associated portfolios, but not the very portfolio in which the Premier said she had a conflict; then he fails to admonish the Attorney-General—the still Attorney-General, if you are not following—who is conflicted for not knowingly misleading the house; and then the parliament has to suspend the Attorney-General for six days in a largely unprecedented manner.

If I told you 12 months ago that this was going to occur this year, you would have told me I was delusional. You would have said, 'That is farcical'. You could not script something so implausible, yet here we are.

Only months away from a state election, we are now witnessing the dark ages of the Liberal Party coming back to haunt every last South Australian—the full division, the full chaos on total display. This is a Liberal Party that is culturally incapable of providing stable government, utterly incapable of providing stable government, and this is all happening live, in technicolour, on everyone's television sets at the very time that we are in a declared emergency.

This is no laughing matter. This is an incredibly serious situation, and those opposite are hoping that a virus will cover up all their sins. Well, I have news for them: it will not. South Australians still place a value on truth. South Australians still expect governments to be united and South Australians expect the government of the day to be focusing on their future rather than on who the Deputy Premier is.

They are paying attention and so are we, and we very much look forward to the option being presented before the people of this state in a few months' time between division and chaos and stable government.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Time has expired.

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