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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-08-30 Daily Xml
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Appropriation Bill 2023

Estimates Committees

Adjourned debate on motion:

That the proposed expenditures referred to Estimates Committees A and B be agreed to.

(Continued from 29 August 2023.)

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:44): I bring to your attention that I propose to take no more than a couple more minutes. Yesterday, in my earlier comments in relation to the estimates sessions, I had some particular comments in relation to the arts portfolio. I was reflecting on the discussion we had at estimates about the 50th anniversary of the Festival Centre. I think, particularly as a venue where it is often a site for the performance of classical music, it is also a reflection of Adelaide's status as a UNESCO City of Music.

The status Adelaide has as a UNESCO City of Music is unique in Australia. There are not that many UNESCO cities of music around the world. It is a reflection of the very strong reputation that we have built on the heritage of decades and more than 100 years, but certainly the 50 years the Festival Centre has been there. For the classical music, traditional forms of music, jazz and the blues, modern music and rock music, Adelaide and South Australia have so much to be proud of in this space.

I particularly want to take a moment to reflect on the importance for our classical music scene in South Australia for performers, companies such as the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, but, potentially even more importantly for younger performers of what we can do to better support them going forward. One of the challenges they are facing is brought on them not by this government but by the ABC, sir. You may be aware that ABC Classic have unfortunately taken the step, when their Adelaide-based music producer stepped down at the end of last year, to not reappoint somebody, and now they have confirmed that the role is no longer going to be continued.

This cut is being applied to Adelaide only and not to other states and jurisdictions. Tasmania, as I understand it, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland will continue to have a producer in this space continuing to record work of classical music, continuing to look for opportunities to provide concerts and classical music to be broadcast nationally and to give those young performers the opportunity to thrive.

The ABC have confirmed that they will from time to time bring in casuals to record performances of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, to broadcast them live. As I understand it, from a period of about 2018 to 2019, pre COVID, ABC Classic was broadcasting up to 40, maybe even more, performances per year of Adelaide-based concerts, but for both the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and emerging artists, those opportunities have now dwindled to single digits. That is something I had taken the opportunity to reflect on in estimates in the last week and to write to ABC management. I encourage the government and the arts minister to follow that and also apply whatever pressure they can to the ABC to reinstate this position.

I wrote to the national managing director and the state manager on 23 August as shadow minister for arts in relation to the removal of the position. I wrote to them, as it was brought to my attention recently, and as has been reported, that the full-time role was left vacant in December last year, was never filled and has now been abolished with only occasional casual work being offered to fill the gap.

The impact on South Australia's classical music scene has been one that I was asked about over the last week or two in discussions with a number of artists and arts administrators. Whilst several were reluctant to speak out publicly for fear of offence dampening their future opportunities for partnerships with the ABC, it is reasonable to say that all were both disappointed with the move and concerned that it will lead directly to reduced opportunities both for artists to reach audiences and for young musicians and their families, who might once have had their concerts broadcast, to be introduced to the network.

The reduced opportunity for artists and companies to be broadcast, whether through the serendipitous engagement of your producer with the music scene in Adelaide or through the reduction in performances that might have been created specifically for an ABC Classic audience, along with live audiences, is most disappointing, given Adelaide's proud status as a UNESCO City of Music. It has been claimed that the ABC live broadcasts from Adelaide have been reduced from more than 40 in 2019 to single digits in the last year.

I have seen the statement offered by the ABC to Limelight magazine on the topic, including a commitment to 'the full schedule of recordings in Adelaide for this calendar year'. I strongly encourage you in the first instance to reconsider the decision to remove this position and advertise for a suitably qualified person to undertake the role going forward. In the event you are not happy to do that, I would seek further clarification. A statement made to Limelight: for how long is the commitment to a full schedule of recordings? What does that full schedule look like?

This may only be one position in a national broadcaster, but it is a position that has a significant flow-on impact to the classical music scene, the ecosystem for artists who are seeking to make a living, whether as full-time performers or as part-time performers and as music teachers—or indeed even, and perhaps to my mind maybe even the most importantly, to young performers looking for their first exposure and the first opportunity to feel the inspiration of being broadcast to a national audience. That is something that has always been part of our scene.

The former staff member who did that role, I understand, did it for approaching two decades and had a significant role. I thank Simon Healy, the former presenter who brought it to my attention personally in the first instance. I thank those other artists and arts administrators whom I will not name but who have been happy to talk to me about the issue in recent weeks. I encourage the ABC to revisit this decision, and I encourage the government to lend its support and weight to convincing the ABC to revisit this bad decision.

The Hon. A. MICHAELS (Enfield—Minister for Small and Family Business, Minister for Consumer and Business Affairs, Minister for Arts) (15:50): I also rise to make a contribution to the debate on the estimates process this year. It is my second as Minister for Small and Family Business, Consumer and Business Affairs, and the Arts. I want to thank the member for Morialta for his contribution just then, and I fully support Adelaide as a UNESCO City of Music and all that we can do to promote that in every way possible.

I did note yesterday the member mentioned I had a few Dorothy Dixers and thanked me for only having a few, but I do not think I had any.

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: It was one your colleagues who had a couple.

The Hon. A. MICHAELS: Okay.

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: You were excellent; you had no Dorothy Dixers.

The Hon. A. MICHAELS: None at all.

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: Very respectful of the parliament.

The Hon. A. MICHAELS: Mr Acting Speaker, as you no doubt would be aware, the Premier has instructed all of his ministers to work hard since we came into government to work on the best outcomes that we can for South Australians, not only now but for the long term. We certainly have been doing that. The estimates process really gave me an opportunity to reflect on what we had done in the last financial year and what we have planned in the years ahead.

I want to thank those members opposite who contributed to the estimates process and of course the public servants who assisted me in my preparation and my ministerial office. It is a huge volume of work that gets done to prepare and execute the estimates process.

The member for Bragg in his questioning asked me about a couple of issues that I thought I would reflect on. One is the government's support for the businesses that were affected by the River Murray floods. While we know all those regional communities along the river were hit hard by these floods, I think it is important to note the Malinauskas government really stepped up to help these communities over a long period of time—obviously in the lead-up to the water rising but also continuing on, and continuing on now.

In fact, I was there only a couple of weeks ago—I think 1 or 2 August—visiting some of those small businesses that we had assisted. Even though the waters have now receded, residents and business owners are still counting the costs of working towards a return to normal and, as I said, I had the pleasure of seeing all the work that has been done when I visited earlier this month.

We are continuing to provide targeted support as required, and, I am really pleased to advise, across the four grant programs that are being administered by the Office for Small and Family Business to help small businesses. We have had more than 660 grant applications be approved and a total payment out of $5.12 million dollars. That included the Early Business Closure Grant and the Generator Grant for those owners who had their electricity supply interrupted, and also the more recent ones that are still open: the Industry Support Grant and the Flood Recovery Grant. Those two grants do remain open to support businesses that are experiencing a loss of trade or have expenditure in cleaning up their premises.

We are also continuing to provide small business financial counselling support through the organisation Rural Business Support. They have done an incredible job supporting not only those businesses, but in country cabinet I managed to speak to one of their staff who was still doing work on the fire recovery up in the Adelaide Hills. The service assists impacted small businesses and individuals to develop recovery and continuity action plans, looking at short-term and long-term implications particularly of the flood event up in the river, and to help manage their financial wellbeing as they recover and build. So they do excellent work, and we have had more than 400 businesses access this service so far along the River Murray.

Based on community feedback and ongoing discussions that I have had with small businesses, councils, RDAs and other stakeholders, we have implemented a number of changes to the grant guidelines to make it as easy as possible for eligible small businesses to access the funding that is available. For example, the eligibility criteria for the Small Business Industry Support Grant have been updated to allow flexibility in the months that can be combined to make up the quarter in terms of looking at reduced turnover. That means more businesses can access that funding sooner. Changes to this particular grant program also allow for businesses, who started trading less than 12  months prior to the flood event, to be eligible for the grant of $10,000. That was an issue that was raised by a couple of new businesses that were suddenly impacted by the floods.

The government understands that for many small businesses and building owners, they are still in the process of working out what they need to repair their buildings, so we know that some are not yet in a position to apply for those grants. They are still assessing their damage and they are still working their way through insurance claims. One of the things we heard was that exact point, so we have extended the Industry Support Grant through to 30 September this year and the Flood Recovery Grants through to 31 December this year, to allow that process to take place.

In addition to that, there are a number of other grants and support programs being administered by other departments, particularly in tourism and agriculture through PIRSA. I want to thank the Minister for Tourism and the primary industries minister for the work that they have done in that space as well, and I also thank the Minister for Human Services in terms of individual supports.

Tourism business across the River Murray has received more than $5.6 million worth of bookings, with the second round of the state government's River Revival Voucher program. This is almost doubling the broader economic impact of the first round of the vouchers, and I know the minister has announced more recently that there will be a further round of the River Revival Vouchers starting in early 2024. This was part of the $4.6 million river tourism recovery plan that we launched in response to the floods. Of course, this program has seen the result of many more people going up to the River Murray and we are anticipating an increase, particularly over the spring period.

The Malinauskas government continues to work closely with impacted River Murray communities. We really want them to come back bigger and better, and I encourage all our communities across South Australia to keep supporting that particular region, whether it is through supporting local businesses and visits up there or buying produce from businesses that are located in that region.

As I said, I did visit the Riverland earlier this month to speak to small business owners about their recovery. This time I went up to Renmark, Loxton and Berri, and I thought I would highlight the discussion I had with Stephen Edwards from the Riverbend Caravan Park as he toured me around the site. He shared with me the significant financial and emotional toll that the flood event had had on him and his team, but he was actually very empathetic about many of the other caravan parks that had gone through a similar situation, and he was very empathetic to them as well.

Stephen constructed his own levee bank to save his park at great expense, and it will take a number of years for him to trade out of that additional expenditure and recover from it. Despite this, Stephen has reinvested in his business and he is remarkably optimistic about the future. He has built new fully accessible cabins and created new powered caravan sites. The Riverbend Caravan Park, Stephen tells me, is almost fully booked out for the months ahead. It is a beautiful location with absolutely incredible facilities, if anyone is interested in visiting Riverbend.

I also popped in to chat to Mike Goryan from Riverfun Houseboats. He was also quite optimistic about his future and the future of his houseboat business. They are looking forward to a booked out summer holiday season despite the recent uncertainty. Both Riverbend Caravan Park and Riverfun Houseboats received early business closure and flood recovery grants through the Office of Small and Family Business, and they were really quite appreciative of this support, which was quite humbling to hear firsthand.

Both businesses are also big supporters of the River Revival Voucher program and spoke enthusiastically about how this has driven people back into the region and helped their bookings enormously. I also hosted an information session with Alex Zimmerman, the Recovery Coordinator, and provided an opportunity for dozens of small business owners to come to that session and talk directly with some of the support services that were there, including rural business support, making sure we can put people in touch with the services they need.

I was also really excited to attend a Women in Business Networking Forum in Loxton organised by our wonderful Women in Business Program partner, the Adelaide Business Hub. They have done a number of regional forums like that to bring women from those regions together in a networking forum and also provide some information, whether it be marketing or digital, making it quite an educative networking event as well.

It was so good to feel the buzz in that room, with so many women coming out on what was a pretty cold Tuesday night, and it really demonstrated the need for the program and why it is proving to be so popular. I look forward to visiting the Riverland and the Murraylands again and making sure we are keeping a very close eye on their recovery process.

The member for Bragg also asked me about the Small Business Strategy. That was on a Tuesday or a Wednesday when we had estimates and I launched it on the Friday, a couple of days after estimates, so I thought I might take this opportunity to talk about the strategy. It is based off a fairly extensive consultation, and I think it was probably the most extensive consultation state government has had with small businesses. It developed a real long-term plan for state government support right through to 2030.

I think sometimes government can take small business owners for granted. We are pretty resilient and get on with things and do not necessarily look for handouts. That is not the intention at all of the Small Business Strategy or how I am dealing with the small and family business portfolio. What I do want is state government to really be standing side by side with businesses, lifting them up across the board. I really do not care if they are a hairdresser in Port Pirie or a plumber here in Adelaide; I think there is support that the state government can provide to better their businesses.

We are working with a number of organisations to roll out that Small Business Strategy and the initiatives through it. I am very keen on working very closely with industry associations, chambers of commerce, RDAs, councils, etc., to roll out those programs. There are good organisations that are doing good work, and I think it is useful for us to partner up, rather than double-up, on some of those programs.

The strategy is broken up into six themes. The first one talks about strengthening the business capability. We are also looking at building skills and workforce, which is a real pressure point for small businesses. Navigating the digital environment and cyber risk, boosting sustainability for businesses, embracing diversity and improving access to government services are all tied in with the Premier's economic statement of being smart, sustainable and inclusive.

We have already within those themes identified 20 initiatives that will be rolled out until 2026. As I said, one of the most popular programs rolling out is the Women in Business Program. We also have a Cyber Uplift Program that has opened at the moment. If any members in this place have any businesses they want to get involved in that, the program is open for registration, and that can be done through business.sa.gov.au, the Office of Small and Family Business website.

The Fundamentals Program is $1.7 million of funding that has been dedicated to that program, and it is something I see as key in developing the business side, the business skills of small businesses in South Australia. From cash flow management, financial management and marketing skills, there is a broad range of basic skills, no matter what sector you are in, that you need to run your business successfully and that is really what the Fundamentals Program is aimed at.

We have already commenced a program with Master Builders Australia on mental health and wellbeing for the construction industry and there will be more in the mental health and wellbeing space being rolled out in due course, as well as a small business sustainability program that we hope to launch later this year.

I keep talking about the needs of responding to what businesses want and when they want it, and this strategy is really here to support our many small businesses. My intention is to make sure we are addressing the issues as they arise. Things will change between now and 2030, but I think we have the fundamental themes correct and we will be making sure our programs are addressing what small businesses need into the future.

In terms of my arts portfolio, there are a couple of really key issues that I thought I would touch on off the back of the questioning from the member for Morialta in estimates, and that was in particular his questions around the screen industry and around the South Australian Film Corporation. It celebrated its 50th year last year and it was an exciting celebration for them. It was established in 1972 by Premier Don Dunstan, as many of my arts organisations have been that are all celebrating 50 years last year or in the coming one or two years.

Over its 50-year history, SAFC has grown from its original function of being a production entity, through to really being a leading screen authority across the country. It has an excellent national reputation. We know recent figures show that more than 530 screen businesses across film, TV, post-production, digital and visual effects, and game development exist. We have more than 2,200 full-time South Australian workers working in the sector, and it contributes $187 million to our economy.

The screen sector really is a critical creative industry sector for South Australia, and we are in the middle of a production boom. We are all watching Netflix and Stan and every other streaming service possible and that will help us here in South Australia really cement our role as a nation leader in screen production.

SAFC has played a key role over those 50 years supporting local screen practitioners, producers and businesses to create world-class content. It is a really important connector between industry, government, the finance that is critical to the screen industry and of course the artists and arts workers who work in that industry.

We know it has done an incredible job over the years with films like Picnic at Hanging Rock, Storm Boy, Blue Fin, Breaker Morant, Gallipoli and many more. More recent productions include things like the Netflix sci-fi hit I Am Mother and the Emmy award-winning children's series First Day. We have Stateless, an ABC and Netflix drama starring Cate Blanchett, who is I would not say my friend, but I would like to say my friend. At least I have met her and I have photographic proof I have met her and she was lovely.

There are a number of other really key films that have come out of SAFC and also out of the Adelaide Film Festival. We have just announced the Adelaide Film Festival program for this year. TheRoyal Hotel is the opening night film with Julia Garner and that is a South Australian produced film, which is fantastic.

We have Mike Rann as Chair of the SAFC. Things have gone full circle, given that Premier Rann was the one who opened Adelaide Studios as a custom-built facility to really boost the screen industry in South Australia, and I want to thank him for his ongoing support of the screen sector here in SA. It is a really good opportunity. We have a global screen sector that is worth more than $US580 billion, so we have enormous opportunities to grow our share of that pool and, of course, there is additional money that was announced in recent months with the ABC partnership and there is more to come.

I also want to make note of the short film for the opening night of the Adelaide Film Festival, which is produced by an incredible South Australian talent, Elena Carapetis. I am very much looking forward to seeing her short film Blame the Rabbit. She is an incredible talent, also part of the AFF and produced here in South Australia.

The AFF this year have their first annual festival, thanks to the Malinauskas government's commitment to making it an annual festival with $2 million in last year's budget and an additional $2 million in this year's budget for the AFF Investment Fund, enabling a number of great South Australian stories to be turned into screen. I am looking forward to the AFF this year and to lots more hard work between now and next year's estimates. Again, I want to thank everyone who was involved in the estimates process.

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (16:10): As many members have reflected on as they have been making their remarks in the chamber, I, too, would like to sincerely thank all the staff who have been involved in the estimates process. I believe it is a really fantastic element of the parliament overall because it provides not just a fantastic opportunity to really put under the microscope the intricate details of the budget but also a litmus test of the priorities that the government sets.

As an opposition member, particularly as the shadow minister for health, there are always so many issues I would really like to have a deep dive into but, unfortunately, there is never enough time to be able to slice and dice the budget in such a detailed way as I would like. Nevertheless, it is a great opportunity to be in the chamber today to reflect on some of those things.

As an opposition, one of the things that we have been really focused on in a positive sense in the health space has been workforce development. We know it is not just the health workforce that has challenges in terms of attracting and retaining a really strong workforce, but I think it is an acute issue that we must resolve when it comes to the health sector. It is a national competition. In fact, it is an international competition.

In the lead-up to the budget, the Leader of the Opposition (the member for Black) and I were really on the front foot putting forward positive ideas, making sure that the government understood what the comparisons were in each state, because it does not matter which side of the South Australian border you look at, there is cold hard cash on the table for health workers. In Western Australia, they have just announced that you can have a portion of your HECS covered depending on which part of the state you are going to, likewise in Queensland. Victoria announced in the lead-up to their budget in May of this year that they had $200 million on the table to attract and retain their workforce.

I believe we are being outflanked and it was a missed opportunity in this budget. The last thing we want to do is sit back and watch our next generation of doctors and nurses pack their bags and head across the border to Victoria because the incentives are so tantalising. We do hold concerns that that is unfortunately what they are going to do in such an internationally competitive environment.

One of the things that the government did announce in the lead-up to the budget, which I believe was on the back of some of the momentum that we as an opposition were able to create, was a $15,000 reimbursement scheme, and it was confirmed through the budget estimates process that it is a reimbursement scheme.

Some of the work that we did in the lead-up to the budget was proven to be correct, and that is that, for instance, if you are a family of four in the UK, which is just one of the places I know the government are now targeting through their advertising campaign, it costs around $33,000 to be able to pack your family up and move to a place like South Australia. Of course, that leaves you massively out of pocket by the time you get here. This is not an up-front payment of $15,000 to this family who are moving here; this is something that is paid in advance.

A number of the issues we were trying to unpack as part of the budget estimates process were in relation to how many people had applied for the reimbursement, how many reimbursements were paid, and what was the target of this reimbursement scheme. How many health workers is the government hoping to attract from this campaign, and how much was the advertising spend in its entirety? We are yet to see that detail, but I do look forward to seeing it.

I hope there is some level of success in what the government is putting forward on the table. This is an enormous challenge we really have to rise to, because if we do not it will have serious impacts right across South Australia. It does not matter which part of the state you are looking at, there are significant workforce challenges in the health space.

In Whyalla, the member for Giles' electorate, the midwifery service was closed down for a while because there was no midwife, and we have seen this emulated right across the state. I look at my local electorate, I look at a hospital like Gumeracha, which worked so hard to see their emergency department reopen in some form. It is not a reopened emergency department just yet; it is an out of hours service, which I believe the locals are embracing. It is certainly better than nothing. One of the barriers, one of the clear challenges to being able to reopen that emergency department, is workforce. From the city to the country, addressing this concern is an absolute must, and as an opposition we will keep working to put forward some positive ideas. We look forward to fleshing that out as we head more and more towards an election.

One of the other elements we have been putting under the microscope in the lead-up to the budget was in relation to the government's new formalised 'fit to sit' policy. This policy is really the formalisation of when someone is literally fit enough to sit they will be dumped in the emergency department. Out of the estimates process we were hoping to get some clarity and asked some questions of the minister in terms of how many patients in South Australia who have come by ambulance have been deemed 'fit to sit'? Disappointingly, the minister did not have access to that information, and nor did the many officials who were with him.

It was also unclear in terms of how patients' wait time was calculated. This is a critical point, because we measure ramping by the transfer of care—that is, how long you are waiting on a ramp in an ambulance before you can be transferred to the clinical care of the hospital. Then, of course, there is the wait time people spend in the emergency department.

What we were hoping to unpack—and what I do not believe should be too difficult—is if a patient arrives by ambulance at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and is waiting in an ambulance for, say, one hour, and then deemed by whomever it is that makes that clinical assessment as fit to sit and transferred into the emergency department, does that one hour they have spent on the ramp count towards that month's transfer of care data, or does the entire wait go to the ED wait room?

I know this seems slightly technical, but this is actually what estimates is for. Estimates is to really unpack and dive into some of these intricacies so that, as an opposition, we can start to furnish ourselves with a much better understanding. I am sure there is a really easy answer, and we do hope the minister is able to provide that in due course.

Another element we were unpacking—and this will not surprise the house—was ramping, because this was the government's number one election commitment and, as an opposition, we will continue to hold the government to account for that. I know there are some desperate moves to try to reinvent the wheel about what it was they promised, and all these asterisks that have come out afterwards, but the reality is that there was a very clear promise to fix ramping.

When I first got the budget papers, naturally I flicked to the health budget and then I flicked over again to have a look at the SAAS agency statement and I was a little bit perplexed to find that there was no target for the government's number one election priority to fix ramping. As I said at the outset, I believe that the budget really does set out the priorities of a government, so I found it a little bit perplexing that there was not a single target under SAAS to fix ramping in South Australia.

Another element that we were able to unpack some more was in relation to some of the data sharing in South Australia. We have been calling for a more frequent release of the ramping data, just like we saw throughout the state election campaign where patients who put forward their dreadful circumstances were put in the spotlight as a way to politically assist the now government to form government and ultimately win the election.

Of course, in the midst of all of this desperation in trying to reinvent the wheel about what they promised, they have now started to release on a more regular basis the response times. Of course, that is done by the government on a monthly basis. When I questioned the minister as to why it was that they were released on a monthly basis, he advised that it was really in relation to the accuracy of the data and that is that SAAS actually have a process that they need to go through to validate the data.

Naturally, I asked him a question as to how it was that the Premier of South Australia had access to the weekly data for the response times, because, of course, he had referred to that in the house during the course of question time. On the one hand, South Australians cannot get access to the weekly response times because it is not validated but, on the other hand, the Premier of South Australia gets to wax lyrical about it here in the chamber. I actually think that that is rank hypocrisy. If it is good enough for the Premier to quote in the parliament, it is good enough for the people of South Australia to be able to see.

The extension of that logically and naturally, of course, is that if weekly data can be provided and pulled up for the Premier for response times, surely weekly data can be pulled up for ramping. In fact, the minister and his team, I know that they have conversations with many people within their department about how ramping is tracking and, yes, we have that dashboard that is available, but that does not give you the overall understanding about what is happening. I would again encourage the government to reconsider releasing that weekly response time. If it is fine for weekly response times, it is absolutely fine for the ramping.

In terms of the budget blowout, I think this is an important point to touch on because we know that despite promising a surplus heading into the budget there was a $1 billion deficit. That is going to be something that the people of South Australia have to pay off for generations to come. As part of that $1 billion deficit, there was a $754 million blowout in health. When we were pressing the minister about whether that $754 million was included in the $2.3 billion that was claimed to be new spending as part of the budget, the minister first of all started out by saying that he would come back to me.

He then did some back-of-the-envelope calculations and then he claimed to have answered the question. That was a bit of a confusing situation. I would have thought that given it took up nearly a whole page of the government's glossy brochure that they produce—of course, every government produces—you would have been able to unpack some of those intricacies about whether that $754  million was part of that $2.3 billion spend.

The estimates process again is critical to be able to assess these types of budget blowouts, particularly at a time of a cost-of-living crisis when so many South Australians are struggling to make ends meet. I believe that the government should justify why it is that they have a $754 million blowout in their health budget.

There is no denying that elements may be critically needed to make sure that South Australians get the health care they need but you have got to be able to justify it because South Australian families cannot afford to blow their budget by that much, and so they should rightly expect that the government does its job and does its best to be able to keep its spending as efficient as it possibly can whilst, of course, making sure that they get the best outcomes possible.

In terms of some of the local things that were being pursued as part of the estimates process, one element we were hoping to get some clarity on was the Amy Gillett bike path. This is a pathway that really comes right through the Adelaide Hills. It is extraordinarily popular not just in my local community but also for the Adelaide Hills more broadly and for South Australia. Once we get this completed, which we must, this is going to be a significant asset for everyone, and keeping people active is really critical, of course.

We already have $2.6 million on the table from the federal government, and that was secured under the former federal Liberal government. As we were leading into the state budget one of the elements that I was hoping to get some clarity on was what the state government was hoping to stump up to make sure that could happen.

Whilst we did not see that in the budget, I am very pleased to note that there is now an offer on the table from the state government, but there are some caveats in it and that is that there is $2.6 million on the table from the commonwealth, the state government is now putting $2.6 million on the table, but they are now indicating that they would like the Adelaide Hills Council to be able to match that yet again as well as take over the maintenance.

This is a project where we have to keep in mind that, only a couple of weeks ago, the government determined that a six kilometre stretch from Mount Torrens to Birdwood in my electorate was going to cost an eye watering $12 million—$12 million for a six-kilometre bike track from Mount Torrens to Birdwood! So, thankfully, this cost is now being reassessed by the government because they have got to do some explaining as to how it is $12 million.

I just believe that the council and the federal government, as well as the state government, really need to operate in good faith to be able to get this project done for our region. It is too good an opportunity to go missing and fall by the wayside. Whether I am holding street-corner meetings, doorknocking in my local community or going to different community functions, delivering the Amy Gillett bike path extension is just one of those number one issues. Collectively across all spheres of government we have got to work together to get this done because it is in the best interests of not just our local community but for South Australia more broadly.

I would love to have seen some more investment into regional roads because we know that there is a $3 billion road maintenance backlog right across South Australia. When you are driving on them each and every day in the regions, like so many of us on this side of the chamber are, it really does make you aware of the fact that we have got to get a hurry-up when it comes to injecting more cash to fix some of these roads because they are downright dangerous.

I have said it before in this place, but when people in the regions are telling you that there is a problem with their road you have got to listen because they know the road network like the back of their hands. They drive it every day, and we have really got to put more money into regional roads to make them better and to make them safer.

One other element I will touch on is, of course, the Barossa Valley hospital. Keeping money in the state budget that the former Liberal government put in was something that is a clear priority of mine, and I am pleased that, as part of this budget, that money is still kept there. All the fantastic work that was kickstarted by the former Liberal government in terms of putting clinical experts in the field and making sure that we are getting all that detailed work done is continuing, and that is fantastic.

We were, however, told that we would be seeing those final plans by March of this year, but we are yet to see them. So we will keep the pressure on the government to make sure that it comes forward with those plans, but what we need to do as a community is just to make sure that we keep that momentum up. The money is still in the budget, the process started by the former government is still underway and we just need to keep that pressure up.

I will keep fighting for my local community. It was great to have the opportunity not just to ask questions in the health space but also to work across the chamber with colleagues to make sure that some local issues could be addressed as well.

The Hon. N.F. COOK (Hurtle Vale—Minister for Human Services) (16:29): I am really pleased to contribute to our discussion about estimates committees. I enjoy estimates. I think it is a great opportunity to share information and provide some answers. Obviously, we do not know the questions that are going to crop up. We managed to get through quite a lot of questions on the day. It is an important part of the democratic process and provides an opportunity to forensically examine how we propose to spend public money. It is an important part of that transparency and accountability.

First and foremost, I would like to offer my deep thanks to the many public servants who worked furiously from the moment the budget was handed down—well, they were working hard before that, weren't they, to help us build the case for the money, to be honest. They worked from the moment the budget was handed down until the estimates hearing, and they are still working to provide answers that we took on notice, which was not very many.

A vast amount of work goes into preparing and checking the briefing materials that allow me and my cabinet colleagues to provide detailed answers to the members of the house. I appreciate also the members who are part of the estimates committee. The efforts of my government colleagues, some of the newer members of parliament, supported me on the committee. They included the members for Elder, King and Davenport along with a more experienced fellow, the member for Giles, who ably sat in the Chair position for the entirety of our estimates committee doing a wonderful job.

In my case, and in that of the Premier and the Treasurer, hearings were on the very first day of estimates, which I thought was terrific. It was a good spot to be. Our agencies and officers did the tough work of getting all that work done in the least amount of time. The Department for Human Services also had a national ministerial council between budget day and estimates, so we had quite a bit of preparation for that, so people were definitely burning the candle at both ends for some time with regard to those events.

As it turned out, both my CE and chief financial officer were absent for the day of our hearing. I would like to offer special thanks to Ruth and Daniel, who stepped up and filled the shoes of Sandy and Nick for estimates. In defence of my incredible CE, she had leave booked in before she took the job in the department and did offer to cancel her trip to be at my side, but when you have a really brilliant team you actually do not need that. It is a testament to the great executive team that people can step in and step up, keep the wheels turning and help me at estimates and, more importantly, continue to help the many thousands of South Australian who rely on our services and support.

The member for Flinders was the main stayer throughout my estimates session and did the heavy lifting for the opposition during the hearings, and I thank him for that. I think we had a pretty good time that day and, with some good humour in between, managed to get through some hard work. I thank the member for Flinders for that and also the other colleagues who took part on the day. I appreciate that ministers and departments do plenty of hard work for estimates but, having been there, the opposition has to do their preparation with limited resources, so I acknowledge that it really is hard work all round.

While only a fraction of the information in our estimates briefings is ultimately used to answer questions during the hearings, the process of preparing the material is similar to a data and financial stocktake of the agencies in our portfolios. This means that information that does not get used under the estimates interrogation is really useful information for us to use in the planning process throughout the rest of the year. It never goes to waste. It helps me, my staff and departmental officers to better understand what we are doing, how much we are doing and how well we are doing. It sparks conversations and questions about changes and reforms that otherwise potentially might not happen.

While I appreciate the efforts of the opposition and government members, I do apologise to my Labor colleagues for not taking any questions from them for the whole day. Of course, if they have any outstanding questions about the budget they can ring me anytime, but the whole reason we have an estimates hearing is to allow the opposition as well to dig into the budget and the great initiatives we are funding to help the people of South Australia. I respect that process and did not take any government questions throughout the day.

Importantly, budgets do not exist in a silo. They build on previous budgets, link with work in other agencies, and also they are there sometimes to amplify federal government initiatives and value-add to them. On all three of these fronts, the new budget delivered in spades.

Last year, we committed an extra $232.7 million for public housing in both the budget and the Mid-Year Budget Review, which was really important for the long-term vision around investment in new public housing and also changing some of the processes already in place. I really never get tired of saying that this will deliver the first proper increase in public housing in a generation after it had reduced in 29 of the last 30 years. In fact, I know it only went up by about six in somewhere around 2014 under Labor, and for the Liberal government it went up for the last time in 1982; some people in this chamber were not even born at that point.

In recent weeks, the federal Labor government has also put an extra $2 billion on the table for social housing. South Australia has secured $135.8 million of this. So, combined with our state investment, it will see around $370 million extra for public and community housing over the next few years. This is a vital investment at a time when we actually need it the most.

Our first budget also had that $6 million of extra money for the inner city homelessness services, and we have also extended the funding for the Homelessness Alliances for two years, which is quite extraordinary given that only one year is guaranteed by the federal government currently under the arrangements, as the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement is renegotiated. The sector has received that really positively.

In the Mid-Year Budget Review, we had around $55 million for additional indexation payments to NGOs, with the recent budget having another $57 million for the same purpose. That is across a broad range of really good humans who deliver services for people in our communities, those people who need it the most. In terms of homelessness services, it accounts for $9 million, and that is quite a significant amount of indexed funding which, on top of providing some certainty moving forward, is really important for those people who are working in all our communities to try to combat these problems at the moment around housing supply and homelessness.

I want to point out that the previous state government, the Liberal government, indexed their contracts with the Homelessness Alliances at 0.7 per cent. We can say that was in a different time, but it was still very, very low when you think about inflation and other costs going forward. It was a fraction of 1 per cent funding growth for a period at a time when inflation was hitting 8 per cent. Inflation was more than 10 times the amount of the indexation that had been written into those homelessness contracts by the Liberal government. I think not acting would have been disastrous, and would mean that we would not be able to deliver services that are much needed.

The extra $9 million into homelessness will stop services from going backwards. I admit it is really not going to expand them; it will keep pace, as such, and provide a breathing space, but it will definitely stop them from going backwards. I was pretty horrified when I came into government and saw that this 0.7 per cent indexation was there during the housing crisis. It did not leave us anywhere to go. Our recent budget also provided $1.7 million for the really respected Aspire Program being delivered by the Hutt St Centre.

If you add up all the numbers, we have put in an extra $17 million to homelessness services since elected last year. I think that is a number that people supporting people in the public should be pleased with. We will renegotiate the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement over the next period of months with the federal government. That is on top of increasing our supply and putting what is now some $370 million into housing and this $17 million into homelessness. We are serious about providing support.

Another main housing element in the 2023-24 budget we have put in is a partnership with the Office for Women for the Domestic Violence Crisis Accommodation program and Perpetrator Response pilot. The multiagency and multiminister budget bid shows what we can do when we work together. The initiative provides more than $7 million over four years to fund both housing and therapeutic supports for a program that was a very good initiative of the previous Liberal government.

It is a good and important program, but it was severely underfunded. In the dying moments of the 2022 election campaign, we know that the Liberals, then as government, committed to a one-off amount of $1 million that somehow was supposed to extend the program into the future and expand it from 40 to 100 beds. Sadly, this was like a chapter out of the Magic Pudding.

On coming to government, we discovered the sector completely rejected that even the therapeutic part of the program or just the 40 beds could be funded for $1 million per year, let alone extending it to 100 beds. That was before you included any money for the housing and tenancy management. The only way this could have happened is if the Liberal government had forced the Homelessness Alliances to fund the therapy or the support part of the work out of their existing funding. Remember, this government had only budgeted to index by 0.7 per cent, so they promised pennies but we invested pounds—more than $7 million, to be exact.

We did not stop there. We are investing to upgrade 45 homes for survivors of family violence as part of another election commitment, really important security grades. Once this is completed, in the coming year we will have many more homes and greater support for survivors than was promised under the previous government. Importantly, they will be properly funded. It provides the respect that is due to both the workers and those who come to the services for support.

Some of the questions in estimates were a little curious, such as car leasing arrangements, given the other important budget lines open for interrogation. However, I understand there are various reasons why people ask questions. I thank the acting chief financial officer for addressing the interest in cars by the opposition. It was not linked to the Adelaide 500, but anyway it was an interest in cars. Our budget included $5 million for financial counselling and food security at a time when people are really doing it tough and need all the help we can provide.

We also secured $11 million over four years to provide critical supports for remote visitors. This funding will support:

increased hours for the Mobile Assistance Patrol bus;

increased assertive outreach seven days a week with DHS and NGOs;

employing cultural workers and first language speakers to improve engagement;

return to community services to help people get home; and

coordinated health responses with the RAH, which address alcohol harms and do reduce presentation to hospital.

We have already added to this since the budget, with an extra $490,000 program funding a Safer Place to Gather, a supported camp near the CBD, with key facilities, including power, water, wi-fi, marquees, toilets, cooking facilities and waste management. We are now seeing around 30 people per night at the camp, and the work includes recreational and skill-based diversionary activities, along with links to homelessness, health, community services and, really importantly, services to deal with addiction.

Adelaide-based remote visitor outreach outcomes since April 2022 include:

1,764 individual services;

reduced hospital ED presentations and admissions; and

improved participation in health treatment and enhanced safety for women and children.

We have provided a further $500,000 for the Child Diversion Program, which helps to keep young people away from detention unless it is absolutely necessary. The budget also secured $300,000 per year for four years of Changing Places facilities that dovetails with the federal government funding for the same purpose.

The approach is to get commonwealth, state and local governments to each contribute one-third of the cost of these amazing facilities for people with disability. We have already landed some deals with local councils to deliver this and we have more on the way that we hope to announce very soon.

One of the most important things DHS does is early intervention. This is work to help children and families. Helping at-risk families is a government-wide response that touches on education, health, child protection, human services, housing, and justice, amongst others. I was so pleased we secured $1.7 million per annum for the Strong Start Program that builds on this work with the DHS. This initiative provides $1 million in 2023-24 and $1.7 million per annum with indexation from 2024-25 for family support services for at-risk first-time parents at the earliest opportunity. It will include connecting those facing parenting challenges to critical services where needed.

As we have been discussing in recent days with the release of the Royal Commission into Early Childhood Education and Care report, we get the biggest return on our spending when we invest early and target those who need help the most. But Strong Start was just the warm-up act for a huge boost to targeted intensive family support services. This initiative provides $250,000 in 2022-23, increasing to $9.3 million per annum with indexation from 2024-25 to increase targeted intensive family support services for vulnerable families, prioritising those living in the northern metropolitan region.

This initiative will focus on supporting around 250 more families per year from 2024 through targeted, specialised interventions to improve the likelihood of family staying safely together. Child safety will be prioritised and families will be supported to address risk and strengthen family safety, wellbeing and functioning by improving skills in parenting, household management, accessing services, school attendance and other practical assistance such as financial assistance and transport. It forms part of the government's $216.6 million response to support children, young people and their families which I am so proud to be part of with my department.

I will come back to the cost of living. We delivered on our election commitment to double the Cost of Living Concession last year. Our first budget provided around $78 million to help more than 211,000 South Australian households with this measure. At the time, this was the largest concession payment in South Australia's history. Well, we are going to outdo that this year, as well as bringing forward the payments to 50,000 renters who used to have to wait around eight months after homeowners got paid. Thank you, Lyndall, from the western suburbs for raising this issue with us and making the change.

This year, our cost of living concessions have already started hitting the bank. In fact, all of them should pretty much be there. I am very keen to hear from people if that has not been happening. We have also partnered with the federal government with the energy relief payment. We have started also paying those out. We are waiting on energy providers to provide us with more information in order to be able to deliver more relief for South Australians. Small businesses as well have been getting that.

On top of that, this year we have made public transport free 24/7 for Seniors Card holders. There are a range of concession payments that are being delivered by DHS and, in terms of this, broadly we are delivering on a commitment to review concessions for all South Australians. Our department is working really strongly to ensure that we pay the best amount of money, the right amount of money, to the right people and ensure the maximum relief is obtained for those who need it most.

I might mention quickly in closing that the federal government has made some changes to the social housing commonwealth rent relief and we have also made changes to our private rental assistance program. There is a lot in the budget for many people in our community. I appreciated the opportunity with the member for Flinders and others to participate in a very civilised, very civil exchange around a lot of information that is very important for most of South Australia, who do not take an interest at all, but it affects them deeply. Thank you very much to the member for Flinders for participating in that.

The ACTING SPEAKER (The Hon. L.W.K. Bignell): Thank you, minister. I note the kind words you had to say about the member for Flinders, so I think it is only appropriate that we give him the call now to have his say and maybe return those rather generous accolades.

Mr TELFER (Flinders) (16:49): I certainly appreciate the opportunity at this time to reflect on the estimates process and not only the portfolio areas that I am responsible for as the shadow, being police, corrections and community safety as well as local government and aspects of planning and regional population, but also obviously with my responsibilities in the lower house for some of my upper house colleagues, including the interactions with Minister Cook and other ministers.

Most people outside this place probably do not really understand what the estimates process is all about, but it goes beyond the theatre of what an hour of question time would do on a sitting day; it actually gets into the nuts and bolts and the nitty-gritty of the budget lines. I always appreciate when ministers are constructive and proactive when interacting with those of us who are on the estimates committee. Some are more generous than others in the information they share. I would certainly reflect the words that Minister Cook shared before about the important portfolio areas that we unpacked, being housing, disability and the like, in our interactions.

I want to reflect a little bit on some of the information we heard from a police and community safety aspect through the estimates process. It was an opportunity for us to unpack a little bit about what is happening at the moment within the police force. There are some worrying trends and aspects, which I, as the shadow police minister, really want to make sure that the minister has his eyes well and truly on.

We heard information shared during estimates that the separations for the last financial year were significant—separations being those members of our police force at whatever level who decide to leave the force and go and pursue other opportunities, whether that is people who are getting to the end of their working life and retiring or those who are leaving the force prematurely because of what is happening at the moment.

We are currently losing more police a year than we are recruiting. Just let that sink in: we are losing more than we are recruiting. We are getting to a scenario where the shortfall that we currently have from the information shared through the estimates process is 214 officers from where we need to be—214 fewer police officers within our force than we need, and that number has actually been growing because there have been more leaving than we have been recruiting. This is why I am so passionate as the shadow minister for police that we put thought and effort into the processes we are presenting our police force with.

I do note that there was a lot of discussion, both leading up to estimates and within the estimates process, about the recruitment of more PSOs (police security officers), but PSOs are not the answer. PSOs have the ability to do some of the duties that police officers are tasked with at the lower level, but they are not the answer to the long-term challenges that we have with the shortfall of police and the need for us to be active in being responsive to what our community needs are.

We need to be putting proper strategy into the recruitment of new police officers. We need to consider appropriate incentives so we compete with other states because at the moment we are seeing policies and incentives put in place by other states to bring interstate and overseas officers into their force. We do not have that here in South Australia, so we are at risk of not just having a shortfall currently of some 214 officers and not just having a scenario where we are losing more police officers than we are recruiting but are up against other states that are putting more strategy and more incentives on the table when it comes to their police recruitment.

We need to also be considering strategy around the retention of police officers. I tried to unpack with the minister a bit of the differentiation between the different aspects of the police force. We know that the retention of police officers is so vital. Too many are leaving well before retirement age, as I said, moving on to other jobs, to other occupations because the pressure they are facing currently is too great.

We need to be ensuring we have proper conversations around our policing models. We need to have a proper strategy to ease that pressure for our hardworking police on the beat. Unfortunately, in unpacking what the government, what the minister and what SAPOL are doing through the resources they are given, I have no confidence on those issues at the moment.

Add on top of that the challenges that are faced with regional policing shortfalls. I see all too often, not just within my region but all the way around South Australia, the difficulty with recruiting police to come into our regional areas and, secondly, actually keeping them there. None of these long-term solutions are in place.

There are no long-term solutions in place for the management of escalating crime within our regions and also within the metropolitan area. At the moment, we have short-term measures. We have a bit of a shifting of the deckchairs. We have officers being taken away from one aspect to focus on another, but that is only short-term when you consider the more than 200 positions that are now vacant because of where we have found ourselves.

There was an opportunity for us to unpack a little bit of that through the estimates process. I probably ended up leaving with just as many questions as I came in with because, at the moment, there have been a lot of words. I am hoping they are actually reflected in actions when it comes to making sure that the people who are tasked with keeping us safe—our police officers on the beat—are getting the proper resources they need to live up to the community's expectation of their own safety.

Another aspect I got the opportunity to unpack through the estimates process was local government. Unfortunately, we were without the local government minister at the time, and our thoughts at that time certainly were with him going through challenging situations, but there was an opportunity for me to put forward questions to the department, to the Office of Local Government, through the acting minister. They were there to provide that information through the conduit of the acting minister, to try to answer the questions so many across local government are putting to me and thus I put to the acting minister, the government, through the estimates process.

Unfortunately, the advice I received from the Office of Local Government did not exactly fill me with confidence about how aware they are of the challenges that local government are facing at the moment or how active they actually are in working with local government on those challenges. I will name a few of the issues that local government are bringing up with me all the time, in both regional and metropolitan areas.

Firstly, there is the ESCOSA process, the rates oversight. I had been hoping the minister would be active in trying to make sure that process is effective for the members of councils all around the state, something that is going to be a useful tool for them to convey a message to their communities that they are financially sustainable. Unfortunately, what we have seen is a bureaucratic step put in place which is adding more costs, and often significant costs. It is $40,000 per community. If you are a community with limited budget means, especially a smaller regional community, that is a pretty bitter pill to swallow: $40,000 for an organisation like ESCOSA to basically access publicly available information to give advice about local government operations, which they actually know more about.

There was such an opportunity for the minister to have his hands on the wheel, to guide the office to be part of that ESCOSA process, but unfortunately it has not happened—the same with the Electoral Commission process. Once again, steps were put in place that the minister could have been more involved in, more active in, but unfortunately, from my perspective, they have been found well and truly lacking.

Most recently, there were the Remuneration Tribunal findings on the CEO salaries. Once again, this is a measure that could have been so much better delivered by having an Office of Local Government and a minister actively involved in what they are trying to achieve through the banding of CEO salaries. Unfortunately, we have ended up having a bureaucratic step put in place that disadvantages some councils and wildly categorises the councils within the CEO salaries.

This needed leadership from the minister, and we still need leadership from the minister in local government, but unfortunately it is lacking. There are so many other things hanging over the head of local government at the moment—the future of the Outback Communities Authority, the future of the Coober Pedy council—and all these aspects could be delivered with an active, forward-looking local government minister. I hope the Office of Local Government realises it has a key role to play and gets its hands on the steering wheel. This process has shown me that there is a whole heap more work that needs to be done.

Through the estimates process, on behalf of the opposition we did get the opportunity to ask the Minister for Water for an update on what is happening with the Eyre Peninsula desal project. This is one that my community on Eyre Peninsula is actively involved with, and the proposal to put a desalination plant at Billy Lights Point within the bay area of Port Lincoln really does not garner any community confidence at all. There is no-one I can find within my community who says, 'Yes, this is the best location for a desalination plant.'

In fact, there is much concern amongst the community, amongst industry and amongst agriculture and fishing, that there are still so many unanswered questions about this process. When Minister Close was asked by the opposition in the estimates process:

So you are incredibly comfortable and confident in the projections in terms of the time frame that is necessary to be met here?

The response from the Minister for Water was:

Yes. It is the best available science, and we have to make reasonable and sensible decisions on that basis.

It is not a level of level of confidence that I garner from those words, and I am truly concerned on behalf of my community that there has not been the time, effort or foresight put into the process and that we will end up with a desalination plant within a confined area of the bay area of Port Lincoln that could potentially put at risk the existing industries in that area.

There is no doubt that Eyre Peninsula needs a water supply that is not climate dependent, and for a long period of time subsequent members for Flinders have been pushing for investment in a desalination plant on Eyre Peninsula. It is frustrating that this is the solution they have come up with, when potential alternative options have been put forward by the community, by the community consultative committee and by industry.

We need to be forward-looking and realise that a bit of a larger capital investment at the front end could minimise risk for those existing industries going forward. We need Minister Close to be listening to our community, because there is still way too much concern about what that might mean to that bay area of Port Lincoln.

Within the estimates process, we started to unpack little bit what the regional road investment package is going to look like. In his speech, my colleague the shadow minister for regional roads Adrian Pederick, unpacked a little bit about what he saw were some of those shortcomings. Throughout the process, I went through the budget lines looking for the proper forward-looking investment that is needed for the Eyre Peninsula road network. There is very little.

Unfortunately, once again Eyre Peninsula seems to be overlooked for investment into our road network in an area that produces so much and adds so much to our state's economy. In a grain season like we had last year, when we saw so much money being pumped into the economy on the back of that production, there really needs to be the investment back into the road network.

I travel thousands of kilometres every month, and when I travel those roads I get to see firsthand the impact the lack of investment has as far as road safety goes, as far as loss of productivity goes, as far as putting people in a scenario where they feel that they may not want to travel on certain roads at certain times. It is not just locals who use these roads; it is also our visiting public, and the interactions between domestic use, caravans and heavy vehicles is one that adds to my concerns about safety on those roads.

I look at the need for investment into the Flinders Highway. There are sections of that road that need investment into shoulder sealing on the sides of the road. As the former member for Flinders, Peter Treloar, would often say, a wider road is a safer road. It really is a basic investment that could add so much to the safety of our road network.

Certain sections of the Flinders Highway have significant drop-off, and if you were to drop a caravan wheel off the back or even a car steer wheel off the side of that road you could very easily lose control, and if someone were coming the other way there could be an incredibly disastrous outcome. We need to be investing into our road networks, not just for current generations but for future generations and production, and that is something I have been disappointed to see through the estimates process, that there is not that level of investment.

From the questions around our health system, we also see that there is a real shortfall when it comes to investing back into our regional health network, and my colleague the shadow minister for regional health, Penny Pratt, has been active in trying to highlight that. When putting in place measures for our regional communities, we need to be fully aware of what the need is in those communities, not just think we understand what those needs are. We need to communicate with those communities, talk to the local HACs and really understand the nuances of regional health in all our different areas.

For me, number one is getting a proper strategy around recruitment and retention of general practitioners and getting doctors into our communities. If we do not get the basic health services right in our regional communities, we will lose those communities. We will lose communities like Kimba, who have been searching high and low for a GP and often doing that work by themselves as a community and as a council.

We need state government to be investing into our regional health networks because the engine room economically for the state is in our regional areas. We cannot take that for granted. If we do not have that economic contribution going into our state's coffers, we are going to be even more city-centric as a state and really miss opportunities that we have for economic development all across regional South Australia. We need to get those foundations right.

As I said, we need to get the health system right in our regions, we need to get investment into our roads and infrastructure and we need to make sure that the money gained into the state coffers by those people working hard within our regions is reflected by proper investment. Throughout the estimates process, time after time I have been disappointed with what we have unpacked in some of those questions.

There were many conversations had and many questions asked by the opposition. There were some answers on which we gained clarity through the estimates process and some which only left us with more uncertainty and probably more questions, but that is the nature of going through this process. Once again, I thank the ministers who were open and honest with where things were at within their departments and those who chose to interact in a cooperative and productive way, and I would encourage the others to continue to do so. With those few words, I will take my seat.

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Leader of the Opposition) (17:08): I rise today to make some remarks about the Appropriation Bill and the estimates process this year. I do not think that it is any secret that I do not really rate the estimates process; I think it should probably be done away with. I do not think it adds a great deal to the parliamentary process at all and, in fact, wastes a huge amount of time in the parliament, particularly the time of hardworking public servants who would have much better things to do than prepare briefing packs and come in here to contribute to a stale and out-of-date process.

I think the government and the opposition should come together and abolish it. That has been my view since arriving in this place in 2014. I think I said that a couple of times when previously in opposition. I think that it is an unbecoming process that adds nothing to our democracy and, yes, I would like to firmly put on the record should be torn up and done away with forthwith. However—

The ACTING SPEAKER (The Hon. L.W.K. Bignell): I'll put the question.

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: Breaking news! Estimates are so boring no-one would even write that up—Paul Starick has gone home. There is something of an opportunity sometimes for the opposition to take a look at the budget papers to try to get answers from ministers with regard to their portfolios of interest.

I want to work through a few themes that emerged from my point of view with regard to the most recent estimates process. Before the election, the Premier was very clear that this state budget would be in surplus and would remain in surplus. However, in the first full financial year that Labor has been in charge this promise was broken on the back of a $1.1 billion budget blowout, and despite historic tax revenue, failed by high inflation, this budget is not in a healthy state whatsoever.

Focusing in on the two estimates committees I participated in, that of the Department of the Premier and Cabinet, which blew its budget by $66 million, and the Department for Environment and Water, which blew its budget by $54 million, one of the most interesting aspects of which is that these overspends are now baked into future budgets, which have now to be paid for somehow on an ongoing basis into the future. Government expenditure will explode to some $29 billion per year over the forward estimates, which, of course, we worry could add fuel to the inflation fire.

A typical South Australian household now has to come up with nearly $400 a week more to pay their bills than was the case at the 2022 state election, and families are paying in South Australia because unfortunately this government does not seem to be able to manage its budget. The second theme that has become a hallmark of this government is secrecy, and that was certainly something that came out on a constant basis during the estimates process.

The phrase 'commercial-in-confidence' is wheeled out on an almost weekly basis to avoid public scrutiny. How much did it cost to bring Sam Smith's concert to Adelaide? Well, that was commercial-in-confidence. How much did it cost to fly members of the royal family to Adelaide? That is also commercial-in-confidence. How much did we spend to lure the Saudi Arabia-managed LIV Golf tournament to Adelaide? Again, commercial-in-confidence. The justification for half a billion dollars of government investment into the university merger? Commercial-in-confidence.

While it is important to protect the integrity of government negotiations to secure the best outcome for South Australians, this government's over the top use of that phrase 'commercial-in-confidence' is a slap in the face to taxpayers. Even the Ombudsman and Auditor-General have criticised the government's approach to public scrutiny, criticising its use of commercial-in-confidence as well as the underpinning lack of accountable and secrecy.

The Ombudsman has been particularly scathing of the Deputy Premier's approach to freedom of information, using words such as 'fanciful' and 'far-fetched' to describe her attempts to deny access to information and avoid scrutiny. Some quotes from the Ombudsman have included, 'The Deputy Premier has failed to justify her proposed refusals of access.' The Ombudsman also said:

In every case the Deputy Premier has failed to justify her proposed refusals for access…the absence of any submissions from the Deputy Premier is even more alarming when considered against the amount of time the Deputy Premier has had to deal with the matter.

The Auditor-General is another independent umpire who has been critical of the government's transparency, in particular the sports rorts scandal, where it is clear there is very little accountability for spending. The normal process for such grants programs would be for them to follow through a Public Service process to determine appropriateness, governance and even financial legitimacy. However, when it comes to sports rorts, the only response we get is that these are election commitments and the government is delivering them via the infamous Premier's Delivery Unit.

That unit appears to add not just a further level of bureaucracy but another layer of secrecy for the Premier. I have of course spoken at length in this place about my concern for how this delivery unit operates. I have absolutely no doubt we will be talking about that more in the future. The estimates process failed to shed any additional light on what public accountability the Premier's Delivery Unit has.

In fact, since the estimates process, we have discovered that Mr Morris has fortnightly meetings with the Premier without any representatives from the Department of the Premier and Cabinet present, with no agenda available and no minutes taken. During a cost-of-living crisis, it is critical that every taxpayer dollar is spent with the public interest at heart. If this delivery unit is such a worthwhile body, the question is: why is it surrounded in secrecy? In fact, outside of the vague description of delivering election commitments, it is entirely unclear what this highly paid government office is actually doing.

The other recurring theme from the estimates process was a clear failure to deliver. The irony of that is not lost on me, having just discussed the Premier's Delivery Unit. I will start with the election commitment to provide universal three-year-old preschool to all children in South Australia from 2026. Over the weekend, the Royal Commission into Early Childhood Education and Care in South Australia was released. It is a surprise to absolutely no-one on this side of the house that that confirmed this promise would not be fulfilled.

The Premier has blindsided the South Australian families who voted for Labor believing they would deliver universal three-year-old preschool by 2026. Not only did the Premier outsource this work by undertaking a multimillion-dollar royal commission, the report has shown that 70 per cent of parents will still be required to pay childcare fees of $100 or more a day. Those who are starting a family now and were attracted to vote for Labor at the last election because of their so-called universal three-year-old preschool policy would rightly be disappointed at what they have seen and heard so far.

Another election commitment, which we should spend some time dwelling on, was the government's commitment with respect to the River Murray. In the lead-up to last year's state and federal elections, Labor guaranteed they could deliver the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Yet, a few weeks ago in another moment we all saw coming, federal water minister, Tanya Plibersek, came clean, admitting the Murray-Darling Basin Plan's environmental water recovery deadline of 30 June 2024 is impossible to meet. The big losers in all of this are of course basin communities and the natural environment in South Australia. For those who believed Labor's commitments, it is a massive kick in the guts again.

Managing multijurisdictional rivers is fraught, but it is imperative that every effort is made to keep all constituent ministers at the table. It can be a constant battle, but it can be done. We have now a situation where the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is in absolute tatters and we have one state that is no longer actively participating in the plan. That, of course, is Victoria. With them walking away and doing the wrong thing it brings the validity of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in the future into question.

It is also the likely outcome of outsourcing responsibilities from a minister to a Sydney-based commissioner, in this case Richard Beasley, at a cost of $2 million per annum. South Australians are yet to see any outcomes from this investment apart from inarticulate and unpleasant commentaries from Mr Beasley in the media. He has not been able to deliver a drop of water, and I am absolutely sure that will continue to be the case.

I now finish with the headline election commitment that Labor received a significant amount of votes as a result of and that, of course, was to fix the ramping crisis. You could not drive down a highway or a main road in Adelaide without seeing the corflute posters: 'Labor will fix the ramping crisis'. We know now that that certainly has not been the case. Ramping has not been fixed; it has actually got considerably worse, with the most vulnerable South Australians suffering the most on the hospital ramp as they wait for critical care.

Ramping has now reached record levels under the Premier's leadership, with nearly 4,000 hours in March this year and more than 3,300 in the most recent month. To put this in perspective, this is more than double what it was in the last full month of the former Liberal government. The Premier has, of course, desperately tried to walk away from his number one election commitment, but I am sure that South Australians will not let him forget that.

The estimates process does not reveal a great deal, but it does reveal those headline areas of failure around delivery, secrecy and, of course, budget ill discipline. I commend those remarks to the house.

Ms PRATT (Frome) (17:21): It is a great opportunity for me as the member for Frome to stand before you today to speak on the Appropriation Bill in response to estimates. I take this opportunity to reflect on the estimates process and the opportunity it gave me to not only advocate for the electors of Frome, to interrogate the budget, to look for those little nuggets of investment opportunity that might allow local communities to flourish but, of course, I also have portfolio responsibilities that afforded me a chance to put to the health minister questions that would allow me to understand or navigate where that extra $2.3 billion of the health budget was benefiting regional South Australians.

My portfolio sessions cut across regional health services, ageing, mental health and preventative health. While many questions were put to the health minister, the 2022-23 budget was also meant to be an opportunity for the current Labor government to be investing through the Mid North and the electorate of Frome. What we got instead was a disappointing lack of foresight and investment in our country roads.

We know that there is a $3 billion backlog of country roads that have been ripped up through a late, wet spring and a very busy and late harvest. There is never going to be an end to the investment in roads, but we certainly cannot afford to stop, and a $3 billion backlog is having an impact on locals every single day.

Housing is a pressure point right across the state, right across the nation. It is a constant issue that my community raises with me. While I am seeing a significant housing boom in the southern end of the electorate around towns like Two Wells, Lewiston, Roseworthy and Freeling, what concerns me and what concerns locals is the absence of infrastructure planning—water connections, improved roads, planning for families and for schools.

Of significant concern is a lack of public transport options for people who are living in those peri-urban areas, let alone further north. There does not seem to be any blue-sky thinking about what that is going to look like for thousands of people who are moving into the Adelaide Plains area.

Health, through my portfolios and through my communities, is a constant threat, it is a constant pressure point and it is a constant concern. To understand that with an extra $2.3 billion announced attached to the health budget that we then could not find those real applications in regional South Australia let alone Frome was another disappointment. While the government's own definition of 'regions' seems to magically include the satellite city of Mount Barker, an extra $100 million was allocated to the brand-new build of that hospital.

We are always going to welcome investment in health, but it is passing strange to see how the government prioritises particular communities and neglects others. Of course, I am standing here flying the flag for not just the Mid North region but for investment in true rural and remote regional health communities. For an extra $100 million for a hospital that is already underway to be defined and recognised as a quarter of the investment in regional health does not go far enough for the people I am interacting with in country towns. So when it comes to my own health portfolios, it would seem that South Australians are actually the poorer for this budget, regardless of the riches that exist in the glossy brochure and the riches that are being spent across the state on pet projects.

In putting questions to the health minister, it is clear that the government does have a plan to roll out and deliver very important pieces of work, like an SA cancer plan. There is a plan for a review of palliative care which I welcome, and I am sure members of the house welcome, but to see a commitment to a broader strategy or an understanding about an SA cancer plan, and to be so pig-headed and dogged in its refusal to contemplate investing in radiation therapy in the South-East goes beyond the pale.

We have evidence of a community, the second biggest city in our state, with a compilation or a consolidation of over 20,000 signatories calling for investment in a critical health service for a population that needs it. Where South Australia is the only state not to have a regional service of radiation therapy is something that the government has really failed to explain or to justify. I commend the community of the South-East, the Limestone Coast and residents in Mount Gambier in particular for their commitment to pursue this campaign to see state government investment.

In fact, all the minister needs to do is to declare that region, or any other region, as a region of need for this service for the commonwealth to unlock much-needed seed funding. Sadly, it looks like, while we are caught up in a feasibility study, the $4.3 million that was secured from the previous federal Coalition is not going to be available when it is needed.

As I reflect on a missed opportunity for the South-East in accessing radiation therapy services, there is another missed opportunity for investment in the PAT (Patient Assistance Transport) Scheme. I was pleased to see the government get on board with what has been a Liberal position of longstanding, and that is to contribute to and to double the subsidy available for the actual transport.

In a cost-of-living crisis, where the cost of fuel is extraordinarily high, for those people who are travelling to critical appointments in the city—unavoidable, urgent, important health appointments in the city—the appointment does not necessarily line up with lifestyle, and often patients are required to stay overnight. The accommodation subsidy is still only $40, and it does not come close to matching what a commercial rate would be now. I know that the Cancer Council is vocal and determined to see a change, an increase in that subsidy. I welcome that being done in the next 2½ years, but it is certainly something that people who are suffering from serious health issues cannot wait for.

Those pressures actually lead to another epidemic that South Australians are facing, and that is mental distress. It is very prevalent in the regions, but there was an opportunity for the government to take some leadership in the lead-up to this budget by releasing the unmet needs report, which was commissioned by former health minister Stephen Wade in the other place two years ago, in 2021. While I understand that reports can take a long time to be prepared, it is my understanding that it was available and completed in February.

I think there is a recklessness about the government and the minister in not seeing the urgency of releasing this report or at least budgeting for the recommendations, the findings from this report, given that the report stipulates that, while the Productivity Commission identified that there were perhaps 11,000 South Australians with unmet needs, in fact we know that number is closer to 19,000 people needing access to psychosocial services across the state.

To consider that in February the minister and the government were in a position to budget for this, but the delay in releasing the report under the cover of darkness to journalists only after the budget was handed down, really kicks into the next 12 months a deliberate buying of time by this government, complicated perhaps by the arrangement of shared funding and shared partnerships with the commonwealth. We are talking about $125 million that did not factor in the $2.3 billion of extra funding allocated to the health budget, so these are not just missed opportunities but points that will impact on real South Australians in a real way.

Workforce across the health sector was another challenge we put to the minister through our estimates process. It has been well ventilated that many other states are ahead of us when it comes to putting incentives on the table. Victoria, as an example, has committed over $200 million to attract and retain doctors and nurses to relocate practice in Victoria, and we are well behind the times on that front. In fact, the government is more advanced in looking at incentives for a teaching workforce in South Australia than it is for a health workforce, so the disappointments continue.

In fact, today in the chamber the Minister for Planning conceded that people from the regions are not even considered for board positions because the government is making decisions based on its own priorities, and we know that those priorities are about a city-centric government with pet projects. Regional South Australians really do deserve better. They had better: they had better investment, they had better service from a Liberal government, and I am confident that they will again. I conclude my remarks.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mr Odenwalder.

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