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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-06-18 Daily Xml
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Bills

Appropriation Bill 2024

Second Reading

Debate resumed.

The SPEAKER: Member for Flinders, I was very sorry to interrupt you; please continue.

Mr TELFER: Thank you, sir. As we look at the different aspects of the budget, there is a part that is especially an area of passion for me, and that is ongoing funding for our jetties network. Indeed, I welcomed the additional commitment from this government on ongoing funding for our jetties, but unfortunately the dollar figures that are involved are only a small drop in the ocean (no pun intended) for what the actual need is for jetties, within regional South Australia in particular. Although there was $5 million that was budgeted in the year that has just gone, we have barely seen any of that get out to the infrastructure investment that is necessary for these vital pieces of our community infrastructure within our coastal communities, in particular, and within our regional communities.

Whenever I get the opportunity, I always highlight that there are 20 jetties within just my electorate of Flinders, and there are some 70 dotted around the coastline of South Australia. We as decision-makers need to make sure that we are prioritising investment into these sorts of vital, crucial pieces of our coastal infrastructure in communities that cannot afford to do that themselves. We are talking about small, regional communities that have significant tourism spend and visitor economy that are based around the lifestyle and the unique way which we, as South Australians in particular, can experience our lovely coastline.

There are more than 2,000 kilometres of coastline within my electorate and, as I said, 20 jetties, but we have small regional councils which cannot afford the significant work that needs to be done. These jetties are owned by the state government. Around half around the state are leased to councils for ongoing maintenance, but when there is a significant capital investment that needs to happen, I believe it is the owner of the infrastructure who needs to make sure they stump up and take responsibility for making sure that the longevity of these pieces of infrastructure are in place.

Sitting suspended from 18:00 to 19:30.

Mr TELFER: I will continue my remarks on the Appropriation Bill. When we are looking at the priorities for a government and where moneys are spent, making sure that our communities are kept safe and those people are properly equipped to the task of keeping our community safe, there is nothing more important than looking and dissecting the budget that gets allocated to SAPOL. It has been interesting at first glance to go through some of the numbers and have in context the numbers that we have seen as far as attrition, the number of police officers who are leaving the force at the moment. The attrition rate is still up above 5 per cent—that is 5 per cent of police officers are leaving the force every year.

There has been a lot of talk, a lot of spin, a lot of PR around the government's attempts to try to up the recruitment rates for police officers, yet we recently heard in this place that the gap between those who are leaving and those who are coming in is negligible—I think at last count it was 11. This is in the context of having currently a gap of over 200 officers. There is a shortfall of over 200 officers who should be on the beat, should be looking after our communities, but are not there because of the lack of direction from this government.

That 200-officer shortfall means that the district policing model that is in place cannot be fully equipped. It is also in the context of the additional officers who are out on the different forms of leave and it means that there is a significant shortfall for those people who, as I said, are tasked with looking after our communities. Within the budget statements, it has been interesting at first glance, looking at the activity indicators.

This is some of the nuts and bolts around the crime stats. Looking at Volume 3, page 185, for those who are wanting to read it at home, the offences and the crime numbers are up—up from last year, up from the year before. But then the government are looking ahead and they are saying, 'Well, no, we are going to project them down.' We see an ever-increasing number—and significantly so for this year—yet, optimistically, they say, 'Don't worry; next year's will be down.' Based on what?

Let me tell you, it is based on over 5 per cent of officers who are leaving the force, those senior officers, experienced officers who know what policing in South Australia is all about, and bringing in new recruits, who I strongly commend, but they are new recruits who are still learning what it means to be a police officer in South Australia. So why are the projections down? I think it is obviously to try to suit a narrative, but that narrative is in word only, not in action.

Where are the measures to retain our police officers within the budget? They are not there. There is nothing there to try to reinforce the fact that we as decision-makers should be making decisions around resourcing of our police officers to equip them, to look after them—to look after those who are looking after us. This is why they are leaving the force.

The big initiative that was announced by the government was the digital police station. I am going to be very interested in nutting out with the police minister a bit of the detail around the digital police station, but at first glance it seems like it is a new website or a new app for people to be able to report crime and go through some of those administrative aspects of policing, that interaction. Apparently, it is going to free up 47 employees—well, we can only hope. But once again, it is a significant cash splash for what I see as unproven as to whether it is going to actually be successful in freeing up the resources to appropriately equip police to be able to look after our communities.

There are a whole bunch of questions and a whole heap of unanswered questions within some of these budget papers which I know we will be starting to dissect through the estimates process. For me, the investment should be into not just police resourcing, as in equipping those individuals on the beat to be looking after us the best they can, but also the infrastructure that goes along with it and the equipment which is necessary to make sure that police are safe, well and properly looked after.

The Cummins Police Station is in my electorate. I thank the previous police minister for putting in place temporary measures for an office facility to be able to house the Cummins police officer as a short-term, temporary solution. The promise was made: 'Yes, we're doing work to progress a new build for the Cummins Police Station.' Well, I am going to be asking the new minister: does he stick by that commitment?

The people of Cummins and the people of Lower Eyre Peninsula deserve to have investment into these things which build the foundations for our community, none more so than equipping and building the capacity for our police force within regional areas to make sure that they are well-equipped to look after us in our communities. As decision-makers, we need to be looking after those who are tasked with looking after us.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (19:36): I rise to make a contribution about the Appropriation Bill, or the budget bill, for 2024. I note that the total budget when you add in the Supply Bill is around $28.5 billion, which is a significant amount of money to resource the state—noting, I think, somewhere around $9 billion of that goes into health.

What we have seen is with Labor's promise to fix the ramping—and it was a promise. They said that they would fix ramping at the last campaign coming into the election in 2022. They had Ash the ambo out; they had plenty of boxes of chalk out, chalking ambulances. It was essentially—well, not just essentially, the corflutes said, 'We will fix the ramping crisis.' That is what Peter Malinauskas and the Labor Party said coming into the 2022 election.

It is interesting that here we are, a couple of years and a bit more down the track, and we see that the ramping crisis has tripled—tripled. But I have not seen Ash the ambo and I have not seen any chalking, so it just goes to show where the unions sit.

We have talk of hundreds, and running over a thousand, extra health staff who are supposed to keep people off the ramps, get people through hospital and get them treated, but we have seen that over 500 people have had to let go their elective surgery. It is disgraceful. If you hear it from the minister, Minister Picton, you would think that everything is rosy. But, as members of parliament, we deal with people who are wondering why their hip operation has been put off, why a knee operation has been put off, whatever elective surgery it is. It is hurting the community. The next thing is we will see concrete trucks pulling into the emergency departments to build bigger ramps. That is what will be needed into the future, because they are not fixing the ramping crisis.

What I saw in this budget for Hammond was, essentially, close to nothing—close to nothing—which was disgraceful compared to when we were in government with the Marshall Liberal team for four years. We poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Hammond, and I was very proud to be part of the government that delivered that money.

As far as direct funding into Hammond, as far as infrastructure builds, there is a few million dollars for the levee banks. We have had to drag this government and the federal Labor government kicking and screaming to get that levee money to rebuild the lower Murray swamp levee banks, the 110 kilometres of those levee banks. We have had to drag them kicking and screaming to get some money.

Overall, it is $31.4 million, and that is only the initial money to work on these banks. That is going to be expended in the next couple of years. It has taken so long. I have seen the frustration of farmers who have had to spend so much of their own money fixing their levee banks and desilting channels, and they are over it.

There was plenty of action when the floods were on, apart from one person—apart from one person. The Deputy Premier, Minister Close, was missing for the whole peak flood event, and she is the Minister for Water.

The Hon. B.I. Boyer interjecting:

Mr PEDERICK: It's a fact, mate; it's a fact. She was missing for the whole month. They do not like it on the other side, but they were pretty happy to swing when Scott Morrison was in Hawaii. You have the minister responsible for the River Murray. There was a peak flood which came in at close to 200 gigalitres a day and no minister to be seen.

At least the emergency services minister was around, the Premier was around, the Minister for Housing was around, but they, too, ripped in, got some photos for social media and ripped out. But they were there. At least they were there, which is more than I can say for some. It was a major calamity for all residents on the River Murray, whether in my electorate or further upstream.

What really bothers me in this budget is that there has been a $172 million cut to regional road funding in the capital works program. Where we have seen some funding put in, a lot of that money is going into between the tollgate and Crafers for the freeway works, for putting in the diversion works for if there is an accident down at the bottom of freeway.

I was listening to the member for Unley's contribution today about the third arrester bed. I think a third arrester bed would work. I know Minister Koutsantonis says it would not work at the bottom of the freeway, but I listen to the truck drivers. I saw one the other day. They literally stopped a bloke, made sure he stopped, because his brakes were smoking. He was past the other two arrester beds, and thankfully he pulled up. Then he had to deal with the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator and the tow truck. It would not have been worth his time of day.

I really think it could be done, somewhere near Mira Monte and The Monastery at the bottom. It would not take a lot of work, but everything seems to take a lot of money. I know there are thoughts of money going into planning, pulling back the Cross Road stop, where the traffic stops on Cross Road for that intersection at Glen Osmond Road, the freeway and Portrush Road. That would certainly assist.

What really troubles me is when we have had some really good projects that would help with freight productivity, the High Productivity Vehicle Network Project, where the planning just seems to get extended on and extended on. We need to get the Greater Adelaide Freight Bypass in place. I am seeing all the work at the Halfway House corner on the Sturt Highway and the proposal to build the Truro freight bypass that was put up by the former Liberal government federally.

We certainly backed it in with $202 million to put in that freight bypass at Truro, but guess what, the federal Albanese Labor government pulled it, just like the Hahndorf bypass project, for which we put in state money of $250 million. That is $450 million of projects that would have alleviated the stress of heavy transport travelling through Truro and Hahndorf. Hahndorf has a million visitors a year, and they all have to travel through the main street, as I did the other day, coming from Charleston-Balhannah way to head back to the freeway towards Murray Bridge.

What do we end up with out of those projects? Labor have come back in and said, 'Hang on, we can do a little bit at Hahndorf. We can put up some money, and we will do the Verdun interchange, and we will do the Mount Barker interchange.' I can certainly say both are good things that need doing, but they miss the complete point of bypassing Hahndorf.

The member for West Torrens, the minister, says, 'We didn't want to compulsorily acquire some land.' He did not say that to the hundreds and hundreds of people whose land has been compulsorily acquired for the north-south connector, the Torrens to Darlington, with the tunnelling project. That is another thing: we have a project that, yes, does need to be done, but this was budgeted at just short of $10 billion and now is running with a $5 billion overload at $15.4 billion. Yes, it has to be done, but it is sucking all the finance that could be assisting in our regional roads around the state.

I know some of my colleagues have talked about the regional road safety program. There was $98 million. Projects were undertaken in near urban areas. There was certainly one at Mount Barker that does not even need doing—and I have raised it in this house before—up at the high school end on Adelaide Road, where I think $40 million or $42 million has been allocated to redo the roundabout. Yes, it is a relatively busy roundabout. I have gone around it multiple times. I have talked to many people from Mount Barker who just shake their head. Certainly, the fish and chip shop owner on the corner is really concerned because they will have to be acquired to change the roundabout. People just cannot get over it, and yet we see projects that need to be completed, like the Truro freight bypass and the proper Hahndorf bypass, being set aside.

Even when we have the community in Hahndorf work hard and put up a different proposal to repave a rubble road around Hahndorf, the government have come back and said—guess what—'It's too expensive. No, we can't do that. We will just stick to the dangerous River Road option, forgetting trucks around Hahndorf and be done with it.' The thinking is atrocious.

In the bigger picture, we have what was the South East Links project that is still in the planning stage with the other High Productivity Vehicle Network Project. They have all sort of been rolled into one budget item, as I can see now. That is the duplication of the Swanport Bridge, which is essential. The first bridge was built in 1979, and the first five kilometres of duplication of the Dukes Highway out towards the Mallee Highway and heading south-east. That is absolutely necessary. There will be a railway bridge incorporated into that as well. So these projects need to happen.

As part of that freight project that extends from Western Australia through to Victoria, there is work to be done on Eyre Highway on the West Coast. As I said, it looks like the freight bypass, from the work going in at Halfway House corner—which down the track I know where this is heading; and that is fine, I am all about productivity—will have to have roads built to match it for triple road trains. So you will be able to take a triple road train from Melbourne around Murray Bridge, Mannum, Sedan, Cambrai, Halfway House, up through Truro, around to the north of Adelaide, come into Adelaide from the north, or head straight through to Port Augusta and straight through to Darwin. I assume that, more than anything, they are probably looking at triple road trains headed into Perth, though I am not entirely sure about that.

So the task is huge, but one thing that is part of that project for getting the freight around on the bypass is getting it out of Murray Bridge. I think that is going to be a challenge in itself. We have had the freight route going through Murray Bridge for quite a while, up around Hindmarsh Road, Maurice Road and Cypress Terrace. It then turns off onto Mannum Road. I know some trucks already sneak out around past Monarto and the Old Princes Highway, around about there, and head up that way. So I think that is a good proposal. It will need a roundabout to go in there that will cost at least $4½ million on today's costings, but there is one factor that needs to be taken into account: that the same road through Monarto leads to the new entrance of the Monarto Safari Park, so there will have to be some pretty good planning done there.

Into the longer term—the close-on 600 kilometres—there is 167 kilometres post Lochiel from the work that we initiated, between Port Wakefield and Lochiel, to duplicate the Augusta Highway; there is about 200 kilometres of the Sturt Highway that needs duplication; and then 200 kilometres of the Dukes Highway, and they are big projects. Even with the exorbitant cost of these projects and the cost of compulsory acquisition, I still think they come in well under the tunnelling project on South Road, which is probably about $10 billion, although that figure is probably getting out of date. Plenty of money needs to be spent on these upgrades.

I note in the budget there is $1 million to support our veterans with programs, and we will explore some of that during estimates. We need to do all we can to support those brave men and women who put their hand up to defend our country. I salute anyone who is prepared to die for their country. We need to make sure that we assist them and look after them well into the future. So we will explore that a bit more during the estimates process.

I talked about the High Productivity Vehicle Network Project. The emergency services is another of my portfolio areas. We do see some funding for the extension of aerial firefighting, which is welcome, and there is $10.1 million there. There is some PFAS remediation and testing through the MFS, $1.65 million; for SAFECOM, there is $435,000 over two years for the state's Volunteer Marine Rescue associations; and there is $2.8 million to relocate the Prospect SES unit to a new facility. But there are many other things that we need to look at in regard to emergency services when we get through the estimates process.

One thing that does intrigue me is the push that we had last year with the Hon. Ben Hood in the other place to get a select committee on all things CFS, including facilities and trucks but also management of volunteers and paid personnel, those who felt aggrieved that they did not get a fair say. I am pleased that that inquiry, even though it did not get up as a select committee, has got up with a standing committee, the occupational safety and rehabilitation committee of the parliament. People can put in submissions, as I mentioned earlier today, until 28 June. I urge people to do so.

One reference got taken out, even though it can be included; people can still refer to facilities management under 'any other related matter' if they write a submission or wish to speak to the committee and probably do both in some cases. They can still talk about facilities, but the really strange thing—as people know, I am a proud CFS member—is that there is a fire station facilities audit for $817,000 over two years. I just cannot understand why, for an organisation that costs hundreds of millions of dollars to run and has people reporting all the time on what is at their facilities, what equipment and what trucks, and the state of their base camps, their sheds, essentially.

Yet, for whatever reason, the authorities do not know the state of the facilities. I think it is outrageous, to be frank. That should be something where you hit a button on a computer and up it comes: the state of the facilities right across the state that our 13,500 proud volunteers work with. I am just stunned. A lot of these things will be explored in estimates. It is a budget that does next to nothing for the regions. I am sure, right across the board from this side of the house, we will have a good look at it during the estimates process.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (19:57): I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on the budget bill, the Appropriation Bill. In the course of today, the Leader of the Opposition gave an excellent speech responding to the government's 2024-25 budget. In that speech, he outlined some clear, optimistic, coherent, costed and well thought-through measures that will indeed assist South Australians in a range of areas. In particular, there were two new measures he talked about today, commitments that were given that a Liberal government, if forming in March 2026, will deliver for the people of South Australia.

One of those was in relation to our energy future. I am really pleased that the shadow minister for energy and mining is sitting next to me on the front benches. The way in which debate over energy in South Australia has developed over many decades is worth reflecting on. Today, I was at Jennifer Cashmore's funeral. In the 1980s and 1990s, and indeed in the 1970s, Jennifer Cashmore talked about the challenges to South Australia. She talked about solar, she talked about hydrogen, she talked about nuclear. She talked about a range of opportunities for what was ultimately going to need to be a transition away from oil and coal as our core supply of energy.

As we went forward, through the era when I became involved in politics more recently, the Rann government saw a significant proliferation of renewable energy in South Australia, and at the same time they hastened the decline of our base load power-generating capacity to the point where, during the Weatherill government, we had the statewide blackout. There were a range of factors contributing there, but the fact that in 2017 we saw such an extraordinary set of experiences across South Australia suggests that we potentially missed the mark on that transition to a cleaner and greener future.

Coming to government in 2018 the former Marshall Liberal government was very clear that we needed to have security, reliability and affordability when it came to the provision of energy. Indeed, the work is currently going on in building the interconnector with New South Wales—first promised by Mike Rann, as I am sure you remember, sir, four years before your own election, when he came into power in 2002 with a pledge card confirming that the interconnector would be built, subsequently disavowed by Labor—means that now, thanks to the work of Dan van Holst Pellekaan, Steven Marshall and the former government, the interconnector will be delivered. This will be of assistance.

There are opportunities in hydrogen. We do not believe that the production of power through an experimental $600 million unproven hydrogen power plant is one of them. There will be a need for future provision of energy in South Australia over and above our current generating capacity. The Leader of the Opposition very clearly articulated that every opportunity to have clean, reliable, affordable energy should be explored, and that may possibly include nuclear as well, as part of the mix.

Indeed, the understanding of nuclear as a safe, reliable, green energy has much more proliferated in the South Australian community now, I would submit, sir, than when you or I started on our political journeys. I think that we should look to follow the science. The Leader of the Opposition has committed to that, and we look forward to that royal commission taking place, a reopening of the chapter of the Scarce royal commission where we can truly consider the opportunity for a civil nuclear industry.

Alongside that, of course, there are also new pieces of information such as the fact that in Adelaide we will be building our own military nuclear industry. Nuclear submarines being built in South Australia, powered by nuclear reactors, while at the same time accepting a federal law that prohibits presumably the attachment of an extension cord to those submarines to power a house down the road is strange. There are a lot of things that need to go into consideration of whether a civil nuclear industry is relevant and appropriate for South Australia.

The government has talked about cost previously. The Premier has said that it would be foolish to get ahead of ourselves in supporting an industry that was going to cost more than existing ones. It is notable, as the shadow minister for energy has said today and at other times that, as I think it was, the CSIRO report has confirmed that the cost of the hydrogen proposal the government is pursuing is higher than nuclear. If nuclear is the more proven technology, a cheaper technology than hydrogen, then I think it is a foolish decision to block it off. That said, the reason for a royal commission is because we want to explore all of these matters and what South Australia would need to do to deliver on such an industry. That is a $2 million commitment and I think one that is going to be beneficial to South Australia.

The other commitment that was made today that was a new commitment was the abolition of payroll tax for all GPs. GPs have not been paying payroll tax. It is not something that has interacted between patients and GPs over the years, until a ruling in New South Wales decided that GP clinics were to be treated as businesses for payroll tax purposes, notwithstanding the fact that the GPs by and large will have an arrangement where they are tenants in a room. They may be paying for some shared services with their fellows in the GP clinic, they all have their own ABNs, and they all have their own interactions with funding going through the Medicare system, and indeed gap payments from the patient.

This is not a small business where there is an employer who owns a practice and has employees who are the doctors, yet this ruling has found a case where they decided that a GP clinic in New South Wales is a small business and that is now being applied to GP clinics across South Australia. This government has given an amnesty until 1 July this year, when GP clinics will start paying payroll tax. The government has come out and said they are going to exclude bulk-billed transactions. That sounds on face value like a positive step forward, but the Liberal Party has gone further and listened to the GPs in our communities. We have listened to the GPs and indeed to the other stakeholder groups who have talked about the practical effect of what the government's position would be if taken no further. What we have heard is that the business model if one was to only see bulk-billed patients does not allow for a reasonable or a sensible business model to exist. As was suggested in one case, people seeing patients might have to limit their sessions to as little as six-minute medicine.

The practical impact of the imposition of the GP payroll tax, we understand, in many practices will be between $10 and $20 per client per session. That is an extraordinary impost in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, at a time when we are already struggling to retain the interest of young residents in pursuing GP practice, at a time when there is already a waiting list, in some cases in the weeks, for people to be able to see their local GP. I certainly get this from my constituents—I am sure you hear it from yours—people who would love to see their GP in a quicker time frame.

As has been pointed out by a number of the doctors who have stood up with the opposition today and last week, GP practice is often in many ways the cheapest and best form of medical care. It is literally stopping a patient from falling off the cliff of sickness where they need an ambulance at the bottom. Pretty much more than anything else in our healthcare system, if we can get primary care and the GP support right, if we can improve those services, we will be able to reduce the risk of somebody needing an ambulance and needing that longer ramp that has been described by so many in recent days.

I put it on the table: we do not have enough young people wanting to become general practitioners. Of the people studying medicine, there are all sorts of push factors going this way and that on what specialisation they might pursue. We would like, as a society, half of them to want to go into general practice and yet the numbers, from what I hear, are not anything like 50 per cent, but much closer to 10 per cent or 20 per cent.

This is a challenge for us as a community. The imposition of GP payroll tax is, we think, a real own goal. This is a government that came to power with big promises on health and ramping and they said they would not leave a lever untouched if they could shift the dial on ramping. They have put inputs in the billions of dollars extra to try to deal with the ramping crisis and yet what are the outcomes? The 24 worst months of ramping on record: the last 12 months with 3,000 hours or more lost to the ramp and three of those months, including last month, with more than 4,000 hours lost to the ramp—more than 4,700 hours lost in May to the ramp.

The government has put in inputs in the billions of dollars and has had worse outcomes. As I have said before, it takes a special kind of incompetence to spend more money than ever before and get worse outcomes than ever before. We have just come out of a fortnight on Code Yellow. I was not able to hear the answer today, but I understand more than 500 elective surgery procedures have been deferred. Maybe necessary for the system in that circumstance but cruel for those patients. It was necessary during the pandemic on occasion for there to be pauses in elective surgery—during a global pandemic of once-in-a-century proportions. This government, not dealing with a once-in-a-century global pandemic, has given us these outcomes, is investing this money, and yet refuses to give GPs the same tax treatment going forward that they have had over the last number of years.

The Treasurer and the Premier seek to defend themselves in their inertia, in their lazy inaction, to support the GP clinics by saying that this is not their decision, there is no new tax here, this is just a legal ruling, as if they have absolutely no agency in the outcomes at all. This is the application of a state-based tax collected by state-based tax collectors going into support the revenue that is propping up this state Treasurer's budget.

The practical application of this tax to South Australian doctors for the first time leaves them really scratching their heads when the Treasurer says that this is not a new tax, this is not his decision, this is something he is being unwillingly forced into accepting. Yet, in the budget papers, the government cannot even bring themselves to say how much they think they are going to collect out of this revenue.

Budget Paper 5, page 5, Part 1: Revenue measures, talks about the bulk-billing exemption that the government has put in. That bulk-billing exemption has no budget figures attached to it. It says 'n.a.' and:

The nature of the measure is such that a reliable estimate cannot be provided.

On page 6 it goes on to say:

Reliable data is not available to estimate the cost of this measure. Estimates of revenue forgone will be incorporated in future tax expenditure statements.

Yet the Treasurer had the gall to go on the radio this afternoon after the Leader of the Opposition had spoken to the excellent Stacey Lee on FIVEaa outlining the new measures that he committed to in the budget, including the abolition of the payroll tax applied to GP clinics. The Treasurer of South Australia went on Stacey Lee's show on FIVEaa of his own choice and said in relation to the Leader of the Opposition:

He has outlined what would amount to hundreds of millions of dollars of additional costs to the state budget.

The Leader of the Opposition today outlined two new measures that would cost money to the state budget, one of which was the royal commission, which would cost $2 million, and the other of which was the exemption for GP payroll tax to continue effectively going forward as it has for the last year under an amnesty from the government as it did beforehand. The Treasurer of South Australia presumably believes that exemption will cost us hundreds of millions of dollars because they were the two measures outlined.

Maybe the Treasurer was talking about other measures that the Leader of the Opposition talked about that had been previously ventilated, things like our commitment, which I am very proud of, to lift the payroll tax threshold for all small businesses from $1.6 million to $2.1 million, which would in fact bring it down in real terms to the level it was at in 2019 when we first abolished payroll tax on small businesses with a payroll of $1.5 million. Perhaps, that is what he is talking about. The idea of giving back money to businesses that have done the incredibly dangerous thing from his point of view of employing South Australians is such an anathema to him that he does not want them to have that money. He thinks that is his money. He thinks that is a cost to the budget, as he describes it.

The other commitment we made several weeks ago that was repeated in the budget reply speech today was the exemption that we want to provide to apprentices and trainees because we as an opposition talk to businesses regularly. When we were in government, sir, you will recall I am sure with pride that many of the young apprentices were educated in your electorate at the excellent St Patrick's Technical College amongst other schools with good apprenticeship programs and other young people beyond school in apprenticeships. We had record growth in apprenticeships.

In talking to the businesses taking on those apprentices, it was very clear to us that one of the challenges usually for businesses thinking about taking on an apprentice is that in that first year or two there is often a time lag until that apprentice becomes productive. There is a time when the business and the RTO are providing support to that young person or older worker training in the area so they can become productive so they can pursue a career. Whether it is an apprentice or a trainee, they are more productive at the end than they are at the start and the business gets a greater benefit at the end than they do at the beginning. It is indeed a cost that many businesses see. It is a barrier to the employment of that apprentice in the first place.

There is a range of measures that the former state and federal governments took to increase incentives for businesses to take on those apprentices and thousands of young South Australians and older South Australian workers benefited from that opportunity. Thousands of businesses, indeed I think more than 3,000 businesses from memory, took on an apprentice for the first time during that period and benefitted from that experience. But we understand that it is a cost, especially in those early years, and so that is why we committed to removing the payroll tax application for apprentices and trainees. These are the things that have a cost factor.

There is also a relief of stamp duty of up to $10,000 that we have committed to providing for young people, first homeowners, purchasing an existing house. This is noting that most first homeowners purchase an existing dwelling rather than a new build. We support the government's measure for a new build, but we do believe that having the particular needs of first-home buyers supported through relief of the first home build would benefit them very significantly.

These are the measures that the Treasurer finds so appalling that he would go on radio and be so critical of them. I am really excited about the policy agenda that the Liberal Party is putting forth. The budget deals with some of the issues that need to be dealt with and not others. I look forward to going through the education, training and skills budget in great detail with the minister next week.

I look forward to going through the higher education budget with the Deputy Premier next week, and I look forward to going through the arts budget with the arts minister, and possibly also the Premier, who has taken some of those responsibilities away from the minister. I am particularly thinking about the South Australian Museum.

It has been raised in this house before, but there is damage being done to morale at the South Australian Museum with every day that drags on without a clear understanding and sight of whether the research scientists, with their collective 400 years plus of experience of supporting scientific and other research at the Museum, have jobs going forward, and of those galleries presenting extraordinary opportunities for young South Australians to learn about the world from natural history to ancient society, to anthropology and a range of other things.

To be clear, those who love the Museum have come out in their thousands and demonstrated support for the Museum in recent months, that their stress that this institution that they love so much will indeed be supported going forward in a form that remains remotely recognisable to them can be alleviated. The Premier has an opportunity to set their minds at ease in the coming days, and I hope he will. It was really disappointing that that was not included in the budget. What we did see in the arts budget was—and I extend my apologies to the education minister, who has been attentively listening. I am not focusing on his issues tonight, we will have plenty of time next week, I assure him.

Just to finish off on the arts budget, the Museum was not mentioned. There was discussion about a number of projects, the Adelaide Festival Centre fire safety upgrade, I think, and some money for State Theatre, State Opera and Country Arts to have new offices. I am really interested in the minister's explanation about what is the thinking, the strategic decision, the application of purpose and, indeed, the application process for the granting of funds under the $5 million arts investment fund. I certainly am not going to complain about the application of money in a budget to the arts and culture sector. I think there are opportunities for it to be spent wisely, and I look forward to hearing what the minister is thinking about what they are. I am really looking forward to the minister and the Premier explaining what the government is going to do with the Museum.

In summary, I support the bill. The bill must be passed. Having appropriation is what pays for everyone's salaries and the government to keep going. Education, training, skills, arts, festivals and higher education are my roles to pursue in greater detail in estimates, and I look forward to that process.

Mr PATTERSON (Morphett) (20:17): I take this opportunity to speak on the Appropriation Bill, which deals with the 2024-25 state budget. Certainly, when South Australians are waiting for the budget to be handed down, and listening to, I suppose, the pre-budget announcements, and then afterwards what actually lands, the big question they want to ask, especially in light of where everyone is at the moment in a cost-of-living crisis, is: will they be better off in the next 12 months? Will their family be better off in the next 12 months? Will South Australians across the board be better off in the next 12 months?

If they are looking at what has happened in the previous two years and what has been going on, they would certainly be very cautious about answering that question in a positive manner—more likely in a negative manner—because if the past two years are anything to go by, that answer is a definite no.

We know that in the last budget, the 2023-24 budget that was handed down, South Australia had the highest inflation in the country at 7.9 per cent, and now in this budget the inflation figures that came out in March show that South Australia still has the highest inflation rates. It has reduced but it is still at 4.3 per cent, well outside what the Reserve Bank sees in its band of targeted inflation. It is a real issue and it is quite sticky, which is the real concern.

At the same time as inflation is high and costs are surging, what is important is that people have jobs. The unemployment rates are at low levels but South Australia, unfortunately, has the highest unemployment in the nation. That low level of unemployment started at the end of the time of the former Marshall Liberal government. It has continued, but the fact is that in South Australia the unemployment rate here is the highest in the nation and, concerningly, the participation rate is what we need to be concerned about in terms of the number of people actively contributing to the economy here in South Australia.

In terms of the average family, in thinking about how they are going: the average family—two kids and a mortgage—are more than $20,000 worse off than they were at the state election in 2022. Their mortgage repayments, their interest payments, the basics and food costs have surged—inflation has seen them go up. Petrol, groceries—those costs that cannot be avoided—eat into the ability of families to have discretion and make do. Of course, electricity costs as well are massively eating into the family budget.

With South Australian households, as well as small businesses, we had the latest market offering handed down by the AER, which showed that South Australian households and families are paying more for the average electricity bill than are households in Melbourne, households in Sydney and households in Brisbane. So they are hurting. It is bearing out in some of the consumer spending reports. In recent months it has shown—I think, back in April—that consumer spending is down by 1 per cent. We are talking about inflation rates up around the 4.3 per cent, and consumer spending has basically gone down, because there is no discretionary spending for them—they are having to withhold money from the budget.

However, we know that increasing is the massive spending going on by governments, whether it is the federal government or, here in South Australia, the state government. We have the highest inflation rates in the country and we have record spending by the government. The RBA has one tool to handle inflation, and that is interest rates. It needs to work in conjunction with fiscal policy, but of course governments have absented this because they want all the blame sheeted home to the RBA.

The RBA tolled the bell on that today when it deliberated. Thankfully, to some extent, the interest rates did not go up—of course people want them to go down—but they warned that the recent big spending in federal and state budgets may have added fuel to the inflationary fire. Now the RBA has to sit and wait to see how the spending is going on before it can move on interest rates. At the very least, interest rates are having to stay on hold for longer, and certainly the threat now is that they may rise.

I spoke previously about the Supply Bill, which is to allow spending to continue while we get through the Appropriation Bill for vital, essential government services, and I was very intrigued that that bill had gone up by $1.2 billion to $7.7 billion from the previous year. I questioned it at the time: why would that be? Is that a portent of what is going to happen in the budget? The budget was handed down and we now see why. The budget revealed a massive spending problem—massive spending and expenditure going on in this budget.

In the last budget that increase in expenditure happened pretty much across the board; almost every single department had overspent to the tune of $1 billion. What would you have thought would have happened? You would have the Premier in cabinet surely reading the riot act to the ministers, telling them to get their departments in check to make sure they are not overspending. But, no, what do we find in this budget? More overspending—I think another $800 million of overspending going on there compared with budgets. We are finding that, compared with the original budget two years ago, we have $3 billion of overspending this year.

When you look through the departments and where that is happening, health has massive overspending going on there—I think upwards of $1.2 billion more than the budgeted amount in that first budget—but also, interestingly, the Department of the Premier and Cabinet overspent and the Deputy Premier's department overspent. So if the leaders are not setting an example, good luck trying to get the ministers to follow, because why should they follow when their leaders are not worrying about keeping their departments in check?

I talked about health. We have massive spending in health, but what is the result? Rather than correcting ramping, what we now have is record ramping in South Australia. In fact, this government and the Premier, despite their promise to fix ramping, are now responsible for the worst ramping ever recorded in the state's history.

We just had the ramping figures come out for May and they showed that 4,773 hours were lost for that month. Despite the Premier's number one election commitment that he was going to fix ramping, what we have is ramping at levels three times worse than the last full month of the former Liberal government. In fact, when you tally up all the ramping hours that have been lost, what you find is that more than 94,540 hours have now been lost to ramping since Labor was elected just over two years ago. Compare that to the former Liberal government which, in its four-year term, had 74,991 hours of ramping over the full four years. So there we go: we have had nearly 20,000 more hours of ramping in a little over half the time.

How those ramping figures play out is that the Premier, despite his promises, has now delivered the worst 24 months of ramping in the state's history. When you look at what that means for paramedics on the ramp and the amount of time they are spending on there, that equates to well over $5 million of taxpayer-funded wages. We had the Premier telling us to vote like our lives depended on it and that he had the fix for ramping, but what we were not told was that he would make ramping three times worse and, as I said before, he would be spending record amounts.

How this has played out is that in the lead-up to the budget, we had five days in a row of Code White where all ED beds were full and hospitals were over capacity, leading to elective surgeries being cancelled for two weeks. We had people who have been waiting and waiting; I think over 500 surgeries were cancelled. Clinicians, nurses and doctors are burnt out. As the top union chief of SASMOA said, 'In my view it's the worst I have ever seen in our hospital system.'

So we have record spending and overspending from departments. In health, as I said, there is a massive amount of spending, yet at the same time we have had 24 months of the worst ramping in the state's history. If you were running a company and went to the board and said, 'I've spent a massive amount of money, more than budgeted, and the results are three times worse,' I think you would be asked to resign on the spot—but not here, not in government. We have the Premier and the health minister going on with no issue from them continuing to do that.

When we look at how the budget, with its record expenditure, is still able to be balanced, that is driven off of inflation and the massive increases to taxation revenue that this government is getting. If you look at revenues, stamp duty and housing prices are going up and that has added another $100 million to the state's coffers. The GST bill—the GST that people are paying on top of their already increasing food, petrol and groceries—has gone up $2.1 billion. Payroll tax has also gone up 38 per cent to $280 million.

So businesses, because wages are trying to keep up with inflation so that workers, rightly, can try to pay their bills, have an increased wage bill, and so payroll tax is surging into the state government's coffers. Overall, the tax take is up by 27 per cent in a cost-of-living crisis. This government is bringing in surges in taxation revenue. Despite their promise of no new taxes, no tax increases, what we actually have is South Australians paying more tax than ever before.

There is inflation, which home owners, people affected by interest rates, are getting crushed under by the RBA trying to bring inflation down. Householders' pain and small businesses' pain is this government's pain. At the same time there are record revenues. You would think, 'Okay, that could be used to pay down debt,' but what we actually found is that state government debt is projected to surge to $44 billion over the forward estimates. That is a massive debt bomb waiting down the line in four years.

What does that mean? The estimates show that the interest rate bill annually is over $2 billion to pay for that debt. That is more than $5 million each day. Money that could be spent on other essential services is now paying down that debt. The other startling factor around that debt is the fact that more than half of the costs of the north-south corridor and the new Women's and Children's Hospital are not included. So there is more debt to come after the forward estimates—upwards of $50 million is not inconceivable.

We have households hurting. They understand the issues around debt; the time of cheap money is behind them. Businesses are the same, but the government has not seen that. Businesses, as I talked about, are struggling. They are currently in a cost-of-doing-business crisis. We have the government, the Treasurer, in question time even today saying, 'You have never had it better. We've got such a positive, strong-running economy,' which, as I said, is driven by inflation.

So you have those positive macro indicators, but what we are finding, in business confidence surveys and even in CommSec surveys as well, is that these big headline factors fail to consider the micro issues that are being faced by business—the costs, profitability and labour availability—which are really hurting them. There was nothing in this budget for small business. The energy rebates that were there in the last budget have been cut, and there is no payroll tax relief as well. That is why, in the lead-up to the budget, it was welcomed on this side of the house that the Liberal Party, if elected, would increase the payroll tax threshold from $1.6 million up to $2.1 million.

I talked previously about electricity: the massive costs and the fact that households and businesses in South Australia are paying more for their electricity than in Melbourne, in Sydney and in Brisbane. Over the term of this government the first two years of default market offers saw electricity bills for the average household and business skyrocket and go up—for both businesses and households—by well over 30 per cent. I think for households it was an increase equating to about $710, and for businesses it was well in excess of that at about $1,700. So electricity prices went up.

Thankfully, in the most recent default market offer, put out only just a few weeks ago, you would say that prices have moderated. They came down by about 1 per cent. We have the energy minister rolling out, saying that this is proof positive that the energy price is coming down. What a plan: smash households with big 30 per cent rises and then have it come down by 1 per cent to say that prices are going in the right direction. Well, clearly that is not the case.

We looked at the budget to see what would be some measures in it to help struggling households and struggling businesses. We did not get any new measures that are going to help with bringing down prices for households. What we did see was more new measures into hydrogen. The budget showed that $126 million had been spent on the government's hydrogen power station in their estimate for 2024, with a further $388 million to be spent in 2024-25. We had the Office of Hydrogen Power, which was meant to be on a budget of $2 million per year in the government's first budget, but the actuals show that it was $13 million for its first year of operation, not $2 million.

It shows that the estimate for the 2023-24 year was $35 million, and it shows for next year it is $25 million. That is significant money going towards $75 million spent on this office, over and above the $600 million required for the hydrogen power station. We know that the government has admitted that that hydrogen power station is not going to reduce electricity bills for South Australians.

While we are on this transition, we got to understand that it is complex and it is at such a scale that we cannot just rely on a one-fix solution. The government has a renewables-only solution with the silver bullet of hydrogen being able to justify more and more renewable energy, which leads to inefficiencies throughout the whole electricity system, and an inefficient electricity system produces an inefficient economy.

That is why the leader today in his address in reply indicated that we need to have all options on the table, and that includes considering nuclear. That is why he has announced that, if elected, a Speirs Liberal government will hold a royal commission that investigates what would be required for South Australia to be ready to have civilian nuclear electricity generation as part of the energy mix, all aimed at trying to have affordable energy, affordable electricity for South Australian households and also business and industry, so that industry is not having to leave the state.

In conclusion, as I stated in my opening comments, after three budgets, South Australian households and businesses must ask themselves: are we better off under Labor? What this budget shows is a resounding no. We have record ramping. We have record high electricity bills here in South Australia, and the cost of living is cruelling families and business.

Mr BASHAM (Finniss) (20:37): I rise to also speak on the Appropriation Bill and very much give a view from the lens of the people of Finniss, an area that certainly has a unique demographic. The population in Finniss is a much older population than generally in South Australia, let alone Australia. It is a lovely part of the world where many people choose to retire. I often look at the data and look at those people who are able to vote. Excluding the children of the electorate, the average age of the voting population in Finniss is actually 66, past the average retirement age. So it is a unique part of the population who reside in Finniss in that regard.

That then also puts interesting challenges in front of that community. Certainly, I acknowledge that there are some things being invested in in Finniss, but that many of them, if not nearly all of them, are things that the Marshall Liberal government had committed to prior to the last election. We see through the budget papers mentions of certainly things around health. We are seeing the commencement right now of the work that is going into the new emergency department at the South Coast District Hospital, in the Southern Fleurieu Health Service there, and the work that is being done is essential.

I certainly had firsthand experience of the current emergency department only earlier this year when, unfortunately, one of my children had an anaphylactic reaction to what was likely nuts and ended up having to be taken to the ED just to be treated to make sure that she was brought back under control, and to make sure that her body stopped fighting those nuts in her system. They did a wonderful job, but under enormous pressure and room constraints. Once my daughter was treated, it was very much, 'Can you move to another cubicle because we need this one.'

It was a really challenging time, and particularly very challenging being there as an elderly man came in for a regular check-up and, unfortunately, it was found that his body was in complete shutdown and he was only given hours to live. It was very hard to sit there—for me, let alone my daughter—listening to the conversation that his family was having to have, that he was only going to be with us for a few more hours. It was a real challenge, and thankfully this new ED is going to have some rooms where families can actually be separated and have those conversations in private so that they do not have to have the world listening to that very personal time that this family was having, talking to relatives around Australia and informing them of the sad news.

I am very much supportive of the investment that is going into the emergency department in Victor Harbor. It is important to make sure that that upgrade is delivered. Unfortunately, it is running late from when it was first forecast. Of all the ED upgrades, pretty well all of the others have been done on time. Unfortunately, this one is running 12 months late, at least, and we will see when it is actually completed how late it actually is.

Also in the health space, there is a new helipad to be built. This is an important part of making sure that the facilities are there for helicopters to land and, as we see larger helicopters come into operation, making sure that the helipad is fit for purpose. Again, this is something that was promised under the Marshall Liberal government. I am glad to see it is continuing and glad to see it is finally going to be delivered—and, interestingly, straight across from my front door.

I live literally straight across the road from where the helipad is and I get to see how often and how important it is for the people of Finniss to have that service there. There are times when it certainly is very regular and there are other times when we do not see it for a couple of weeks, maybe even a month or so. Sometimes it can come many times in a day, so it is an important thing in making sure the people of Finniss are receiving their healthcare needs.

In the investment in the region in health, also in the budget is the new ambulance station, on which work has also commenced. I am pleased to see this work commence. The old station has certainly been a challenge and it has been something that has needed to be upgraded. It is something I certainly spoke about with the previous minister, Stephen Wade. I was not able to get it lifted up to the priority of being in our cycle, but it certainly was acknowledged that it did need upgrading and it was a challenging time to find where to direct all the funds.

I guess the other important piece of infrastructure that is mentioned in the budget papers is the upgrade of Victor Harbor Road, particularly part of the money that was secured under the federal Morrison government to upgrade safety along Victor Harbor Road. It was meant to fund an overtaking lane, but that overtaking lane was axed by this government. We are still seeing some investment into one of the intersections, which was also planned to be done by the Marshall government, and that is at the Hindmarsh Tiers Road/Virgin Road/Victor Harbor Road corner.

This intersection is probably 1½ kilometres north of the roundabout, which many people call the Urimbirra roundabout, just next to the Urimbirra Wildlife Park. This intersection is quite busy and unfortunately is on a bit of a crest of a hill. People often do not realise the dangers that are there and do some fairly silly manoeuvres that have led to some quite serious accidents at times, and unfortunately there have been deaths at this intersection as well. It is a really important safety infrastructure upgrade, so I am really pleased that that is there.

There is also some money being spent on the bridges on the railway line where the SteamRanger train operates between Mount Barker and Victor Harbor. There are four bridges that are certainly showing their age. SteamRanger has been able to secure funding for those. We cannot actually find exactly where it is in the budget, but I am pretty confident it is still there.

That work is important to make sure that SteamRanger is able to continue. Interestingly, all of those four bridges are actually in the seat of Finniss, one being the crossing of the Finniss River itself, one crossing Currency Creek, and another one crossing the Urimbirra Creek. Most people would not know where that is, but that is between Port Elliot and Victor Harbor, and is also known as Watson's Gap. The fourth bridge is just as you come into Victor Harbor, going across the Hindmarsh River as you come into town.

There is an interesting little story about that bridge. I had a constituent come to see me. Her grandfather was given a job during, I believe, the First World War. There was concern that there may be an invasion and so they actually drilled holes in the bridge. These holes are still there today, where they were going to put the dynamite to blow the bridge up, in case there was an invasion. I would have thought that it was fairly unlikely that Granite Island was going to be the point where they were going to invade the Australian mainland, but they were prepared anyway. It was very much a request of this constituent to make sure SteamRanger were aware and that they did not fill these holes in. They have made that commitment. Unless they are structurally needed to be filled in, they will not be filling these holes in.

That certainly covers the bulk of infrastructure that I can find in the budget in relation to Finniss. There are certainly some other things that will help, but they are of very limited help in the population as I was describing. As I said, it is very much an aged population, so the number of children in the electorate is much lower, probably, than average across the state. The increase in sports vouchers is welcomed by those who are able to use them, but it is certainly limited.

Interestingly, I was just having a look at some of the stats over the years about where we are seeing that sort of investment, where people are using those sporting vouchers. It is quite fascinating to see that, over the last calendar year of 2023, a full year, 102 different organisations received funding via that sports voucher, 102 different sorts of sports clubs or Scouts, etc.

A total of 386 vouchers went to Australian Rules Football. Second was 191 to netball. We have a very strong soccer club at Port Elliot, and we had 150 playing soccer at Port Elliot. Interestingly, we had nearly exactly the same, 149, for dancing. It is certainly interesting to see that dancing is such an important part. A total of 138 went to gymnastics, another less known sport, but certainly well participated in there. Then there is a bit of a drop down to 79 for basketball.

That is where the community of Finniss is actually using these vouchers. There are some other interesting things that I think we need to look at, and that is what is in it for the older population. One of the things that gets raised with me a lot by the older population is the free transport available for seniors here in the city. The question is asked: why do we not get that in the regions? It is certainly something that is very city-centric in its approach.

Even though we do have public transport that goes from town to town, so travels between Goolwa and Victor Harbor, it still costs the community, users, a fare, whereas here in the city, if you want to go from Unley to Glenelg, that can be a free trip for those seniors. The older people of my community very much question why that is not available to them, particularly for those internal movements within our community.

I guess another thing that is of big concern to me is the infrastructure that the leader mentioned in his speech, in particular the infrastructure going forward needed for the developments that we are seeing across different parts of the electorate. In the move to see significant growth around Goolwa, what infrastructure money is there for the road network? What infrastructure money is there for the power networks? What infrastructure money is there for all those services that are needed? I guess one of the big challenges that we are really concerned about, because we are seeing some challenges even with the current developments, is what infrastructure money is there to support SA Water, making sure that they can deliver water and sewerage across the region?

It is becoming very challenging for those developers working forward. They are committed to this region and developing as fast as they can in some of those new developments across the region. We are wanting to see these houses built. They are doing all that they can, but they are absolutely running into some problems as we are moving forward.

With regard to the overall look of the budget from the perspective of those in Finniss, I certainly very much remember as a young adult watching the State Bank collapse and the debt that the state was in in relation to the $3 billion loss the State Bank made. I just looked at $3 billion from the time when the State Bank collapsed through to now: what does that look like in today's money? It looks like a bit over $7 billion, from my calculations. In comparison, we are only looking at a $44 billion debt for this government.

I guess my concerns are that it was mentioned today that the increased revenue has allowed increased borrowings. Certainly, as a small business owner and operator of a farm, that would be a very dangerous way for me to have operated—every time I got more income, to go out and borrow more money—because there are many things that come at you that you are not expecting. You need to make sure that you do not overextend yourself, particularly in borrowings where you are committed to paying those borrowings back to the bank, when those unforeseen circumstances occur.

In farming it was drought and low milk prices for me as a dairy farmer, so you could either be hit with increased costs, as you would be in a drought, or reduced revenues by a changing milk price. I think it is very concerning that we have gone out and continued to borrow with that increased amount of revenue that is there. I think that the debt bomb is certainly before us, and we have to be very careful how we manage that going forward. Since I am about to lose my voice, I might actually leave it there.

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (20:53): It gives me great pleasure to speak to this Appropriation Bill. May I say that it was a budget of interest, and it was a budget in which those of us in the Limestone Coast and MacKillop were mentioned, and we were considered, and we are forever grateful.

I will have two parts to this conversation. My first part is obviously going to be about the fact that, for the sake of budgets and the history of MacKillop and me being the member since 2018, sometimes it has been very hard to find good news amongst budgets. This one is pleasant. It is not huge in proportion. I think it is a budget that resembled a little the federal budget, which really does not tell us a lot and does not make any sort of landmark claims to any clear direction. As we all know, we find ourselves in the middle of an election cycle, and it is probably going to be a lot more about the next budget rather than this one now.

Capturing a little bit of the intent of the budget, I know that the people of MacKillop and the Limestone Coast will benefit from the $243 cost-of-living payment, and they tell me that this budget is trying to address the cost of living. We know that families going to government schools will also get a $200 reduction in fees for schooling processes and service subsidies. I know that will be welcomed.

I know that the children of MacKillop and the Limestone Coast are very active in their sporting pursuits and I know the doubling of the $100 sports voucher, where there are now two of them, will be well received; it will be appreciated. For those who may not be interested in sport, it has been extended to those who may wish to participate in music lessons.

There is another one that is really interesting, and I am pleased to see it, although I do not think it really captures the Limestone Coast but there might be potential for it certainly down in Mount Gambier, and that is that stamp duty will be abolished for first-time homebuyers. The biggest problem with MacKillop is that we really do lack developers, we really do lack home builds in any sort of great quantity. I do not think that saving first-home buyers the stamp duty is going to help much in MacKillop, but I can see the intent.

I know that first-home buyers obviously would be struggling with the cost of purchase of new homes, we know that interest rates are going up and we know that everything has become more expensive, so this is a help. Certainly, if there are those big extensive builds around Mount Gambier, I think those buyers are going to appreciate this initiative.

The biggest spend in MacKillop, which I have to say I am really excited about—it came out of the blue, and I will be speaking more about it later—is an $18 million new police station for Naracoorte. I have to say a really big thankyou to the previous Minister for Police and Correctional Services and I now also thank the new Minister for Police and Correctional Services, member for Kavel, Dan Cregan, for this announcement, and for pursuing this new police station and advocating for Naracoorte.

The police station is an $18 million build. It is a very tired and old police station. Ironically, we have had a number of fires. Most recently and sadly, we saw the loss of a local policeman at Lucindale. I know it is not Naracoorte, but I am sure Naracoorte would have been a police station he worked in as he was a policeman who used to travel around many stations, hence why he ended up in Bordertown on the last part of his duty. No doubt, he would have spent a lot of time in the Naracoorte Police Station.

It is really welcome that we are seeing this government initiative of $18 million rolled out into Naracoorte, knowing that the police in a sense (SAPOL) are valuing Naracoorte as a facility. We are not going to be dependent upon Mount Gambier. We are not asking the police to come up from Mount Gambier to monitor Naracoorte. We are actually going to have substantial home office and facilities, and I know that the Naracoorte and surrounding communities are going to be very well served and feel a lot safer with this investment and commitment.

It is a little bit interesting when we see the CFS. They are going to receive $800,000 for an audit and facilities. This is also another great initiative and it is just a matter of what does it mean, what will they find and where will they land? We do know again in Naracoorte they have a CFS headquarters. Recently, it has been frequently used, but has found itself to be quite small with the number of fires.

There has been activity around the CFS headquarters, such as it is. I know they are looking for new facilities. There has not been any announcement yet but, fingers crossed, maybe in the budgets in the future we might see a nice surprise in this area, too, when they do this audit and go around looking at all the sheds knowing that some of our fire trucks in our regions still do not fit in the old sheds, knowing that some of our fire sheds still do not have bathrooms and amenities, flowing water, and it will be nice to address those as well.

It is also interesting that $13.7 million is being rolled out at Lake Hawdon. I made a presentation to the Public Works Committee this week. I am very supportive of the fact that the intent here is for environment, birdlife and native fauna, but the devil is in the detail. Lake Hawdon represents part of our south-eastern water conservation and drainage network. It is an old network, over 100 years old now. It has a lack of maintenance, a lack of development. It has bridges that do not fit and meet the needs of the community. When they start weiring up, using regulators to hold water back in a system that has not been maintained, all I can say is let us watch this space and be careful, because there can be dire consequences upstream from there.

Even though they are only talking about 10 centimetres of extra water being held back, those are the sort of significant holdbacks on this flat landscape in wet seasons that can make a lot of difference. The devil will be in the detail about whether we are going to see any further drainage network cleaned or maintained beyond this regulator so that water can make its way with speed beyond the regulator towards Robe, because I can tell you it is full of reeds, it is full of trees and it probably has not been cleaned in 50 years.

There is $250 million for school infrastructure, obviously noting $155 million at Mount Barker. We can say that, yes, Mount Barker is not quite regional, but I guess it is a growing centre. We are seeing another $62 million towards the northern suburbs and the like. I know that in MacKillop our education facilities do need upgrades. We see that there was $6 million rolled out towards Mount Gambier High. I am looking forward to the day when we see some millions rolled out towards Naracoorte, Lucindale, Penola, Naracoorte South, Millicent and any other school that is obviously being left behind with old infrastructure that is no longer meeting its needs.

What was most interesting in the budget was to see this $715 million over five years to implement universal three-year-old preschool, obviously picking up early childhood. I am not sure where the connections lie here. I do not know where the conductivity lies in regard to child care and early learning. Where is the money going to be rolled out in the way of infrastructure? I can tell you that most of my towns have a shortage of child care. They are full, they are flat out or they do not have any at all.

We are trying to address a seven-year issue in Kingston where there is barely any child care to speak of, with a kindergarten that is very old and away from the school, trying to pick up that child care and early learning alongside the area school. We are still running short and we are still battling there, so it will be interesting to see where that $715 million rolls out. Can it pick up the needs of Bordertown, Naracoorte and other towns where we know there is a shortage of child care?

When you think about it, there are two really good positive aspects about child care and early learning. Firstly, child care allows both partners to be able to enter the workforce, and we know there is a real shortage of employees in regional South Australia. Secondly, we know that the benefits of early learning have the end-of-education outcomes that we are all looking for for greater education at year 12 levels. Greater academic achievements can be made through this early learning before four or five years old.

In roads, there is a massive road issue on the Limestone Coast, with roads beyond 20 years of age needing maintenance and upgrades. We saw $80 million in road safety funding. It is lovely to have the safety funding, but I wonder whether we would need the $80 million of safety funding if we had safer roads. Obviously, the billion dollars and more probably required to resurface some of the roads that are 20 years past their use-by date on the Limestone Coast is not there.

We are all waiting in our region to see what the iPAVe assessment came up with when the iPAVe truck was down there. It is going to take 12 months to divulge and work through that data before we get any sort of insight into what that really does mean with our road surface longevity and whether the roads are really safe.

In road safety, we saw $3.8 million being rolled out for a heavy vehicle—but it would also be any sort of vehicle—parking bay and facilities for travellers just north of Salt Creek. Between Meningie and Kingston, there used to be a service station catering for the needs of travellers. It has all been packed up, closed up and left since COVID and has never reopened. It has certainly left motorists short of a stopping spot between Meningie and Kingston when they travel down through the Coorong, particularly tourists when they are not sure about distances, times and the tyranny of distance and they get caught short. Hopefully, this new parking bay facility for both heavy vehicles and also tourists will be welcome.

Summing up, there was not much to mention but we saw a little bit in health. There was a notice around mental health and some moneys going towards mental health; we are just not sure where it is going to roll out and who is going to receive it. I guess the devil will be in the detail.

As I said, it is a budget in small proportions. There are no big licks of big moneys and big changes. All I can say is that around the health area there is obviously a real need for investment, there is a real need for services, but sometimes you can even throw millions of dollars at the health budget—like the Marshall government did, taking I think around a $6 billion spend to a $7 billion spend—and nothing changes. It is not a really good way of spending the money if that is all you are going to get.

Coming back to some of the things that have rolled out recently in my electorate, and I am really appreciative of the ministers coming down and visiting. It is not maybe right in the budget, but it is certainly a state government rolling out spending in the Limestone Coast and backing up services and industries and shortfalls. It was really welcome to see the Hon. Clare Scriven come down and advocate $800,000 to the Tatiara council for a 10-block development in the industrial area. Most of that will adjoin the Dukes Highway. It is looking like it is going to be oversubscribed and welcome and the developers will be raring to go once this development is completed.

On that same trip when the Hon. Clare Scriven came down she went down to Naracoorte and rolled out another $500,000 to a private developer who bought the old TAFE site in Naracoorte, which was originally a school site, and that old TAFE site is going to be turned into an early learning centre. It is still a bit unknown as to what the whole centre is going to be. There is talk of picking up health rooms and activities by services or specialists alongside that childcare facility, or the childcare facility could be on one side of the building and the other side of the building could be a training centre in childcare facilities and trainers and the like.

It is one thing to have a childcare centre and say you can take 50 or 80 children, but then you need people to run it. In our area where we have a really low unemployment rate, and perhaps it is even lower in those skill levels we are looking for in the way of nurses and teachers and professionals, we do need to start looking towards that training and bringing our next set of school leavers and preparing them for the workforce and making sure that the local training is there for the local issues that we know that we can solve.

Recently, the Minister for Human Services, Ms Nat Cook, came down and she backed up the community centre at Tailem Bend. A lady by the name of Tammy Shepherd has been working with me really closely and she is trying to work with Minister Nat Cook as well in regard to—

An honourable member interjecting:

Mr McBRIDE: We actually had a ball. We had a great time. The Tailem Bend community knows that the state government really does support their community hub. It provides everything from cooking to any sort of mental wellness or unwellness, cars and appointments, just a real service centre go-to place for anyone who would like to volunteer their time because they have got it, or they actually need help. We would really welcome seeing more of these community hubs in towns like Naracoorte and Millicent.

I had the really great fortune of running into the Millicent south primary school, Newbery Primary. I was talking to the principal there about supporting her students and her families. One of the things that is tough to see but is also good to see is the community around a school of a low socio-economic type area. There is a lot of social housing around Millicent south and a lot of issues to try to deal with. Talking to the principal, Leanne, she said, 'If I could work with a community hub in Millicent we could break down some real barriers and get the education to the children and get them into the workforce and get them educated, but not only help the children, help the parents help the children.' That is what seems to be lost a lot of the time with these low socio-economic type issues that are out there in society.

On the bigger issues, these are the ones where you can say, 'I am really appreciative for the budget. I am thankful to the Malinauskas government for considering MacKillop,' as they have with the budget and spends that we have received, but there are some really big issues here for the government that probably need to be highlighted. This is not punching anyone in the nose; this is not saying they are getting it wrong. What it should raise is alarm bells.

If you want to look at alarm bells, go and look at what Victoria is doing right now and where they have got themselves. They tell me that if you add the debt between Queensland, New South Wales and Tasmania, you will end up with the Victorian debt. If you want, talk about a Premier who advocated for either the Commonwealth Games or the Olympic Games, then turned his back on it because he ran out of money. He was building tunnels, bridges, crossings and so forth and he ran out of money and had to stop.

The real question for the state governments of Australia is there is no doubt that no-one wants to get to this position. I do not know what the position is for South Australia—and these are real figures—because when Marshall came to government in 2018, the beyond forward estimates debts were $24 billion. When Marshall left in 2022, it was out to $34 billion. Now, two years and going three years into the Malinauskas Labor government, there are figures now of $44 billion. Ironically, $10 billion increments.

One of the things you do not want in politics or in finance is to say, 'It just rolls off the tongue like it's easy. It just doesn't matter because we will just keep on borrowing.' Let me tell you, we all know those who have lived through these cycles and it all comes back to bite you one day, particularly when interest rates go up like they have and we are not sure where they are heading. I have experience and I have seen the pain when you go to interest rates beyond 20 per cent and that is real and that happened in the late eighties and early nineties. I entered the workforce in 1986.

It is interesting when you look at these big builds that the government is proposing: the north-south corridor, $14 billion, and the Women's and Children's Hospital, $2 billion. They say, 'The longer we wait and the longer we talk about it, those figures will get left behind and soon it will be $15 billion for the north-south corridor and maybe go to $16 billion. The Women's and Children's, we need this and we need that,' and it will be one of the most expensive buildings in the Southern Hemisphere, if not the world, like the RAH was when it was finished.

I am hoping those who are out there thinking about these builds know this is real money, it has to come from somewhere and someone actually has to make the money. In this high-inflationary economy, this is Australia in general but the South Australian economy sits inside of that, we see interest rates rising and the perspective is: interest rates are rising, so who does it affect?

Apparently it only affects 25 per cent of the population. If it only affects 25 per cent of the population that we really do hurt and screw down, the other 75 per cent are enjoying it and the higher interest rates do not really have the effect they are meant to. Then with inflation, we are seeing it is around 3½ per cent or 3¾ per cent—it has been up around 5 per cent and beyond—we all want our pay rises, so you have to pay us more, so then everything costs more.

If efficiencies do not come into it, and there is not an efficiency because now we have a workforce that employs someone and you do not just employ people to work, you have to look after them, you have to look after their mental health and you have to allow them to work from home, and you have to allow them to have WorkCover and so forth. If the health system will not work for them, maybe they will use WorkCover instead. All these sorts of things fall back to employment and ultimately it affects the cost of production, the cost of the system to make anything in this state or the country and it is all way out of control.

What I really wanted to say is we are getting ourselves into a two-tier economy. We have a government economy over here and we have a private economy and they are worlds apart, I can tell you. The private world is absolutely struggling. It cannot find the workers, it cannot find the workers it wants to produce what they need to efficiently on a world market, if they are an exporter. Then we have the government world, the government bureaucracy, and the government contracts. It is almost like it is fairyland Christmas time over here, without any problems. No, we just keep on borrowing money. We just spend a few more billion. It just gets more expensive so we add a couple more billion to it.

What does it matter? It will not be us paying it back, it will be my children paying it back or it will be my grandchildren paying it back. In the end it really does matter. With those reflections, thank you for the opportunity and I wrap it up

Bill read a second time.

Estimates Committees

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION (Taylor—Minister for Trade and Investment, Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Housing Infrastructure, Minister for Planning) (21:14): I move:

That this bill be referred to estimates committees.

Motion carried.

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION: By leave, I move:

That a message be sent to the Legislative Council requesting that the Attorney-General, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector (Hon. K.J. Maher) and the Minister for Primary Industries and Regional Development, Minister for Forest Industries (Hon. C.M. Scriven), members of the Legislative Council, be permitted to attend and give evidence before the estimates committees of the House of Assembly on the Appropriation Bill.

Motion carried.

Appropriation Grievances

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION (Taylor—Minister for Trade and Investment, Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Housing Infrastructure, Minister for Planning) (21:15): I move:

That the house note grievances.

Mr COWDREY (Colton) (21:15): I would like to start my contribution to the grievance debate today by addressing a couple of the issues that I only briefly got to during the second reading, primarily in regard to the issue of beach and coastal management through the western suburbs, in particular those beaches, for those who are unfamiliar with the issue, where essentially we have a phenomenon called longshore drift, which shifts sand from south to north and has done for a very long time along the Adelaide metropolitan coastline.

If we look back over the last 20 or 30 years, there has obviously been a level of development that has occurred over that coastline as well. This resulted in a period of time 20 or so years ago in a realisation that there were significant erosion issues at Kingston Park to the southern end of a section of beaches and, post the more recent development, a significant issue at West Beach.

Over the last five or six years, those issues on the northern set of beaches have significantly worsened to the point where essentially the erosion issue at West Beach has got to the point of impacting infrastructure in terms of local roads. That erosion subsequently had also moved down further with the lack of action that was taken by the previous Labor government over a long period of time to start to impact the likes of Henley South and Henley itself in more recent years, where we have essentially seen rocks exposed and the clay bottom of the ocean bed exposed through many of the areas of what is one of South Australia's and Adelaide's most popular beachside destinations. To be completely frank, it has been an issue that has become so politicised that it is ridiculous.

If we look back over 15 years ago, the former Labor government at the time proposed a dual sand recycling pipeline solution, a pipeline that would run from Glenelg up to Kingston Park that operates through that southern set of beaches between and starting at the member for Morphett's electorate, through the member for Gibson's and then up to the member for Black's electorate where Kingston Park sits. That pipeline has been operating successfully for near on 10 or so years. It has seen a significant rebuild of the beach at Kingston Park to the point where it has essentially turned what was a rocky outcrop essentially near 10 years ago to what has been a remarkable success story that has seen that beach completely rejuvenated.

At the time, unfortunately, the then Weatherill government did not have enough money to complete the second pipeline. That was subsequently shelved and instead the poor people through my suburbs—through Henley, through West Beach and through Henley Beach South—have over time had to endure a range of different short-term solutions to this issue. Some of that involved significant movements of trucks, in the order of hundreds of trucks a day, that would shift sand from one spot to the other. On coming to government, we made a commitment to the local area that we would find a sustainable long-term solution for this and re-examine what the options were.

The work was undertaken by the department and the expert contractors who were brought in to undertake that work. Frighteningly, this has been one of the most significantly researched pieces of coastline in the world almost, with the number of reports and reviews and other research that has been done to determine the rate of drift, how significant it is, where it is occurring and what can be done to facilitate the fix.

This government came in and tore up the contract that was in place for the construction of the second pipeline that they themselves proposed in a former version of the Labor government. That has meant a significant delay in getting those beaches fixed. I am certainly putting the environment minister on watch and on notice, as it stands, because Henley Beach South is in dire straits at the moment. If we have a bad winter season and significant storm events coming through this year, there could be significant issues by way of infrastructure being impacted, rock walls being significantly impacted, and council infrastructure, in terms of beach access points, that will be impacted. That is on this government's watch. This is on this government's head. That is the simple reality of where we are.

On the back end of what has been nearly 2½ years since the election of this government, they finally got around to releasing a report, and essentially the outcome of that is a trial to look at whether near-shore dredging is a potential option. There had been a range of work supposedly done to determine the viability of this option but, to this point, it has been announced as a trial. We still do not know if this is feasible moving forward in a longer-term capacity. There has been no work, as I understand it, undertaken to determine the volume of sand that sits at this particular spot. We do not know and cannot ascertain, and still will not know, I do not believe, until the end of this trial, how frequently dredging can be undertaken at these particular points.

Number 2 is when the sand is being deposited at the other end, whether it is sensible works or otherwise, from a practical perspective, to be disposing of the sand or unleashing the sand into the tidal zone of the coast—not onto the beach itself, not onto the dune system itself, but into the tidal zone which, one would assume, would allow that sand to then shift further north anyway through the normal tidal patterns. There is much still to be examined, to be pulled apart, and questions to be asked in terms of what this actually means moving forward.

The most ironic outcome of the whole review process is that the government has quite literally said, in black and white, in the document, that, 'If the trial doesn't work we will have to go and do the pipeline because the pipeline was viable, it did have enough sand, and was capable of doing the job.' The government itself has admitted that the solution that was in place would have done the job, but their preference was to undertake a trial for this first. That is their prerogative and, again, I point out that the near $20 million that is being spent just this financial year is essentially half of what the budgeted cost was for the sand recycling pipeline as well.

In addition to that, the one thing that my community was keen to see, and has been keen to see right from the very beginning—as I discussed with the history of this issue—is security and sustainability. Under previous Labor governments it had been a year-by-year process of approving funding for sand carting, of deciding where and when and how much would be coming in that particular year. What we have now is we are back to that very same position where, if I look at the forward estimates, is there any money in 2025-26? No. Is there any money in 2026-27? No. Is there any money in 2027-28? No.

There has been nothing budgeted for sand for the coastal management of that stretch of beaches from next year onwards. I hope that is simply a function of the government hoping that this trial works, and I stress that I believe it is more of a hope than anything else. I certainly am in the same boat. I have always said I do not particularly care what technology is going to be used to return sand to that point, but it needs to be sustainable.

The community needs to be assured and convinced that there are appropriate levels of sand to be able to do this each and every year, so that we are not in a position in 10 years' time where we come back and have to have this same argument again as to how we deal with this issue, because it is not good enough that one section of beaches to the south has not had to deal with this for more than 10 years—it is not—when we know there is a solution that works. The member for Gibson sitting here today I do not think has suggested to anybody in her government that the pipeline that has been operating for nearly 10 years, servicing her section of beaches, should be turned off.

I do not believe there is a natural underlying issue with that technology on the Labor side. I think t this was a cynical political decision to try to win votes—nothing more, nothing less—but it certainly cost taxpayers a lot of money in the process. We will see what sort of resistance or otherwise, how open some groups are, on the northern section of beaches, how amenable they are, to nearshore dredging. There is a lot of research that starts to underline how nearshore dredging can affect beaches as well.

There are pros and cons to every technology that can be deployed in this space, but there is certainly evidence that the likes of Greens, Labor, Liberal or otherwise, councils, state governments around the country, have implemented sand recycling pipelines: here on our southern section of beaches. In Noosa, on the Gold Coast, there has just been a second extension of a sand recycling pipeline completed up there. On the Sunshine Coast, in Maroochydore, there is also a pipeline running between Alexandra Headland and Mooloolaba. This is a technology that is proven and makes sense, and the Labor government's own report and review into this concludes to that end.

In regard to the budget, I thought I would go through in a little bit more detail, given that I did not get the opportunity in my earlier second reading contribution, to have a little more discussion and a deep dive into some of the numbers that underpin the budget position in South Australia. I described, as have many on this side of the house to this point, that this budget was defined by the three records: record tax, record ramping and record debt.

In terms of how we got there, it is very difficult to ascertain the fact that we are entertaining those three things together at the same time. In fact, it is quite difficult for some people to understand how the state budget works in terms of surpluses, when the Treasurer is out there saying that we are turning surpluses for the foreseeable future, yet we are increasing debt drastically to the point of $44 billion over forward estimates. There are some that simply say, 'How does that make sense?'

It is reasonably simple to explain that net lending and capital expenditure does not count towards a surplus and deficit calculation, but what does that mean in practicality, the $44.2 billion worth of debt, the debt bomb that is coming for us? The difficulty is from a per capita number, as we addressed earlier—some $24,000-plus per person, which will only escalate, as the Treasurer admitted today in question time, and increase further over coming years. We have an interest repayment bill that has escalated from $800,000 up to $2.1 billion over forward estimates.

Comparisons have been made in terms of the total debt burden at the current time, or estimated over forward estimates, in relation to the State Bank collapse. A reputable media outlet made those comparisons on the day the budget was released. Net debt peaked post State Bank at roughly $12 billion; we are talking about more than four times that. The debt directly associated with the State Bank collapse itself was almost two-thirds of what we are going to be paying year on year just to service the debt that we are going to be taking on inside of forward estimates. Those numbers should be shocking, and they are shocking for a range of reasons.

In terms of how a budget is received, the easiest measure of how a government views their own budget is how happy they are to walk away from it. I think we saw the Premier almost disappear the week after the budget. I think the Treasurer was at, give or take, maybe one or two press conferences the week after the budget.

Essentially, what we have seen from those opposite, even today, is that instead of every member coming into this house from the government and applauding the work that had been undertaken and the preparation of what is contained in the budget—I have been on my feet now for my contribution to the second reading debate and this first part of the grieve, and I think have spoken more on the budget than any members of the government to this point. That says a lot. It says a lot about this budget. It was a stinker for a range of reasons, and I am very certain that those opposite know that.

The other issue in regard to the state budget that I think is telling, having seen a few of the Treasurer's presentations on the budget to this point, is that he has almost gone to lengths to not discuss revenue when he presents the budget, because it tells a story and paints a picture of fiscal ill-discipline. More than that, it paints a picture of just how significant tax collections and the tax burden have been for South Australians over the last couple of years.

We have essentially seen the total revenue, or total tax take, for the state increase above and beyond original expectations from the government in their first budget of $2.7-odd billion in 2023-24, $3 billion in the coming year and $3½ billion in 2025-26. Rightfully, I think, people would be asking the question: where is it coming from? The simple explanation is that we are paying more tax than ever before. The GST pool has drastically increased on the back of South Australians and Australians paying more for their everyday goods and services, and inflation has driven that number consistently for the last number of years.

But it is not just the GST pool that has increased again between the first budget and now by more than $2 billion in itself. The story is the same across car registration, the ESL, fines and land tax. For payroll tax, there is $483 million more in collections estimated in 2024-25 than was estimated in the 2022-23 budget—$483 million in additional payroll tax. Stamp duty tells a similar story of significant increases.

The Treasurer, in terms of his narrative for the state's economy, paints a picture that our economy is strong because of the significant revenues that the state is taking in. I can tell the Treasurer that South Australian small and family businesses and households around our state do not see money going into state coffers as being a sign of a strong economy. In the context of having been out with a number of businesses and a number of families over the last few weeks, as we always do, and in particular in trying to tell some of their stories through the media in the lead-up to the budget and post budget, they are not buying what the Treasurer is selling.

When we have hospitality businesses—the likes of pubs that have been operating for years and restaurants that have been operating for years—having to close their doors or struggle to keep their doors open off the back of this inflation and off the back of increases to their electricity bills, their rents and their wages, do you think that they think that a strong economy is defined by revenue returned to the state government? I do not think so. I think it because that is exactly what they told us. Yet, when it comes to payroll tax reform, there is no interest from this government in finding any way to provide some relief to those South Australian small businesses and in putting them back in the position they were a couple of years ago in terms of the real growth of wages in comparison to the payroll tax threshold. These are real and telling stories.

What is more, it is not just those South Australian businesses and those South Australian families that are telling us that they do not think the economy is quite as rosy a picture as the Treasurer may paint: there are multiple surveys out there that are saying similar things. Only just over a week ago the latest NAB Monthly Business Survey showed that the South Australian business community is struggling, absolutely struggling. We have the lowest business confidence in the nation, at minus 13 points. We also have business conditions that lag behind every other state—again, the bottom of the table.

It is an absolute contrast to what we are being told is happening, an absolute contrast, and it continues to tell the story that the opposition has continued to spread to as many people as we can to help people understand why the revenue lines and the tax have been so strong for this government. It is as simple as saying that the pain that South Australian small businesses and families have been feeling over the last couple of years has quite literally been the gain for the Malinauskas government, because on the back of inflation, on the back of property price growth and on the back of wages increasing, South Australians and South Australian small businesses are paying more tax than they ever have before.

We have what can only be described as a tax grab when we have GPs quite literally standing in front of cameras—a group of people who I do not think would ever themselves describe their demeanour as naturally political—saying that they despair the fact that they are going to have to pass on increases somewhere in the order of $10 to $20 per patient, based on the fact that the Malinauskas state government will not step up to the plate and deal with this issue surrounding payroll tax and GPs.

Again, I say what I said previously: if the government were truly committed to fixing ramping, for starters we would not have the 24 worst months of ramping in the state's history, we would not have ramping which is now nearly three times worse than it was when this government came to power, and we most certainly would not have decisions by this government that result in increasing the cost of everyday South Australians going to see their GP.

You try to explain to me the logic behind having a situation where South Australian GPs are going to have to pass on a cost increase to their patients. How does that make sense in the context of fixing ramping? How does that make sense in the context that we know that any price increase at the moment is going to shift and deter people away from their GPs and towards a hospital, towards the ramp? It just does not make any sense whatsoever.

If those opposite are not willing to, it is clear as of today, given the commitment that has been made by the Liberal Party today to ensure that no consultation, no fees paid to country GPs in servicing their communities through their hospitals—in the South Australian health system, mind you—should attract that tax to make it less desirable, less certain for South Australians to visit their GPs.

In the last week or so, I have also taken the opportunity to join with other shadow ministers to explore some of the other commitments that were made in previous budgets to ascertain where some of these are at, in particular the much vaunted and sold land releases that were to deliver a significant number of homes to South Australians. In terms of the Hackham development and every other one of those that were named in that land release, I can tell you there is not much there. There is not much going on. There is not much by way of houses. There is not much by way of frames. There is not much by way of slabs. There is not much by way of supporting infrastructure.

For what was described as essentially the silver bullet to the housing crisis in South Australia, there are more questions than answers when it comes to some of the announcements that came a year ago in terms of housing. It goes in the same vein that some of those projects were underway under the previous government. With some of those projects, including Prospect Corner I think is the name of the development close to the Bunnings there by the interstate freight train station on the bottom of Churchill Road, not much has progressed down on that section of work either.

Take the Seaton development that I drive past on a regular basis down Frederick Road every now and again when I make the trek down to West Lakes. I try my best on occasion to get down there when I can. That site has sat near empty with a fence around it for approximately the last year or so. If the government was serious about building these houses, then we would actually see action rather than just words, which is all we have seen to this point.

In terms of the other issues that have been traversed to this point, in particular I just want to draw attention to the fiscal ill-discipline. Again, this is a systemic issue that we have seen now a couple of years running across a vast number of agencies. It was identified last year in the context of what was a $1.3 billion blowout in operating expenses. This year, thankfully, it is slightly more modest, in the order of $800-odd million that departments and agencies had blown out their budgets.

Again, it is systemic. It is not just one or two, not just three or four; in fact, it is almost the opposite, where I think, from quick count, we have three departments and agencies that have met their budgets.

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: Name them.

Mr COWDREY: I would like to recognise the legislature. The clerks here have ensured that the legislature has met its budget this year. The MFS thankfully has met its budget as well, and the Auditor-General, the always astute-to-fiscal-discipline Auditor-General, whose job it is to look very closely at the financial statements of each and every government department or agency, has done his job again this year, ensuring that he has met his budget this financial year.

In fact, the one department that has underspent is innovation. I am not sure which minister is responsible for innovation these days, but congratulations to them on being just about the only minister—

The Hon. A. Michaels interjecting:

Mr COWDREY: The Minister for Small Business says, 'Definitely not me,' so I will not applaud her for her fiscal discipline by any stretch of the imagination if she is not even happy to claim that she was the one and only minister to have ensured that her department or agency hit budget this year.

But there is much that was left, unfortunately, as missed opportunities. Imagine if some of that money could have been reinvested in ways that would have helped South Australians. Imagine if some of that money over the last couple of years could have gone towards payroll tax relief for those small and family businesses that are doing it tough right now. Instead, poor fiscal discipline has led to what can only be described as record tax, record ramping and record debt.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (21:45): The Hon. Jennifer Cashmore AM was a giant figure in South Australian politics, whose legacy is perhaps more well understood today in retrospect than it may have been by many people in her time. Today we said farewell at her funeral. In the coming days there will be a condolence motion in the parliament, and I will make a contribution. I look forward to that opportunity.

This evening I want to share with members and posterity the text of the inaugural David Tonkin Memorial Address given by Jennifer Cashmore to the South Australian Young Liberal Movement on 2 February 2000. At the time, I was the vice president and organising the event. Its reflections on historical liberalism and the challenges to come in the 21st century remain as sharp and prescient today as they were then. As I have about nine minutes, and it was a 15-minute speech, I will skip the biography of David Tonkin and the achievements of his government and focus on the philosophy. In the words of Jennifer Cashmore:

Thank you for the privilege, which I value greatly, of being your guest speaker tonight. And congratulations to the Young Liberal Movement for establishing an annual address in memory of David Tonkin, Liberal Premier of South Australia from 1979 to 1982.

It is an extraordinary fact…that death brings character, personality and achievement into sharp focus. Once the final chapter is written, somehow we have a clearer view of a person and of his or her achievements and significance in the context of their times.

So it is with David Tonkin, whose inaugural memorial address I have the honour to present tonight—Liberalism—From Mill to Tonkin and Beyond.

Some might question the claim of a direct link between a single term, late twentieth century premier of an Australian state of some 1.3 million people with John Stuart Mill, nineteenth century liberal economist and philosopher. David Tonkin was Premier for three years. Mill's influence on democratic practice throughout the English speaking world and beyond has been profound for one and a half centuries.

And yet, when you examine carefully the political philosophy, the policy approach and the administrative style of David Tonkin, you realise that he was a liberal thinker and practitioner in the true tradition of Mill. The link between the two demonstrates the immense importance to the world of philosophy as a discipline. It highlights the power of original thinkers to exert a continuing influence long past their own generations. It illustrates the positive role that has been and can be exerted by liberalism. And it should inspire those of us who belong to the Liberal Party to remain faithful to the ideals upon which our Party was founded in 1944 by that great Australian Prime Minister, Robert Menzies.

For the younger among us who may not yet be students of history, it is worth considering the origins of the word 'liberal'. The idea of freedom is probably as old as humanity itself. It was certainly spoken and written of by the ancient Greeks and Romans. But the word 'liberal', in the sense that we use it when we refer to thinkers like Mill, Locke, Rousseau, Voltaire, Burke, Bentham and Tocqueville, did not belong to the language of politics until after the French Revolution of 1789.

Mill's great essay On Liberty, published in 1859, bears regular re-reading and quoting. In the introductory chapter, Mill states: 'That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.'

Mill goes on to say that liberty comprises liberty of conscience, of thought and feeling and of absolute freedom of opinion. He maintains that the principle of liberty should enable us to pursue 'the plan of our life to suit our own character', so long as what we do does not harm others. From this liberty of the individual follows the liberty, within the same limits, for individuals to unite for common purposes.

At this point, I will skip the biographical detail of David Tonkin and continue:

To illustrate some of the qualities which illuminated David Tonkin's personal philosophy of liberalism, I would like to quote from an article entitled 'The Best Answer to Fanaticism—A Liberal Decalogue', written by Bertrand Russell, and published in The New York Times in 1951. Lord Russell's ten liberal commandments included the following:

'When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavour to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.'

'Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.' And,

'Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.'

Those of us who knew David Tonkin will recognise this description of his resolute appeal to reason, his love of political discourse and his integrity.

As a parliamentarian, David Tonkin was in the mould of the classic South Australia liberal. This tradition was imprinted in the 1855-56 constitution, which provided for universal male suffrage, a revolutionary concept at the time in that it did not discriminate, for Lower House elections, between those who owned property and those who did not, nor between men on grounds of race.

South Australia's 1856 Electoral Act included the first provision in the world for the secret ballot, subsequently adopted by the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901, and eventually by all the world's democracies.

In 1894, South Australia became the first Australian colony, not only to grant women the right to vote, but also to give them the right to stand for parliament, another world first which was not emulated by either England or the United States until two decades later.

Other pioneering reforms, all rooted in the liberal tradition of enhancing the rights of the individual against the power of the State, or of monopolies or corporations, included:

The 1858 Torrens land title system which simplified and secured ownership and transfer of property through a central government register, a system subsequently adopted by other states and many nations

Pioneering laws to provide for conciliation and arbitration, thus providing orderly procedures for resolution of issues between employers and employees

The world's first legislation, enacted in 1940 by the Playford Government, to give mothers equal rights with fathers in the guardianship of their children.

David Tonkin added two more firsts to this impressive but by no means comprehensive catalogue of legislative reform. They were his own Private Member's Sex Discrimination Bill, introduced in 1973, and his government's Pitjantjatjara Land Rights Act of 1982.

The Sex Discrimination legislation was in the pure tradition of Mill, who had advocated full political rights for women as early as 1867. The Tonkin Bill, subsequently adopted as Labor Government legislation and passed in 1975, was the first such legislation in Australia and among the first in the world to outlaw discrimination based on gender. It provided for investigation and remedy, if necessary, of alleged discrimination in the fields of employment and training and the provision of services and the granting of loans. Remembering the atmosphere and attitudes of the almost entirely male-dominated parliament which I entered in 1977, I remain in awe of David Tonkin's courage and political skills in his efforts to secure equal rights for women.

Similarly, the granting of land rights to the Pitjantjatjara people was testimony to David Tonkin's recognition that transfer of one tenth of the area of South Australia was a question of simple justice for the original inhabitants whose leaders and culture he respected and whose advocate he became.

The liberal philosophy, which we inherit, originated in the seventeenth century. It was further developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in both Europe and the United states. Our western democratic ideas of freedom have their roots in three developments which, seen in the light of today's world, are still highly relevant to the continuum of liberal thinking. Those developments were the emergence of the modern state, the expansion of trade and industry and the proliferation of organised religions.

Liberal thinkers must now consider how individual freedoms are at once potentially threatened and enhanced by new developments. These include:

The emergence of global corporations with powers greater than those of sovereign states

The development of information technology that surpasses any single previous invention in its power to revolutionise economic, political and social ideas and practice

The development of biotechnology which is already transforming human and animal reproduction and traditional notions of genetic relationships

The influence of technology on the nature of work and, as Mill put it, on our capacity to 'frame the plan of our lives to suit our own characters'

The changing nature of families, of global influences on children, and the implications of the first human generations with longevity of more than eighty years

The relationship between humans and the earth itself which will determine our survival as a species, and

The relationship between the earth and the universe.

Globalisation requires instruments for governance that have not yet been invented. Institutions such as the United Nations, born out of war, and the International Court of Justice, established in the mid twentieth century, were perhaps tentative steps towards recognition that a world view must prevail if peoples are to live in the peace and prosperity that best secure freedom. At the same time, our human nature is rooted in family and community, both of which are traditionally shaped by a sense of national identity.

The forgoing poses mighty questions for liberal thinkers. I hope that, in the tradition of Mill and Tonkin, Young Liberals will search out with open minds and without prejudice the knowledge which will determine policy responses to some of these issues. More importantly, I hope that you will study the world history of liberal philosophy and ideas, including the distinguished history of liberalism in Australia, in order to learn from the past and plan for our future.

I will have a great deal more to say about Jennifer Cashmore next week. In the meantime, I leave Jennifer Cashmore's words with all of us and encourage people to take those provocations as they were meant in 2000 (on 2 February) as still relevant for consideration today.

Mr BATTY (Bragg) (21:55): I am pleased to avail myself of the opportunity to spend a little bit more time this evening talking about the state budget that was handed down a couple of weeks ago and to talk in a little bit more detail about some of the new tax policy that the Liberal state opposition have announced over the past few days and weeks. This is in addition to my remarks this morning, where I characterised the budget that we saw handed down a couple of weeks ago as another typical Labor budget where we see record spending. Indeed, I think we have seen cost overruns and blowouts in nearly every government department.

We see record debt. I spoke a lot about my concern of the $44 billion worth of debt over the forward estimates, which of course it is future generations, young people today, who are going to be left bearing the cost for, and record taxes. While Malinauskas Labor was a government that promised us they would not introduce any new taxes, a government that promised us they would not increase any taxes, the truth of the matter is this is the highest taxing government in South Australian history.

We see tax and revenue intake being increased right across the board in this state budget. Indeed, I think the headline figure is a 27 per cent increase in tax and revenue collection in this state budget compared to two years ago under the Malinauskas Labor government. It is in areas such as GST, where we see a 31 per cent increase; car registration, a 16 per cent increase; payroll tax, a 33 per cent increase; ESL, a 17 per cent increase; fines are up 59 per cent; land tax is up 48 per cent; and stamp duty is up 7 per cent.

If it feels like you are a South Australian who has never been paying more tax than ever before, it is because you are a South Australian who has never been paying more tax than ever before in the history of this state. That is the context in which the Liberal opposition has announced a whole range of policies that seek to actually reduce the taxes of hardworking South Australians during a cost-of-living crisis. We want to put more money back into the pockets of families, back into the pockets of small business operators who are trying to run their business, because they are best placed to spend their own money. It contrasts starkly with a Labor government which simply wants to increase your taxes and is taxing you more than you have ever seen in the history of the state.

We have introduced a range of policies to lower taxes for South Australians. I mentioned some of them this morning, but I want to go into a little bit more detail on these policy announcements, because they are very important. It is important that South Australians know it is the Liberal Party which wants to lower their taxes. The first way we are going to do this is through reforms to payroll tax. I spoke about payroll tax in my own maiden speech. I spoke about all the state-based taxes, which I described as inefficient, inequitable, unfair, but payroll tax in particular I described at that time as a tax on jobs.

That is exactly what it is. It is a tax on jobs, which is wrong and counterproductive. It is why the Liberal Party over the past couple of weeks has announced a policy of increasing the current payroll tax threshold, which currently sits at $1.5 million, to $2.1 million. It is also why we have introduced a policy that would see an exemption in place on payroll tax, on wages paid to apprentices and trainees, so we can encourage those new entrants into the workforce.

As you would know, the payroll tax threshold was most recently adjusted by the former Liberal government in 2019, which was a very good move indeed. It basically removed payroll tax from all small businesses in South Australia. But what we have seen since then, of course, is record inflation. South Australian businesses have been subjected to record award wage increases, including the highest wage increase in history of 5.75 per cent in 2023. That means that there is a whole raft of small businesses in South Australia who are paying payroll tax for the very first time. They have moved above that $1.5 million threshold through taking no action of their own, other than inflationary pressures and these wage increases on their salary books.

Payroll tax can influence a decision by a business to employ new staff. Of course, at this time more than ever, we want South Australian businesses to employ South Australians. The incentive structure is all wrong. We are facing a critical skills shortage, and what we actually want to do through our policies is further incentivise employers by abolishing payroll tax for apprentices and trainees. We want to not only cut tax but, of course, create jobs.

These are measures that a Liberal government would introduce if we are elected in 2026, these are measures that we have been calling on the Labor government to introduce in this state budget—and it is not just us calling for it, it is industry as well. Indeed, it is the peak business body in South Australia, the South Australian Business Chamber, calling for this sort of payroll tax reform, crying out for help at this time. I note that if we were to implement our policy—a raise in the current payroll tax threshold to $2.1 million—we would make South Australia the most competitive threshold in all of Australia.

So if you really want to back small business, these are the sorts of policies you need to implement. Do not be under any misapprehension that this is some sort of business-friendly Labor government; that we have a pro-business Premier. While those opposite might quite happily go and sit around the boardroom table, and say the right things when they need to, what business in South Australia is going to do is judge this government by their actions.

Their actions are a budget last sitting week, where we see record tax for South Australians; their actions are small businesses struggling in a cost-of-doing-business crisis and red tape strangling their operations; and their actions are ignoring calls from not only the Liberal opposition, but peak bodies like the chamber, to seriously reform payroll tax in South Australia. If the Labor Party will not do it, the Liberal Party will back small business. We will cut payroll tax for small business if we are elected.

We announced two other tax policies over the past couple of weeks, including reform to stamp duty. In my maiden speech, I described stamp duty as a tax on the efficient transfer of property. Again, that is exactly what it is. We want to introduce a stamp duty exemption scheme for first-home buyers to include a $10,000 discount on stamp duty for established homes up to a value of $750,000.

It is because we want to back young people in South Australia to keep the dream of home ownership alive. Frankly, there are whole generations now of South Australians growing up who are under the apprehension that they will never be able to afford to buy their own home. That is a great shame on where we have got to. It is a great shame on policymakers in this place who have allowed it to get here. We need to reform stamp duty to enable the dream of home ownership to stay alive for young people in South Australia.

Thirdly and finally today, we also announced that we would be scrapping the GP tax grab that is going to be introduced in less than two weeks. That is going to see South Australians pay more to go to the doctor. That is not only going to cost South Australians more in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis but it is also going to cost our health system because more people will present at hospitals, adding to record ramping under this Labor government.

Mr TEAGUE (Heysen) (22:05): I am tempted to seek leave for some additional time because we have just started to touch on what is actually going on here in terms of this 2024-25 state budget. You might have said that the Malinauskas Labor government might have been given a bit of a pass the first time around. You remember we saw all those operating efficiencies, and we saw this sort of chimera of responsibility in the government in terms of the way it was describing its approach to the budget, then we saw that all completely blow out.

It was day-to-day management incompetence. It is pretty down-to-earth stuff running a state. If you are going to be described as a government that is worth staying put, then you just have to do the basics, and as Premier you have to get your ministers to manage their agency budgets with something approaching compliance with what you have said you are going to do.

We saw these operation efficiencies that were laid out in all departments except for Child Protection. I will come to Child Protection in a minute because that got additional money—alright, well and good, but get over the principle of whether or not more money in Child Protection ultimately looks like a sign of success or failure. You have to look at what outcomes are improved for the additional money.

What we have seen now, over budget after budget, is just such an extreme lack of any kind of day-to-day management capacity across just about every agency you can name. South Australians, who are used to hearing about macro-economic matters, government that is all a bit different because you have the management of public finance to be sorting through and it is all a bit complicated—folks, it is not so complicated.

You see year after year massive blowouts against stated budgets, agency upon agency, and then the government comes along and has the gall to say that it has achieved what is known in the public vernacular as a budget surplus. They indicated last year, 'We are headed for a surplus,' and 'We are headed for a big surplus—no, it has been chipped back a bit.' This time around, we have this minuscule little so-called surplus. The word 'surplus' has just gone right out of fashion because the big word on everyone's mind is 'debt bomb'. You can hyphenate it if you want to make it into the new single word on everyone's mind.

Unless we start seeing measures to address debt from this government, then their credibility is going to go out the window and it is going to stay there. We have a $44 billion debt bomb. The Advertiser got it dead right the day after the budget. We see the smiling face, the expression writ on the face of the Treasurer, in terms of a recasting of the currency and a $44 billion debt bomb coming down the line. Massive debt is baked into the budget.

Alongside day-to-day management incompetence, the sort of thing that we all need to do in our day-to-day-lives—and South Australians are right to expect of ministers in charge of agencies—there is then a debt bomb that is going to hold everybody to ransom for generations.

If that was not bad enough, it does not come against the background of 'Gee, we haven't got any revenue anymore. Revenue is just so down that we have to borrow more and that is all on the capital account and debt is going through the roof, but we are just going to get through because we've got no revenue.' No, we have massive revenue. You have never had more revenue.

You have $3 billion in additional revenue and it is rising to $9 billion, so you have never had more revenue, you have never had more debt, massive day-to-day incompetence in budget management. Look at any minister and say 'Alright, how are you going? How is it going against budget?' Massive incompetence across the board, running to just about $1 billion worth of incompetence in overruns—go from one agency to the next—and that combination is a triple threat risk to any kind of sustainable future for South Australians.

For the Premier to kind of swan around as the cool kid from one thing to the next, you know 'What can I announce? Where can I be seen next?' all that stuff, it is not washing anymore. The Premier is going to be asked by regular Australians, 'What are you doing saddling us with all these generations of debt coming down the line? How are we going to believe you that it's only going to be $44 billion when north-south is off the end of the forward estimates?' Women's and Children's is right off the end of the forward estimates and we have to believe it is $44 billion of debt down the line and absolutely no plan to reduce it.

This is an occasion very briefly in these short minutes to provide some grievance response and there will be time to unpack this in terms of the estimates in just a couple of days. I focused in the contribution earlier today on what I described as measures that ought to be praised in terms of what budgets can do to improve the resilience and supports around families and it ought to be central to what is going on in child protection.

Indeed, if you have a look at the objectives, the objective that is stated in the Agency Statements, Budget Paper 4, Volume 1 at page 82, every one of the four paragraphs that sums up the objectives of the Department for Child Protection talks repeatedly about supports for families. I referred earlier to the contribution of Simon Schrapel in praising measures not in this budget but little minor attempts in the previous budget to do things that will support families, and we can analyse that a great deal more. There is nothing in terms of significant outcome that can be set out in the budget in Child Protection that is going directly to that core priority.

Meanwhile what do we see? If we go one page further into the Department for Child Protection's budget, and let's remember here we are talking about dollars applied towards improved outcomes, about halfway down the page we see there writ large, yet again, the budget for 2023-24 for the Department for Child Protection, for care and protection, their core function, is just shy of $788 million. It is a large amount of money. It has been rising year on year on year. That is the budget.

What is the estimated result for 2023-24? It is $855 million going on $856 million. So what has to happen as a result of that is that you have to turn to Budget Paper 5, to the Budget Measures Statement and on page 12 you see this kind of backdoor tail between the legs type scenario where you have a measure that says, 'Well, in there, Department for Child Protection, out-of-home care, additional resources, operating expenses' just shy of $70 million.

So we are running, on my maths, $67,846,000 over budget in Child Protection on what is a massive budget to start with. We are required then to go to a budget measure to have a one-off payment to get the books all balanced and then going forward, 2024-25, miraculously we have a budget again that is back to $793 million. You just cannot believe a word of it—you cannot believe it.

I single out the dollars involved in Child Protection because it is the most important of human service delivery work that needs to be done. The work to improve family outcomes, the work to improve the circumstances of children supported in families and family substitutes where necessary could not be more important. But so too, there could not be any more important area in which to responsibly manage those scarce resources, those scarce public funds that are available to provide these critical services of government.

So there is a great deal more to be said about what is just basic day-to-day management incompetence of this government that is writ large yet again in these budget papers—a debt bomb against massive additional revenue and then a day-to-day display of incompetence that is just so startling that the time available for estimates just will not be enough to get through it all. I look forward very much to analysing all of that in just a couple of days' time.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mr Odenwalder.

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