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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-06-14 Daily Xml
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Bills

Appropriation Bill 2022

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 2 June 2022.)

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Leader of the Opposition) (11:00): Before and during the election campaign we heard repeatedly from the Premier that he and his party had a clear plan for the future of South Australia. He repeatedly said that that plan had jobs at its very heart and, to use the Premier's words, he said 'a plan which is not just about the next four years, but it is about the next generation'. Rather than seeing a long-term plan outlined in the first Malinauskas government budget, we see a budget that comprehensively fails to meet the expectations the Premier set just a few short months ago.

This is not a budget that sets even a four-year plan, never mind a plan for the next generation. It is a budget that is short term. It is focused on smoke and mirrors. It aims to get the books in order for a short period of time to try to pay for some election commitments, some of which we of course know will never occur, and it does nothing to set this state up for jobs growth, nor deal with what is an extremely likely cost-of-living crisis that is facing our state's immediate economic future.

This budget has been characterised by that trait that we see time and time again. We saw it from 2002 to 2018 and we saw it during the four years of the Labor Party in opposition and we see it again now: the trait of arrogance. Arrogance is going to become the central defining characteristic of this government; I have no doubt whatsoever about that. It has started straightaway. We see the hubris. We see the arrogance. We see it continue as if 2018 to 2022 did not even happen.

We see a level of arrogance that seems to suggest that the world has returned to its rightful place: Labor is back in power, that is the way it should be and they can get on with the same old approach. The short-termism, the media headlines and the jobs for the boys—that is just the way that Labor in this state works, and this budget continues that same old pattern. We should be disappointed by this.

To quote a term used by the Premier when he gave his first budget reply speech as opposition leader in 2018, he claimed that our budget at the time had no central uplifting theme. Well, I am afraid there is little in the way of a central uplifting theme in this budget whatsoever. This budget benefits hugely from the legacy the Marshall Liberal government left them, and that is simply the case. Consumer and business confidence was rising; in fact, it was at a level not seen in recent times.

All throughout our time in government consumer and business confidence rose. It rose in 2018 and 2019. Even though globally it got an incredibly significant knock from the COVID-19 pandemic, even though that global catastrophe, in many senses, set in in early 2020, business in this state and households in this state continued to have a level of confidence that at some points in the early times of the pandemic we never thought was possible—but it happened.

It happened because we had a government in the Marshall Liberal government relentlessly focused on keeping the cost of doing business low, on keeping costs to South Australian households low and ensuring that every decision that we made was setting South Australia up for the future. New jobs were reported at near decade-high levels during our time in government. Job vacancies were increasing at a faster rate than anywhere else in the nation.

Residential construction work in South Australia was rising while across the nation it was falling. Annual tourist spending in South Australia was at a record $8.1 billion, with 40,500 people directly employed in our visitor economy across 18,000 businesses—many of them, the lifeblood of regional South Australia—and that trend continued throughout our term. We equipped many more South Australians with the skills and training for the jobs of tomorrow and the incentive to remain in their home state to seek rewarding careers, rather than having to move elsewhere.

I want to pay tribute to the member for Unley's relentless focus on traineeship and apprenticeship numbers during his time as minister, as someone who was ultimately focused on outcomes for employed South Australians, particularly getting more young people into the workplace through traineeships and apprenticeships. In fact, during our term in government, more than 3,300 employers took on an apprentice for the very first time, something that hopefully both they and the apprentice achieved a huge amount from and will want to repeat time and time again into the future.

This approach turned around South Australia's disastrous performance under Labor, when there was a 66 per cent decline in these commencements between 2012 and 2018. Our achievement means that businesses now have more skilled workers and can have confidence that taking on a trainee, taking on an apprentice, will set their business up for success. It will set their business up in a way that they have a culture of investing in young workers, giving them the skills that will benefit their business. It will set up that often younger person—not always a young person, but primarily young people—for success in this state going forward.

Unlike Labor and their budget, for four years we provided for future generations. We set this state up for future generations. We cut taxes, as we said we would. Importantly, we dealt with the payroll tax burden in this state, essentially abolishing payroll tax for small to medium-sized businesses across our state. We had the emergency services levy for households and businesses, it having been pushed up in the most unfair way by the previous government.

We dealt with water prices, reducing the average household water bill by $200 per annum and the average business water bill by some $1,300 per annum. We also put significant downward pressure on power prices while also building grid stability into the network in South Australia—so important for business confidence and certainty.

The Marshall government had South Australia's economic growth leading our nation for the first time on record. We delivered on our commitments to the people of South Australia. We did not let the arrival of COVID-19 distract us from that challenge. Nor did we need a taxpayer-funded Premier's Delivery Unit to ensure that we could get on and deliver our commitments and deliver for South Australians—because we restored responsible and effective cabinet government to South Australia after the failed Labor years.

Unlike Labor, our ministers took responsibility and accepted accountability for ensuring that the agencies that we had responsibility for delivered. We did not hand that responsibility to a faceless delivery unit—of course, it is not that faceless; we know one of the faces. We took responsibility and owned our decisions and drove those decisions through the cabinet process. They want Rik Morris to show them how (that is the face we know, by the way). Heaven help our state! We need to see ministers lead, not outsourcing to delivery units or commissioners and a whole range of unelected officials.

Before the election, the Premier said time after time that he was going to govern to ensure there were jobs for future generations. But he is already failing this generation, never mind future generations, with the admission in this budget that it will not continue to produce the jobs and economic growth South Australia so desperately needs. While it also comprehensively fails to do anything about the here and now challenge of rising cost-of-living pressures, these are the great challenges that this budget presents, or had the opportunity to solve, setting South Australia up for job success and dealing with the challenges—and we know they are growing challenges—of doing business and surviving in South Australia.

The Marshall Liberal government had no warning about COVID-19, but we responded immediately and effectively to it, with more than $4 billion of support provided to South Australian households and businesses to keep them going during the darkest and most uncertain times that this state has faced for many, many decades. This was the nation's largest stimulus as a share of GSP to support the economy and save as many livelihoods and local businesses as possible.

Labor constantly complained that we were not spending enough on sustaining and securing jobs in this state. Our careful budget management supported nation-leading economic growth while passing on to this government an operating surplus in the 2022-23 financial year. Our budget management has left this government in a position to respond more effectively than it has so far to cost-of-living pressures. Other governments across the nation have announced a range of initiatives, recognising these cost-of-living challenges and cost of doing business challenges that are either already here or likely to emerge on the immediate horizon. But here in South Australia, in the budget most recently handed down, we saw no such suite of initiatives.

It seems that, despite the new Premier's Delivery Unit, its ministers lack the capacity to deal with a major challenge in the same way that the Marshall Liberal government responded to the arrival of COVID-19. We stepped up, we responded, but there could be an equally debilitating set of business circumstances arriving in the immediate future. There is no response; this budget has its head in the sand. In fact, in the lead-up to the election Labor only had one jobs project, one jobs announcement, and that of course was their Hydrogen Jobs Plan. That has also since become pretty much their only environmental project as well.

Massive cuts to the environment department were announced in the budget, but, 'Don't worry—we've got a hydrogen jobs plan and a hydrogen plant coming which will deal with the state's environmental challenges in a few years' time.' So $70 million was ripped from the environment and energy portfolio, significant climate projects were cut, projects that delivered greening and climate resilience for our city and regional towns cut, but, 'Don't worry, folks—we've got our Hydrogen Jobs Plan and our hydrogen plant is coming.'

In the fullness of time, I am convinced that this election commitment, the Hydrogen Jobs Plan, will either be so significantly changed that it will be unrecognisable from what was originally announced or it will be shelved altogether, because we know that this project has been homed in on by business experts and energy experts across this nation, as both unnecessary and unworkable. It has been ridiculed by stakeholders and industry insiders throughout the nation and globally. But, because of the arrogance, they keep running with it.

I suspect that right now Rik Morris and the crew in the Premier's Delivery Unit up there in the dream factory are wondering, 'How can we spin this'—because he is a master of spin, Mr Morris—'to make sure that we are still delivering on it?' when it will be massively removed from what was announced during the election. It is the sort of election commitment you make when you do not think you will ever have to fulfil it. That is what this will end up.

We know that hydrogen has a really significant future in this state. The Marshall Liberal government spent a significant amount of time ensuring that we were setting the groundwork, putting that in place so that we could grab hold of the opportunities that will come from hydrogen in this state. But one thing we know that is not needed is a government-owned hydrogen power plant. No matter how they spin whatever it finally looks like, it will not be what they committed to. The jobs flowing from hydrogen in this state will be significant, but will there be jobs flowing from the Hydrogen Jobs Plan? I seriously doubt it.

The Premier has been brought up to believe that government knows best in every circumstance. That ideology, coupled with arrogance, sets our state up for some very significant challenges in the future. The Labor government has an ideological aversion to private sector investment across so many different parts of the state's business DNA, but we see it so clearly articulated when it comes to the Hydrogen Jobs Plan.

There is this idea that government can step in, take over an embryonic industry that private investment is setting up and getting going. There has been a bit of government enablement along the way, but the Malinauskas government wants to take over this embryonic industry and say to that industry, 'We know best. We want our Hydrogen Jobs Plan to be front and centre. We want to be the winners in this game.' That is just not how it works. By doing this, by budgeting under $600 million to do this project that we have been told will cost at least $1 billion, if not $1.2 billion or $1.5 billion, this could not only set our state's hydrogen industry back a generation but also set our state's budget back a generation as well.

Moving on from the hydrogen plant, another return to the same old Labor ways is the characteristic of picking winners. The budget funds a nebulous $100 million economic recovery fund. Again, this is trotted out regularly in media releases and in media statements, but there is no detail as to what it will actually look like. In fact, in 2016, Labor announced something very similar: a Job Accelerator Grant Scheme. This provided more than $100 million as an employment support scheme to individual hand-picked businesses, but it fell far short of its jobs creation targets and drew criticism from the Auditor-General that it had not been supported by a comprehensive business case analysis.

The Auditor-General's commentary on the Job Accelerator Grant Scheme also revealed that Treasury had advised it was likely most of the grants would go to employers who would have hired additional employees anyway. It seems that this government is going back to a catch-as-catch-can approach, and we will be keeping an extremely close eye to ensure that the picking of winners in a way that does not have appropriate integrity and selection processes built around it is not what this government lurches to once more. Again, we suspect it is the exact approach that is expected.

Another question we have to ask is: what happened to Growth State? I have been unable to find any mention in the budget papers of the Growth State program initiated by the Marshall Liberal government. The 2021 budget explained that the Department of the Premier and Cabinet was leading the implementation of Growth State across the public sector to increase the sustainable rate of economic growth in South Australia.

The focus of Growth State was on those sectors with strong growth potential, with most of the government financial support provided on a sector-wide basis rather than on individual companies. Growth State rearranged the way that government supports our economy by mandating quicker consistent decisions, removing obstacles to growth by driving much greater collaboration within the public sector and between government and the private sector. This means government working more closely with industry so that what government does is informed by what industry at a sector-wide basis actually needs.

Growth State was both a challenge and an opportunity: a challenge to the public sector to make the changes needed to ensure much more effective support to drive economic growth and an opportunity for specific industry sectors to work closely with a government which understood the support that they needed to grow. Governments have the right to change direction and rebrand and reposition, absolutely, but it is so important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and the work that was happening with Growth State was building up sectors of the future. These sectors had been identified as ones that had the great potential to transform South Australia's economy.

The Malinauskas government immediately went silent on this strategy. By all means rebrand it, put their stamp on it, get Rik Morris to come up with something, but continue with the focus on these sectors, not because they were the areas that the Marshall Liberal government identified but because they are the sectors that the evidence shows will set this state up for immense economic growth into the future.

In further support of our economic reform agenda, the Marshall Liberal government established the South Australian Productivity Commission to provide independent advice focused on lifting productivity and removing unnecessary regulatory barriers to economic development. However, this budget cuts the commission's staff in half and slashes its budget. In its first four years, the Productivity Commission had undertaken very useful work on issues like development referrals, tourism regulation, government procurement, local government costs and efficiencies and, more recently, South Australia's renewable energy competitiveness.

At a time when it remains vital to improve the rate of growth and productivity of South Australia's economy, it is incredibly concerning that this government is emasculating the Productivity Commission. This government's approach to business support generally shows that it has not learnt from the failures of the Rann and Weatherill years and is keen to perpetuate the 'good old days'.

We see the smoke and mirrors in this budget, with the north-south corridor being the most significant one of them all. This is a nation-building project that is at the heart of the economic productivity of this state: the movement of goods and services around our capital city. By pushing this project out by more than a year the government gets short-term budgetary sugar, but it does not benefit the tens of thousands of people and thousands of businesses that use that road every single day.

We put in place a plan, a plan which was validated and accredited by Infrastructure Australia and Infrastructure South Australia and which was ready to get on with, but within days of this government coming to power the same advisers, the same public servants who had said that this project was ready to go, somehow gave different advice that said that a whole range of problems were associated with the project, the same project reported to those people when we were in government and when Labor was in government.

When we were in government, it was ready to go. When Labor formed government, it suddenly was fraught with problems and had to be delayed. I suspect that very significant ministerial pressure was put on those senior public servants to change the story, to come up with that 495-word rationale to see this project—and at least $1 billion of expenditure and an unquantified level of productivity loss—pushed off the budget so that the short-term sugar hit could be gained.

South Australians should fairly ask themselves and ask the Malinauskas government whether the north-south corridor will ever progress, and that is a very scary question to ask. This city needs a highway from one end to the other, and we committed to that when in government. The bit that was left over, the stretch between Darlington and the River Torrens, is the difficult section, but it is the section that we knuckled down and got a solution in place for.

Since becoming leader, I have been able to visit the regions every other week. I have been to the South-East, to the Mid North, to Yorke Peninsula, to Eyre Peninsula, to the Riverland and to the Fleurieu Peninsula and I have a range of trips booked into the future. I see the member for Schubert nodding because I am coming up to the Barossa in a couple of weeks.

The regions make a phenomenal contribution to our state. To say that they punch above their weight economically would be an understatement. I will continue to celebrate our regions. I will continue to advocate for investment in our regions, and I will continue to fight for our regions, because I am concerned that the contribution that our regions make receives scant interest in the Malinauskas government's first budget.

The seriousness of the cut endured by the primary industries and regions department is extremely concerning, meaning that our regions may not have the support of the government that is warranted for the contribution that they make, and so my shadow cabinet and the party that I lead will be continuing a sharp focus on what South Australia's regions can offer and what government's role is in supporting that offering to be developed and realised.

For four years I was South Australia's Minister for Environment and Water, and during that time there was record investment in the environment portfolio, particularly in terms of capital, but we also set that department up so that it could deliver at the frontline of environmental resilience across our state.

This budget saw a return to Labor's historic cuts to the environment department. A few additional grants—which are not part of the environment department's operating capacity at all—head out to NGOs, so off the books straightaway, and the government claims them as increased environmental expenditure. But if you add up the cuts sustained to both the environment portfolio and the energy portfolio, we see $70 million ripped from the environment department's budget on the week that South Australia declared a climate emergency. The hypocrisy is writ large.

The environment department has a budget of about $300 million. It seriously punches above its weight in terms of its contribution to our state. Twenty-one per cent of our state is held in our national parks network. If you add it all together—and I often quote this—it accumulates to a geographical region about the size of the United Kingdom. In the year 2000, there were 300 rangers to look after that. When Labor left office in 2018, it was down to 93. We got it back up to 145. My warning to people who care about our environment in this state is that, once again, rangers are likely to become an endangered species under the Malinauskas Labor government.

It is all virtue signalling, slogans and gestures, but when it comes to practical action on the ground they are just not interested, and it shows. The Deputy Premier's influence around the cabinet table—as has been historically the case, the holder environment portfolio comes from the left of the party—is overrun by the Labor boys from the right, and their record with the environment is not good at all.

The Liberal Party of South Australia has significant ambition for our state, and we remain ambitious for this state. We may be in opposition, but we will talk continually about how ambitious we are for this state. We undertook some incredibly ambitious projects while in office between 2018 and 2022. We were ambitious for skills development, we were ambitious for our education sector and we were ambitious for innovation in this state through projects like Lot Fourteen. Our ambition runs far higher than the first Malinauskas Labor budget has for South Australia.

In just one term of government, we demonstrated how our ambitions could quickly transform aspiration to outcomes. At Lot Fourteen, we inherited a Labor plan to turn this CBD central site into a block of high-rise flats. This was pretty ordinary ambition, to say the least. But in just four years, driven from the top by Premier Marshall, we saw Lot Fourteen transformed into a hub for the economy, for innovation and for culture, a world-class innovation startup and growth precinct, a place that has already become home to entrepreneurs, startups, small businesses and even global companies like Google and Amazon. It also hosts our nation's Space Agency, cementing South Australia as the undisputed focus of Australia's burgeoning space sector.

As well as growing our economy and creating jobs, Lot Fourteen also has the capacity to make a significant contribution to our state's cultural heritage. The Aboriginal Art and Cultures Centre being built there will showcase our state and our nation's rich and diverse Aboriginal culture to the world. The location offers many exciting job-creating opportunities for our state. It means more South Australians can start and grow global businesses from right here in their home state, without having to travel and live interstate or overseas, while the East End of Adelaide will be an even more vibrant and exciting place for locals and tourists to both live and visit.

If Labor can muster the imagination to match that of the Marshall Liberal government, what has been delivered so far at Lot Fourteen can just be the start and it can spread beyond Lot Fourteen. However, on the evidence of the budget, Labor lacks that imagination. Labor was lucky with COVID. It did not have to do much for the first half of its term in opposition, and that shows up in this budget. It shows up in their range of election commitments—barely election commitments, many of them thought bubbles.

You get the sniggering, you get the arrogance, you get the slogans, you get the virtue signalling—but this budget does not get South Australia. It does not get South Australia's households, it does not get South Australia's businesses and it does not get the people who work in South Australia, the people who come up with ideas in South Australia, the people who drive this state forward. Those people, South Australians, should be extremely disappointed by the lack of ambition that Peter Malinauskas and his arrogant team have for them.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. A. Koutsantonis.

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