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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-09-14 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

State Labor Government

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:03): It has been quite an extraordinary week from a government that I think is becoming known as the most arrogant and self-aggrandising in the state's history. These guys make Mike Rann look like Mother Teresa when it comes to self-confidence. It is just extraordinary that a government that is so incapable of governing effectively for the people of South Australia can have so much confidence that they come in here, behave with abuse towards other members of parliament, behave with incredible arrogance every day of the week, when their first duty is of course to the people of South Australia and serving them well.

That is not how they behave and that is not reflected in results. Just this week, on Sunday, when they were hoping nobody would notice, they snuck out the ramping figures once again. For 15 months since the election, we have seen the 15 worst months of ramping in our state's history. In fact, 900 hours nearly worse than any month under the former Liberal government—900 hours worse from a government whose central premise for election was that they were going to fix ramping.

That was the one thing that Peter Malinauskas spoke about before the election more than any other. It was the thing that was on the posters on every Stobie pole in South Australia, littering our streets with plastic, with 'We will fix ramping' and 'Labor will fix ramping'. That is the thing that the people of South Australia remember about this government, yet this government has singularly failed to deliver.

The latest ramping data was 3,721 hours lost on the ramp in August, up from 3,354 hours in July. There has been a 144 per cent increase since the election from the government that promised that they were going to fix ramping, that that was their number one priority. These days, they do not even want to talk about it. Transfer of care data? Not even a KPI for this health minister, for this Premier, who had one job. There was one job that they promised to do, and they failed to do it. Despite the government's promise to fix ramping, we have the worst ramping in the state's history.

Jobs for the boys is a typical Labor premise, and again this week there was a perfect example: Mr Peter Hanlon. I am sure he is a lovely man. He is an entrepreneur. He is a filmmaker; in fact, we hear that he is an excellent filmmaker. He was hand-picked by the Premier, according to Rik Morris, hand-picked by the Premier to work for the Premier's Delivery Unit for—get this—$600 an hour. In fact, for about 13 days' work, this gentleman—the government has refused to say whether he has any connections to the Labor Party—has received $60,000 of taxpayers' money.

South Australians from Elizabeth to Whyalla, from Mount Gambier to Port Lincoln, are undergoing a cost-of-living crisis right now. People are struggling to put food on the table, to pay electricity bills that are going up constantly, yet this government can find $60,000 to pay to Mr Hanlon, hand-picked by the Premier for the Premier's Delivery Unit. What are these people doing anyway? The Premier says that it is important that the Premier's Delivery Unit exists to ensure that the government can deliver on its election promises. There was once a day when that was the job of ministers. There was once a day when people were elected to parliament with a manifesto—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Elder! Order!

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: —and they would deliver on that manifesto. They would be responsible for that, but the Premier does not trust his ministers to do that, and I do not blame him, having seen the way they work. Instead, he has to have a hand-picked selection of bureaucrats. Rik Morris, on $361,000 a year, a team of advisers from the department supporting him, meets with the Premier on a fortnightly basis without any other public servants, without minutes being taken.

We do not know what they are talking about, but the Premier assures us it is not political work, so we will take him at his word. On top of that, Rik Morris tells the Budget and Finance Committee of the parliament that Peter Hanlon was the Premier's choice and the Premier said he had to hire him. He was hand-picked by the Premier, providing secret advice to the government for $60,000. What are South Australians getting for their money? We do not know; there are no minutes.

There are significant challenges for the people of South Australia. The government has decided to move the police barracks away from their spot now, where they can respond to issues in 10 minutes. Having worked out they could not go to the Parklands, having worked out they could not go to the Airport because they had no access to that land, they have decided to send them to Gepps Cross at a cost of more than $100 million, where it will take 50 minutes for them to come into town and then go to a staging area. They have not even identified how that is going to work either.

It is a shambles. We have teachers threatening to go on strike, we have tram drivers threatening to go on strike, we have the people of South Australia suffering the worst cost-of-living and worst cost-of-doing-business crisis on record, and this government have no idea what they are doing, except they are very self-confident. They love the selfies and they love the arrogance. Shame on them.

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