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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-06-26 Daily Xml
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Bills

Appropriation Bill 2025

Estimates Committees

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (15:37): I bring up the report of Estimates Committee A and move:

That the report be received.

Motion carried.

The Hon. A. PICCOLO: I bring up the minutes of proceedings of Estimates Committee A and move:

That the minutes of proceedings be incorporated in the Votes and Proceedings.

Motion carried.

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (15:38): I bring up the report of Estimates Committee B and move:

That the report be received.

Motion carried.

Mr HUGHES: I bring up the minutes of proceedings of Estimates Committee B and move:

That the minutes of proceedings be incorporated in the Votes and Proceedings.

Motion carried.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Treasurer, Minister for Defence and Space Industries, Minister for Police) (15:38): I move:

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

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta) (15:39): I indicate that I am not the lead speaker, tragically. The opposition, as we outlined during the debate on the Appropriation Bill, supports the bill. It is appropriate to do so. Estimates is the tradition by which we go through the scrutiny of the appropriation in detail. Different parliaments have different processes. I have been through 16 estimates now; this was my last one. I am not going to say that it is with enormous sorrow that I am unlikely to sit through another one, but there are things about the process that I will miss.

As Steven Griffiths, the former member for Goyder, used to say when he was here, estimates is a tremendously interesting process to go through if you are paying attention. You can learn an extraordinary amount about the things that the government does. It is a process whereby ministers will usually try to find an opportunity to highlight those things of which they are particularly proud, but in a more lengthy form than they usually get the opportunity to do. Opposition members will highlight issues that they are concerned about and will have the opportunity to process those in some detail, and they will also seek to get to the grit of things that are otherwise unclear.

I remember that Iain Evans, the former member for Davenport, when I entered the place about 15 or 16 years ago used to encourage us all to really respect the estimates process. He said that when he was a minister—and I am certain he said this publicly; I think he said it in his valedictory speech, so I do not think I am talking out of school—estimates was a wonderful time to ensure that as a minister you were actually across everything that the department might not otherwise want to tell you about, because they would be relying on you during that estimates process to be their spokesperson and the person who would be presenting whatever issue they were uncomfortable about in the best possible light.

Reams of parliamentary briefing notes are prepared and presented for the minister to have an understanding of either the reasons behind some otherwise potentially awkward-looking decision, or, indeed, the detail that they think the minister should say and the detail that they recommend the minister keep in their own confidence.

Over the years, it has been a regular thing to highlight the inefficiencies of the estimates process. Certainly, there are administrative opportunities for improvement that are fairly easy, in some senses, to do. I think that the Standing Orders Committee of this parliament might care to take half an hour to bash together a dozen dot points. I am sure the Acting Speaker, the Treasurer, the member for Finniss and I could do it after these comments and we would get some excellent ideas. But I do not want to get bogged down in those details; those sorts of administrative improvements that might streamline the process are fairly obvious.

I highlight that every parliament has its own variation on budget estimates. The federal parliament does it all in the Senate, the upper house, rather than the lower house. They do it three times a year—I assume they still do this; this was at the time when I was working there—and they use it as an opportunity to bring public servants and officials in to be questioned directly, rather than the minister having everything funnelled through them. Is that better than our process? I do not know. It is a different process.

There is something to be said for the Westminster tradition of the minister taking responsibility for every aspect of their portfolio. I think the point that Iain Evans made about the minister as the spokesperson having everything brought to their attention means that even if those questions are not necessarily asked in the estimates process, there is, of course, the benefit to the parliament and the people of South Australia of the public servants hopefully being more on their toes. It highlights, I think, the critical importance of a minister who is curious, a minister who is questioning, and is not just going to assume that their public servants know everything.

I do not say that as a slight on the Public Service; I say it as the duty of a minister in that role because without that duty you might as well not have elections. We would have a technocratic approach. Let's face it: the Department of the Premier and Cabinet is made up of some really smart people who, on every cabinet submission, will put forward a paper on what they recommend the cabinet does on that submission, and an opportunity is available for every cabinet decision just to be to agree with whatever the Public Service has come up with.

By and large, we would go along okay if that was the case, but we would miss some terrific opportunities. We would not have moved year 7 into high school and we would not have undertaken substantial reform of early years literacy in 2013. We probably would have by the time the Liberal Party was elected in 2018 because by that stage the Public Service had reached that point. There would not have been a second city high school in 2008 and 2009, when people were calling for it, but they would have gotten there by 2015 and 2016. There are opportunities that the elected government must bring to improve the decision-making of what would otherwise be on the Public Service.

When the Marshall government was elected in 2018, Steven Marshall made it very clear to all his ministers—to all of us—that as a new government it was critical that we show respect to the Public Service. As new ministers, we may have had our portfolios for some period of time, but that we did not know everything, and that while we should be curious, engaged and challenging to our public servants, it was critically important that we demonstrate respect at all times. I hope for the large part, we did that. I certainly hope for the large part that I did that.

In that vein, I want to thank all those public servants who supported the committees that I participated in. The advice that they give to ministers has had enormous amounts of energy put into it. There are some things about process that we sometimes find interesting in the Public Service. In an education sense, I am sure it will not come as a surprise to members that they may have come across a local constituent issue, where the constituent may have approached the education department and they might have spoken to a teacher, they may have spoken to a principal, they may have spoken to the complaints line, and then as a last resort, they may have spoken to their local MP.

The local MP may write a letter to the minister or approach the local education director. They may approach the minister in the parliament. That question will often then go through a series of processes where, ultimately, the minister's office would approach the bureaucracy to seek advice on how to respond, and the executive director would seek a response from the director, who would seek a response from the education director in the local area, who would seek a response from the principal, who would seek a response from the teacher, and then it goes all the way back up the line.

That is replicated all across the Public Service. You can understand how these processes happen because you want to ensure procedural fairness. But sometimes also we just need to get to the point. That is also the duty of a curious and engaged minister who understands their brief and who is able to add value to the processes of the department through their judgement, through their understanding, through their knowledge, and through their hard work and diligence.

Estimates is a good time to get a sense of how those ministers are going. I think there are some ministers who have done well during the estimates process and some who have highlighted their opportunities for improvement. I commend ministers in a general sense when they do not take too many Dorothy Dixers, if you like, too many government questions. I certainly resemble a minister who did take the occasional government question.

There are occasions when you need to highlight or certainly want to highlight good work that the government is doing. Especially in some of the longer sessions, a couple of government questions can actually be of assistance to the shadow minister, who might otherwise have been going for 2½ hours straight without a break in flow, to think, 'How can I best use the next allocation of time I have here? We have been talking, potentially, about this one topic for the last hour. Maybe I should allocate the remaining time more effectively in that two or three minute break while the minister takes a government question.'

I recall earlier on in my parliamentary career a couple of examples where ministers would take the mickey. I am not making the habit in this contribution, because I hope people will take it in good faith, of naming names, but maybe they can make some guesses as to who the minister was that I was directly responsible to as a shadow a bit over a decade ago, who, in a one-hour session managed to take three opposition questions in between the 13-minute opening statement and the six government questions that they managed to get themselves asked by having the chair of the committee go to the government side first.

It was not the member for Light, I can assure you. It was not a portfolio, I would have thought, where there was any fear of it making constant front page news. It was remarkable to me that this happened. Anyway, it was an experience that fortunately we did not see on this occasion. Indeed, I commend those ministers who took no government questions, or at least if they were taking government questions, kept those answers brief.

I think that there are opportunities in estimates to highlight to parliamentary colleagues issues that are really important for a minister or a shadow minister, and bringing those issues to the fore is really interesting. One of the things that sometimes comes out of this is, if The Advertiser or other media publications are paying attention to estimates, that journalists can learn some extraordinary and interesting things too. I am really interested in how the government is going to go, and I do not mean this in a particularly loaded, critical way. I certainly hope it goes well.

There are new accommodation facilities that are associated with the technical colleges in Mount Gambier and Port Augusta, which we spent a bit of time talking about in the session on Monday—the member for Light was chairing the session. I did not anticipate that we would spend so long on the topic, but the way that the information was provided through that session was interesting in that it raised more questions. Hopefully the process of estimates will bring those more to the attention of indeed not just the minister but potentially the chief executive of the department, if they had not been giving as much attention to those issues.

The question of 44 students doing weeks at a time in a government boarding house—15-year-old to 19-year-old students, males and females—away from their parents for the first time and many of them at a really interesting age in their lives, I do think is going to have some complexities and some challenges to it. I think what the government is trying to do with this—if you are going to have brand-new facilities to encourage kids into pathways to work, then absolutely bringing in kids who are able to come from other areas and stay there is a worthy goal. I hope that the government has put in place every possible mechanism and matrix to ensure that this is going to work.

The matrix within which this is being organised within the Department for Education is, as I understand it, from the camps unit within the education department, so the camps and the program have rules about kids from schools who are going on overnight or even longer-term camps for a period of time. If that is the framework that we are doing for longer-stay boarding houses, then that might work and might be sufficient. I certainly hope it is, but I suspect that the boarding houses will present challenges that the camps and excursions team has not dealt with before.

I trust that there are some really dedicated public servants working on this, but it is ultimately the government's responsibility. Having talked for some time about this issue in estimates, I am sure that the minister and the minister's office will now be giving it a large amount of attention in the coming weeks as Port Augusta comes on track ahead of those first students who are going to be there.

I will be interested to see how often those boarding houses are used, because I understand that they are not going to be used for months at time. Indeed, it is more likely to be week-long blocks for students who are coming in for a period and then going back to on-the-job training, and then coming back to the technical college for a period and then going back to on-the-job training.

What that means for the staffing allocations will be something that I would have thought the Treasurer would be very interested in if the education department is uncertain as to how many students are expected or anticipated to actually be using this boarding facility for a period of time, but that boarding facility in the meantime needs to maintain expert staff. I understand Port Augusta is due to be open in six weeks if the building is finished. They already have five full-time staff and presumably will need more. At the moment they are looking after an empty boarding house that has not started yet. That may be necessary to recruit the staff to have them ready to go, and if it is going to be full for the rest of the year that is happy days—it has been a good investment. But we will certainly be interested in exploring more information.

I say all these things with respect. It could be an outstanding addition to the public education system. It is not entirely a novel addition, but it is certainly a massive expansion. I think it is Lucindale Burra and Cleve that currently have boarding schools within the public education system. I visited the accommodation at Cleve. I think it was run by the department of what used to be called Families and Communities; I imagine it may be Housing SA now. Those facilities were certainly not state of the art: those facilities needed a lot of work when I visited in 2020 or 2019. I would have loved to have seen more work done in that space, but obviously the second half of my time as education minister was utterly dominated by COVID, and indeed we were not encouraging large numbers of new boarders during that time due to the complexity of arrangements in looking after those boarders. That was a small number of students, I think up to about 12 in about two or three houses, and they were all within a certain cohort.

From memory, either Burra or Lucindale is not run by the government at all—it is a private boarding facility that is adjacent the school—and the other one is similarly of modest numbers. It is much smaller in size than the two new ones. This is a big expansion of what the government is doing and it is the sort of thing you learn about through the estimates procedure.

I encourage those ministers who are coming out of estimates—maybe they feel very relieved; maybe they feel very proud of themselves that there was no scandal that came out of the process, or at least not yet, and that their answers have not identified any problems. I recall a story that came back to me about one of the early ministers that I was shadowing. He got back to his office, and he was so proud that he felt he had dealt with everything—or she; it could have been a she, but, in any event, that he or she had dealt with everything very well, but the public servant responded: 'But you took 133 questions on notice.'

From an opposition's point of view, we love it when ministers take questions on notice. There is an obligation that an answer is going to come from an estimates procedure that does not exist necessarily at other times. You can have a minister in question time saying they will take a question on notice and, as a result of this government's decision not to renew the standing order requiring an answer to be provided that the Marshall government imposed on itself, we may never hear back—but we will hear those answers back from an estimates process. So for all of those questions taken on notice, I commend the public servants preparing those answers to be taken on notice for the work they are doing. The opposition looks forward to receiving those, and the information therein I am sure will garner some public interest.

I do not propose to detain the house any longer than is necessary. I commend the Hansard of those estimates processes to the chamber, to members to have a look at, for those ones that they missed. There were assiduous viewers in the gallery, and the member for Light will report that Estimates Committee A had twice as many viewers as Estimates Committee B—which suggests to me, frankly, that there are more public servants from those ministers' departments tuning in and not doing any work. But for those members of the public who were watching, I hope they found it a useful process. I certainly express my gratitude to those public servants who supported the information being provided to the public. I hope that, as they prepare those answers to questions on notice, they will do so in the context of providing as much information as possible, because at the end of the day the public has a right to know how their money is being spent.

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (15:57): I would like to make a few observations of committee A—or team A—of estimates. As the member for Morialta correctly pointed out, we certainly had more attention from the public than the other committee did. I think it was three times as much, not twice as much.

Mr Whetstone: It's whether the Chair had control.

The Hon. A. PICCOLO: I will let others make that judgement; it is not for me to do that. The estimates process is an important part of interrogating the annual budget, as the member for Morialta said. From my observations, committee A was in the main civil, and it stayed civil, and all members made every attempt to use the process to its best benefit. I think the Chairman of committee B was the same: we were reasonably lenient with the questioning and allowed some questions which perhaps strictly speaking would normally be ruled out, but it was moving along fine. Like a good umpire, you just get in there when people start to get a bit fiery. Certainly in my committee, the ministers endeavoured to answer all the questions. In fact, where they did not, they actually gave a commitment to provide answers on notice.

Committee A looked at the State Governor's Establishment, Audit Office SA, Defence SA, Education, Energy and Mining, Housing and Urban Development, Human Services, State Development and also some items by Treasury and Finance, including Premier and Cabinet.

The Premier and Cabinet session tended to focus a lot of attention on the Premier's Delivery Unit, which I think plays a very important role in ensuring that the commitments we made in the lead-up to the 2022 election were being delivered in this term of government. Certainly the Premier's Delivery Unit is making sure that they do that and I have often had discussions with them to make sure that the commitments which were made to the people in my electorate are being delivered. I can say with 100 per cent certainty that every commitment made has either been delivered in full already or is in progress and will be delivered in the next few months.

There are some projects that have been delivered which were not committed to, but some which were identified since then have also been committed to. There was an issue around pedestrian safety on Lyndoch Road that was raised by the Lutheran Primary School and the government responded and made money available to make changes there, which have been extremely well received by the school and also by the pedestrians who have to cross the busy Lyndoch Highway.

So the Premier's Delivery Unit I think is a good investment. It enables the Premier, who ultimately is responsible for the whole of government in some ways, to make sure that he can be reassured that all the commitments that were made at the last election have been delivered and any commitments made during this term of government are also being delivered upon. I know others have given a different interpretation of that, but I think if the delivery unit is helping to ensure that we deliver on our commitments it is money well invested.

I think the member for Morialta was the lead in the education area and asked a number of questions. I certainly found that a helpful and useful exercise. There were some things I learnt throughout the process that I was unaware of, so I think the detailed line-by-line questioning is a useful exercise.

The only hiccup in the committee A sessions that I chaired was that for some reason the opposition spokesperson had difficulty coming to terms with the fact that when a minister declares a conflict on a particular matter, they cannot answer the questions and so it has to be answered by the minister where the delegation has been granted. We made the necessary arrangements to make sure that line was opened in Estimates Committee B, and the minister was alerted, so those questions could be asked there.

That conflict actually came up in Estimates Committee A last year and is ongoing, so I would have thought a person doing their reasonable homework would have known that and prepared for that eventuation. However, we were able to help them through the process because the minister was quite clear she had nothing to hide. It was quite clear what was happening and what was intended there.

Mining and transport obviously got quite a bit of attention, particularly from opposition and Independent MPs, regarding roads and a whole range of infrastructure, and that was certainly the case in the electorate of Frome about some key road infrastructure required in that area. The Minister for Energy and Mining, quite rightly, talked about the success of this government in actually investing in the necessary parameters to enable private companies to invest, and the industry is travelling quite well in that regard.

The Minister for Education, Training and Skills was able to highlight the improvements we are making in skills acquisition through the technical colleges—and that is something the member for Morialta has already touched upon, so I will not cover that again—and, as the Premier has said, we are now ensuring that every child can be successful in life without having to go to university. There are a whole range of new opportunities open through the technical colleges and further education.

The Minister for Human Services addressed a whole range of questions, and I think the member for Chaffey was the lead questioner there. In my view, the minister was able to highlight the fact that this government is doing as much as it can to help those people in need with cost-of-living support, supporting the volunteer effort in our community, and certainly trying to improve access to services so people can age well. There is a whole range of other programs offered by the minister's department that I think are delivering good outcomes.

These are just some of the observations I would like to make about the estimates committee. As I said, it was quite a civil event, in my view. Members from both sides, including the Independents, in the main were quite respectful. Even though at times some of the questions were not quite on the mark, I think it was still a worthwhile exercise. I would like to thank all the committee members for their participation, as well as the ministers and the public servants who provided all the information.

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (16:05): I will make a contribution to the estimates process. It was quite an interesting season, I might call it, this year. Obviously, a number of individuals performed better than others: ministers, shadow ministers and the teams around those people of high office. I must say that this has been a prolonged exercise for a long time. It was my 15th estimates this year, and I have seen estimates come and go. I have seen good budgets come and good budgets go.

As has been fairly well reported and documented this year, it was quite a lacklustre budget. It was a budget that has seen South Australia position itself into significant debt. What we have seen through the announcement of the budget and what we have seen through the scrutiny of the budget, through the estimates process, gave me an opportunity this year to look much deeper into the scrutiny of the budget.

I was busy. I took the lead on nine sessions and assisted in 11 sessions. What it showed me this year, no more than any other year, was the high-performing ministers and the low-performing ministers. It really did reassure me that the estimates process consumes a huge amount of time and a huge amount of resources. I will start off by thanking my office for doing an outstanding job. A lot of work goes into the budget papers to take the lead on those nine sessions, and Josh did a great job.

Thank you to the executives who sat next to the ministers and to the public servants who have put their lives on hold almost to prepare documents and to prepare the folders so that we can scrutinise the budget and have credible answers. I think a good estimates process is about a conversation: good questions being answered, a minister across their brief being able to answer those questions or, if not, using the resources that are sitting next to them.

I take this opportunity to also acknowledge the committee Chairs who had to keep control. There were some fiery moments, and I probably was a part of that, having a committee Chair, who is not here at the moment, threatening to close down the process because the minister refused to answer questions. It is what it is. I stood firm on not backing down on my accusations of scrutiny, and I think it was fair.

In this place, by and large we are held to account in a lot of instances by the media. The media are a gauge. They are not the be all and end all, but they are a gauge of who is performing and who is not, who can tell the story, who is across their brief and who is not. On both sides of this chamber we have performers and we have those who are not performing as well as others. In my earlier days, I gave a grading to some of the ministers. That did not go down very well. I remember it very clearly. I gave each minister a grading out of 10, and that was not received in the highest light by the government of the day. I also felt like the media took it as me taking away their reign on gauging who was and who was not performing in that estimates process.

This place is one team versus another. We have the leadership teams, we have the on-ballers, we have the back line, and we also have the emergency players. We have those who need to get better and those who have been part of this process for a very long time and use it as second nature. Potentially, the media need to be a little bit more bolshie and put a grading on the performance of the government of the day and the opposition so that there is a gauge. I hope it would be a fair gauge on who needs to perform better, who is performing better and who is part of a good, robust budget process.

As I said, of those 20 sessions that I was involved in, there were some very frustrating parts. My shadow portfolio responsibilities saw some ministers who refused to answer the questions. They fudged their way through their sessions. I am not going to name and shame because I do not think that is part of my contribution today, but what I would say is that some of the very alarming comments, statistics and revelations that came out of some of the answers were probably nothing new.

Some performed better than others. Some of the answers we probably knew were coming. There are areas of portfolio responsibilities that I think are more important to the economic side of the running of a government. There are the social aspects, and there are also the other elements of the scrutiny that comes to ministers. Some of those ministers were new, some of them were experienced, some of them were a bit older. I think that normally tells the tale of the day.

One of the issues that has come to me is the bread and circuses that South Australia is currently experiencing. We have a very popular Premier who is very focused on all the good things that come to South Australia, but when it comes to putting the focus on the real things in South Australia, it is always: 'Look over there; nothing to see here.' Some of those very popular events that come into South Australia are exactly that: they are very popular. But there is always, I think, not enough scrutiny, not enough emphasis put on what is real, what needs to be addressed.

That is, by and large, the health system. By and large, it is the social aspects of law and order and also making sure that people are better off today than they were yesterday. It is making sure that South Australia is a great place to live, work and play. It is making sure that South Australia is top of the metrics when it comes to scrutiny, when it comes to some of those industry bodies that are actually scrutinising, putting a gauge or a grade on where is a better place to live, where is a better place to do business and where is a better place to invest your dollar. By and large, on a global stage, I think South Australia has always been an underdog when it comes to investment, visitation and population growth.

My view of the world is that South Australia needs to have a government that is there for all of South Australia. As a regional MP, it really does worry me that we have a current government that has by and large focused on their favourite space, and that is the inner city seats, and I do not say that lightly. I say that with concern that the majority of South Australia's economy is driven out of the regions. A lot of the administration is here in Adelaide; I understand that. But what I witnessed through the estimates process was somewhat alarming.

Particularly in employment—the growth of employment, the job opportunities here in South Australia—we look at some of the areas of concern like Invest SA where the target was 8,000 jobs over the last two years. They came up over 6,000 jobs short. Now that tells me that there are alarm bells ringing when there is an agency that is spruiking about all the good times, all the jobs that they are going to create, the economic activity, but they came up at 6,120 jobs short of an aspiration. The questions of that minister were: what are you going to do about it? He said, 'I am going to aspire to do better. I am going to aspire to create more jobs.' That is not what the business world wants to hear—a minister aspiring.

It is all very good to be ambitious, it is all very good to go out there and spruik these large numbers of jobs, but when you cannot deliver you actually have to have a good look in the mirror and understand why. I think that really is something that just typifies programs that have failed—a 23 per cent failure when it comes to job creation here in South Australia. Now, I will not dwell too much on individual spots, but that is one that really did ring alarm bells.

I must say, in Human Services, we looked at community safety, youth, and we looked at understanding: why is youth detention getting worse? We look at police numbers. Why are they finding it hard to attract? Why are they finding it hard to retain? There are a lot of factors involved, and I know the minister is here. The government have to look harder, they have to look at alternative measures in how they are going to do better.

We know that police are under severe strain and stress, doing their job with the resources that they have, particularly out in the regions of South Australia. If I look around my electorate, I have the town of Renmark of over 10,000 people and it does not have a police station. It has been closed. For three years the police station had a sign on its front door, 'temporarily unattended'. Why is it that we cannot have strategies put in place to better protect our communities, to better incentivise and get our youth engaged in some of those law and order programs so that they can be a part of our future? They can be a part of keeping our communities safer and they can be a part of making South Australia a destination as a safe state. That really did ring alarm bells when the minister would not answer numbers of youth in custody, youth on home detention, youth who are monitored.

I know that the minister did say, 'Always a mother, always a mother' but that is not the answer that South Australians want to hear. Emergency services also—I must say that I was quite concerned that every portfolio, as I understand it, every portfolio blew their budget. Every portfolio.

Mr Teague interjecting:

Mr WHETSTONE: Consumer and business services? I am not looking at individuals, I am not looking at people, pointing the finger, but it is a trend that the government has demonstrated to this chamber, and many South Australians would not have a clue about what is going on. But, in the bigger picture someone has to pay the bills eventually. We can continue to create debt, we can continue to create an uncertain future for our children, but at some point in time, we have to stop the rot and address the ongoing debt that, at some point, one generation or another is going to have to pick up.

We look at our emergency services; it is concerning. I pleaded with the minister to look at new initiatives to attract volunteers, to attract personnel. There are some really good initiatives, some good strategies, out there that are being used all around the world to attract people, to retain people. Are we looking at young volunteers? How do we look at ways that we can incentivise young people to volunteer, to be part of a community, to contribute to their community?

I left the minister reassured that I am happy to work with her, happy to give her ideas, that we need to look at some of the levels of discount we can put on HECS debt, some of those incentives, carrot and stick approaches, so that we can make sure that if our youth are seriously wanting to engage with their community they get rewarded for it. In this day and age, as has been explained to me, everyone is busy, everyone has different priorities. The majority of our communities are looking elsewhere when it comes to volunteering. We have to re-engage our communities to make sure that we can have them feeling a sense of responsibility in becoming a volunteer.

As I said, it is not just Human Services, it is not just Emergency Services, it is not just our sporting codes that are screaming out for volunteers to step up. It is about making our communities better. I think the government has a significant role to play here in incentivising those communities to be better role models for the young ones. I understand what has been explained to me. I am not old and I am not crusty, but the Gen Alpha are a different breed. They are driven by algorithms, they are driven by a sense of self, and what it means is that they too need to be approached differently when it comes to their responsibility for community service, their responsibility for what role they will play in the future of common good. I must say that it is a concern.

The funding that seems to be drifting out of the MFS is a concern. Response times are growing. There is a set target for MFS to respond in the city or in the metro area. It is a real concern that at seven minutes in a metro setting, 11 minutes in a regional setting, it has been achieved 75 per cent of the time in a metro setting but only 65 per cent in a regional setting. The MFS feel as though they are the poor cousins to other frontline first responders, and I think rightfully so. They need to stamp their feet a little bit louder so that the government hears them and makes sure they get the level of funding and incentivisation to make their organisation comply with the government's parameters in responding to emergency situations.

As an opposition we always have to actually respond. We cannot just criticise government. Being in government is a tough role. It is a tough gig. A minister has scrutiny on them every day, and rightfully so, but there is a level of responsibility that they must adhere to.

I think the opposition is starting to release some very good, robust policy. There will be more to release. We are scrutinised by the media at the moment and we are scrutinised by the government at the moment, but if we look back four years I remember there were not too many policies coming out of the opposition back then, early in their term in opposition. What we saw was that they came in very late and they came in hard and fast.

Under a Tarzia Liberal government, scrapping the GP payroll tax is, I think, a very good initiative. It will be easier to pay bills by abolishing the $85 water bill price hike and reinstating the home battery scheme. It will be easier for young people to buy their first home by removing stamp duty for first-home buyers up to $1 million. It will be easier to do business by lifting the payroll tax threshold up to $2.1 million. Slashing red tape and fast-tracking apprenticeships to build more homes is, I think, an outstanding exercise. This opposition, should we go into government, will stand with regional communities and will give meaningful relief to drought-affected farmers.

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (16:25): As Chair of Estimates Committee B, I thought I had better rise and add a few words. I would like to acknowledge the member for Elizabeth, who enabled me to do the fly-in visit to Whyalla on Tuesday for some important events: the opening of the runway, an essential piece of infrastructure, and the positive announcements at the steelworks. I was grateful to get out of estimates for a day and actually move around. It was very good.

I have to say that Estimates Committee B, overall, was a very civil affair. I think the opposition did well. They asked the questions they needed to and they did not get aggro too much. They got frustrated every now and again. Ministers are at liberty to answer questions however they see fit under the rules, but I think there was an effort to answer questions and respond to what the opposition was saying.

The member for Morialta was, I think, in a bit of a reflective mood, given this has been his last estimates session. He indicated that over the years there has been discussion and debate around what format estimates should take. He made reference to what happens at a federal level. It happens in other states in different formats. We can have that argument about formats and what have you, but I think irrespective of the shape that it takes, it is something that is important: that after the budget, there is that opportunity to scrutinise the budget. It is a way of holding government to account and extracting information.

I am more than aware of all the work that goes on behind the scenes: all the public servants collating the information, anticipating the questions, the minister and the minister's office anticipating the questions. A lot of work goes into it, and most of the questions are never asked. But as the member for Morialta said, it is an important process. It is an important process for the minister because it does re-emphasise the importance of being across your brief, and it is important for other members here.

I have always found the Hansard reports that come out of estimates to be very useful for the following year. It is a good source of information that you can go back to and have a look at—this is going on here, this is going on there—because you often get questions from constituents about particular things, so the Hansard reports of estimates have been a very useful tool.

When you look at estimates and you look at the institution of estimates, it is just one amongst a whole range of checks and balances that we have within our system. It is particularly useful, not that many people look in on it, and I will get to the member for Light's comments in a minute about the spectatorship of committee A as opposed to committee B.

Given the nature of the answers from ministers, it is all done in the open. It is one of those things where there is that degree of accountability, openness and transparency. Sometimes people are very cynical about our political system in this country and some of the other western countries and we do maybe have an unfortunate drift towards authoritarianism and the hard right in a number of places, but the thing about institutions like this is they are incredibly important. Each little bit makes up something that is worthwhile looking after and preserving, because when stuff like this is gone, it is gone and we end up in a bad place.

There are many countries around the world where the sort of opportunity afforded through an estimates inquiry just simply does not happen. It is one element—maybe a small element—of what makes up an open and democratic society and so we should value it, irrespective of what ultimate format it might take in the future.

As a Chair and usually in the proceedings, when it comes to the omnibus questions I think, 'Why can't we just table those questions? Why do we have to have this repetitive reading out? It is the same stuff, essentially, year in, year out. Can it be tabled?' It was interesting to hear that when it comes to the reading of the omnibus questions, the former member for Mount Gambier, Rory McEwen, holds the record for the reading out of the omnibus questions. As part of my entertainment, I was recording everyone. I put the stopwatch on to see if they got anywhere near the record. I would have to say that nobody did.

It was a politician who told me so I hope it is not misinformation and I hope it is accurate and I have no reason to believe it is not accurate, but I was told he had the ability to read out the omnibus questions in two minutes. I will challenge you all to go away quietly and try to do that. Hopefully, next year, someone can indicate that they are going to have a go at this record. It is a record of Olympian proportions so I think you are going to have to go away and start practising now and just maybe you will get close to that two minutes. I do not know how he did it, it seems like an impossible task to me, but he did it.

Appearing before my committee were incredibly important portfolios such as child protection with billions of dollars of expenditure, which, irrespective of government, is always going to be a challenging portfolio given some of the issues that we confront as a state and a nation. We had women and preventive violence and it was good to hear some of the things that have been done in the domestic violence sphere.

In my electorate, there are often complaints that the police do not turn up. I am not talking about domestic violence in particular, I am talking about in general, that they are delayed or they do not turn up. The police minister is more than aware of this. The amount of time that is taken up now with domestic violence in our communities is deeply concerning. There is clearly a range of initiatives in place to address that, but we have a long way to go.

Once again, irrespective of the government that is in power, this is going to be an ongoing issue that we need to get on top of. It is not just a coincidence that it is nearly always women who are on the receiving end, and there are impacts on families and long-term implications. All the empirical evidence indicates that a disproportionate number of males who as children are exposed to domestic violence go on to be perpetuators themselves—it is when you do not see respect and love in the home. It is a deeply concerning issue.

Estimates Committee B had the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. That portfolio is obviously another incredibly challenging area, the largest area of state expenditure. We are, believe it or not, doing a lot of good things in terms of employing a lot more doctors and nurses and providing more beds. What we have done, when it comes to the Ambulance Service, is to have more facilities and more crews. Those are all good things, but, in common with other states and around the world in western countries, the challenge when it comes to health is going to remain a huge one. We do have an ageing population and we do have more chronic disease, and I guess there needs to be—and it is always difficult when the acute part of the system is competing for dollars—more emphasis on the preventative area.

We had the Treasurer, as I said before, in Estimates Committee B. As usual, he handled himself really well. I am only saying this because he is in the chamber at the moment, but he was his usual very professional self. We also had defence, space and police. It was mentioned that, in country areas, attracting police is a challenge and retaining police is a challenge. Attracting experienced police is especially a challenge; we often get new graduates. One of those good things in the budget was about the police security officers: a whole tranche of police security officers will be employed to go out to regional South Australia—I think the number was around about 80. That should have an impact in freeing up police time when it comes to the whole range of issues that they have to deal with. If you can free up some of that time you are going to have more police out on the frontline.

Primary industries and regional development obviously was an incredibly important area of the budget, given the profound challenges that our farming community is facing. I come from a regional community, but obviously not one—especially given the particular nature of my electorate at the moment—where farming as such has a direct impact. It will have indirect impacts, and obviously there are the vast pastoral areas.

The challenges that are being faced are incredibly profound, given the nature of this particular drought. It is good to see some rain, but clearly more is needed, and far more widespread as well. Hopefully the winter will improve when it comes to rainfall events, but it is going to take a long time for some of our primary producers to get back on their feet. As has been said many times, primary industries is a massive contributor to the state, more than $18 billion. It is an incredibly important part of the economic fabric of South Australia.

We had Consumer and Business Affairs and the Arts, and that was all fairly easygoing. I missed out on the Attorney-General on Aboriginal affairs and industrial relations because that was the day that I was in Whyalla. Once again, I thank the member for Elizabeth for taking on the chair. We had multicultural affairs, tourism—there is some good stuff going on in tourism, some pretty positive stuff. We had rec and sport and then, to cap it off, emergency services, corrections and autism. That was a newbie minister when it came to estimates, and I thought she did very well during the hearing.

As I indicated at the start, a lot of people—many of whom we do not see—play an important role when it comes to estimates in putting together all the documentation that is needed to hopefully answer the questions that are posed. Also, estimates can be a bit of an endurance event, especially if you are in the chair from 9 o'clock to 6 o'clock. I have always found the parliamentary officers who assist us to be very helpful and good-humoured. It is always good to have those people sitting next to you in case there is something you do not know that they would invariably know. Of course, there is all the work that is done by Hansard recording all our words of wisdom. It is a lot of work. I always like to acknowledge the security guards sitting up there hour after hour. What is going through their minds having to do that?

I will finish on a note that I think some people face estimates with a degree of trepidation or 'here we go again', but it is a mechanism that is very useful when it comes to holding the government to account, to getting information out on the table and having a record of everything that was said. As I said, I find that a good resource to use. During the year, you can nip back into it and find out the answers to some of the questions that your constituents might have. With those words, I will resume my seat.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (16:41): I rise to make a contribution in regard to the estimates process. For all my sins, it was my 20th estimates and it is always an interesting process. As the member for Giles said, there are some long days, and you do get a little bit of information sometimes, but at other times it can take a long time to get an answer. I am certainly very privileged to have a role as the shadow minister for veterans' affairs, and it was good to hear about employment programs for those people who have stood up to serve our country and then find themselves looking for employment after that service.

Part of the conversation was around whether or not the government had progressed with a standalone Korean War war memorial. As I have indicated in this place before, I had two uncles serve in Korea, and one of those had previously served in World War II. I want to acknowledge Colonel Peter Scott, who sadly passed away recently. I had a fair bit to do with Peter. He was a huge advocate for a Korean memorial, and it is my passion to make sure that we do get that memorial in place, whichever side of politics is in power.

Wherever I sit in this place, I will be dedicating that to Colonel Peter Scott. He was a great man, and a great service to our country, and I would just like to acknowledge the many, many tens of thousands of South Australian veterans who have served right across this state and right across the world. I have said multiple times that I have the utmost respect for those who are prepared to put their hand up to defend our nation and to do so potentially with their lives. I truly salute them.

Another issue, under my portfolio of regional roads and regional roads, is that they have a $2 billion backlog. What we found out through the estimates, whether it was with the Treasurer or the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, is that there is only about $100 million a year being spent on the maintenance of regional roads, so it is going to take forever to catch up on that backlog. But as we know, in the meantime all the roads are wearing continuously. So there is a lot of work to do. I think there should be a lot more money allocated to regional roads so that people's movements across the state can be facilitated a lot better, and there is also the freight task that we need in place.

Certainly it was disappointing today to not get an answer to a supplementary question I asked about the Birdsville Track, which closed at about 11.30 this morning between Marree and Birdsville. We already know the Strzelecki Track has been cut by the floodwaters up north near Moomba and Innamincka, and Cooper Creek coming over the border was bringing about 1,000 gigalitres of water a day when it was at full noise. That is about two Sydney Harbours a day coming across the border and it has to go somewhere.

It has been many weeks coming to get to the Birdsville Track, and what has the government done about a replacement ferry? There has been a small ferry that was in place, I think it was about 15 years ago; it was probably used before then as well. It is just a ferry that sits up there in the sand. It has a single cable and they put a couple of outboards on it, but it could only take a single vehicle. The issue for people who want to access the north, or for producers in the north that want to get their stock—it is mainly cattle, there may be some sheep, but mainly cattle—down to the southern markets, is that you just cannot do it.

The minister would not elaborate when he was asked a question by the member for Stuart about options that were being looked at. I have heard in the background that there are options for ferries that are a bit like a giant Meccano set that are made in Perth, that they were off the shelf and they would carry freight. You would have to break up the road trains into the separate units, like the three trailers, obviously, and bring them over one at a time. That would be a massive boon to the Far North.

Then, disturbingly, I have heard that there might be a toll attached to the use of a new ferry crossing for the Birdsville Track. I find that really disturbing, when the minister has always pushed back on toll roads in South Australia. Is this the start? Is this the first toll road to be established? I hope not and I hope the government does the right thing by all South Australians and gets an appropriate freight and vehicular ferry in place, so that stock and trade and supplies can go up and down the Birdsville Track. I note that the big event of the year, the Birdsville Cup, is on in early September, I think around 5 and 6 September, and that will have a lot of people trying to get to Birdsville from down south.

The Strzelecki Track was a project that we started back in about 2020 when we were in government. It was a $215 million project, and that has obviously been set back with floodwaters and rain damage. I have not been up there for a couple of years, but it is really disappointing to see the state of the Della Road directly east from Moomba, which 40-odd years ago used to be like an outback highway and now, essentially, it is a farm track. It has been reduced to nothing. The company speed limit up there that Santos institutes not just for its workers but the contractors as well is 60 km/h. You do not want to go too fast because you get flat tyres in that stony country, but when you are doing only 70 km/h or 80 km/h you are going past a triple-trailer road train that has to be sitting at 60 km/h.

There is a lot to do with roads. There is a lot to do right across the state. We do need to look at the bigger projects as well. We do need to look at the extension of the duplication of the Augusta Highway, which is close to 180 kilometres past the section from Lochiel, that section from Port Wakefield to Lochiel that we instigated and has finally been opened, I understand. The Sturt Highway and the Dukes Highway that cuts through my property both need to be duplicated. As I have indicated, on about five-year-old costings, that would have been about $9 billion or $10 billion, but it would create a lot of safety if these roads were duplicated.

I remember getting home after estimates and after a multicultural event in Murray Bridge on the Friday night. The UHF radio in my car had a very strong signal that something had happened not far up and a lady had gone off the road. Anyway, a long story short, I went up the road and worked with a couple of truck drivers who were first on the scene and someone in a ute. There was a police officer driving past from Murray Bridge highway patrol who turned up pretty quickly. He just happened to be coming back from the border.

The local CFS turned up, and I must congratulate the Coonalpyn crew who cut the roof off what was almost a perfectly good VT Commodore, but not anymore, because the lady had neck and back injuries. She was conscious and talking. We tried to keep her comfortable. The Tailem Bend ambulance turned up and they did a great job. Jaensch's crash repairs from Tailem Bend were there as well. Apart from the priority of obviously getting the lady to the emergency department—I assume she went to Murray Bridge first—the car was taken off about midnight, so that operation was cleaned up in about two hours, so I commend everyone involved.

Sadly, we see incidents like this when things go wrong on overtaking lanes, and this was on an overtaking lane; it is the one that goes past my farm. People either get in the wrong lane or they get spooked by oncoming lights. I am not apportioning any blame, but something went wrong and this poor lady ended up in the trees. So we do need to work on what we can do to make our roads safer right across South Australia.

I want to talk about primary industries, where I sat in with the member for Flinders and the member for Finniss. It was interesting. For 30 or 40 minutes we were trying to get some answers around the $80 million blowout to the primary industries budget, and we just could not get the answer out of the minister. We just could not get a finger on the pulse of, of the $73 million that has been offered to primary producers in drought relief funding, how much had actually been spent. We believe it is probably about $20 million out of that, but it took so long to try to get these answers, especially when we are in such terrible times.

I know we have had a little bit of rain, but it has not been everywhere. We have had enough rain at Coomandook. A lot of crops had gone in dry across the Mallee. Some had come up and then got ripped by wind, and people have gone in and sown again and then they have been ripped again this week. These are terrible losses for producers just trying to produce for their family and trying to make some money out of the land. I contacted a local only today and I think we only had three millimetres at home this week. It will be interesting when I get home on the weekend to see how many trees have been pushed over with the winds and to see what damage has happened to the crops coming up.

So it is not all roses. Yes, some coastal communities and some a little bit inland have done pretty well and got falls of sometimes 25 or 26 millilitres and some even heavier in recent days, but there are a lot of people who have not had much at all. There is a lot at stake, people's complete livelihoods.

I certainly think there has been a missed opportunity—and I have said it here before—for no-interest or very low-interest loans. I know the federal government offer a low-interest loan package. I think it is at 5.18 per cent. But that is still a lot of money when you look at the amount of money that someone might have to borrow to put a crop in. There are plenty of stories of people having to borrow an extra half a million dollars. I heard one story the other day where someone spent $4 million putting their crop in alone without paying for the expensive machinery to do it.

They are tough times out there, and our farmers do need more support. They need real support. Yes, the Rural Business Support group and the counselling services do great work. It has been good to have the barbecues instituted across the state. I worked with the ag bureau with someone from Woodchester who was organising one there the other day. I hope they had a good night. They were combining a couple of agricultural bureaus to have a barbecue event. I think they are good events for people just to get together and know that they are not alone in that cause. We have a long way to go yet. Farmers have had the worst drought in more than living memory, and this year has a long, long, long way to go.

There is barely a bale of hay left to buy in South Australia. If you want to buy a big square bale of oaten hay that is about 700 or 750 kilos, it will cost you around $400. Hay out of Western Australia is $300 on site in Western Australia and $250 a tonne to freight here, so that is $550 a tonne. It is expensive. I know feedlotters that are doing all and sundry to get all sorts of hay, whether it is rice husks or sorghum. That could be coming out of New South Wales, Queensland and the Northern Territory. I wish all our primary producers the best moving forward.

It has been a budget that has not delivered much to the regions. Certainly, getting back to the roads issue, there were no clear answers with the Greater Adelaide Freight Bypass and what will be built first. It is $400 million short of the $1.05 billion dollars that was budgeted for the freight bypass, which includes the Swanport Bridge, about 100 kilometres of road towards Halfway House on the Sturt Highway and back towards Truro, and then obviously a dual lane each way bypass for heavy freight to go around Truro.

I think the minister was having a bit of a bet each way during estimates, saying it might be Truro or it might be the Swanport Bridge. They both need to be done. The government need to get more funding out of the federal government if they are going to go with the 80:20 split model, and then they will need to top that up as well because the state government have only put in $125 million. There is $565 million between the state government and the federal government for that project of more than a billion dollars. So which bit misses out? Is it the Swanport Bridge, is it the road between Monarto and the Sturt Highway and ongoing up to Truro, or is it the Truro freight bypass?

It is wait and see, but by looking at the timing in the forward estimates, it will probably be about five years before we see anything major in that freight bypass. I have seen surveyors out near the Swanport Bridge doing some survey work, so whether that is something to do with it; it may be. Certainly, I would welcome that whole project being completed so we can not only make the freight delivery safer but also increase its efficiency to a 53-metre, three-trailer road train capacity, which would benefit not just country areas but city areas as well.

One real concern I have in regard to what is happening in the health budget is about the helicopter landing pads that have been in place for years now for MedSTAR retrieval at our hospitals. They have had to be upgraded for a new contract with new heavier helicopters coming in. I have one at Mannum and one at Murray Bridge in my electorate. I think there is one down at Victor Harbor in the member for Finniss's electorate. My understanding is that these landing pads have been worked through. I think there were some issues with fencing that was potentially a bit high, but there has been a lot of work and a lot of concrete poured to get these landing pads up to scratch.

They are right next to the hospital and vital for that life-saving work to protect lives. The issue for me is that these landing pads, from what I am told, are ready to go, but now there is industrial action that the pilots will not land there. If that is the problem, that is outrageous, and the health minister and Peter Malinauskas need to fix that problem for the safety of our regional communities.

I am not having a crack at the MedSTAR staff. They do marvellous work. They will land on highways, they will land on paddocks, they will land right next to the scene. So, for the life of me, if there is an industrial dispute around these landing pads outside country hospitals, the government needs to fix it immediately so that we can ensure, not just the safety of country people but the safety of people from outside the area, and city people included, who travel through and may have an accident or have a health problem while they are visiting a regional area, and know that the MedSTAR helicopters can land on the appropriate landing pad and get them to safety. There is a lot of work to do in the state budget and we will be following it with a keen eye into the future.

Ms WORTLEY (Torrens) (17:02): As members of parliament in government, we all look forward to the delivery of the state budget by the Treasurer of the day and to the opportunity of speaking about the positive ramifications, the outcomes, that it can deliver to our local communities and also to the state. This year's budget focused on the Malinauskas government's key priorities, including funding for police, road safety, courts, law and order, housing, health, cost-of-living measures, and education.

Of course, following the delivery of the budget, we have budget estimates. This year I was assigned a number of budget estimates committees, and I have to say I was very pleased to be assigned to Estimates Committee A focusing on education with the member for Wright, the Minister for Education, Training and Skills, at the helm.

As a former teacher, and as a parent and member of parliament, I understand the value of education and just as the foundation of a house is crucial to its long-term standing, the preparation of a canvas tools to an artist, the development of fitness to an athlete and an instrument to a musician, a sound educational foundation can be crucial to the life journey of an individual from birth through to adulthood. It is education really that provides a window to the world.

I want to thank today Tahlia Marafiote, a 2024 Avenues College graduate, who is about to begin her university pathway studying psychology. She enthusiastically researched the budget estimates paper A on education for me. I know this just adds another learning experience to Talia that she will take with her on what I am sure will be a very successful career pathway.

Investment in education is crucial for children and young people today and into the future, and this year the Malinauskas government and the commonwealth government signed the new Better and Fairer Schools Agreement, providing an additional $1.25 billion joint investment in education over 10 years with the state contributing $340 million. Questions regarding this investment were asked in the budget estimates committee. In this budget, the government outlined a $40 million investment over four years to support improving the amenity of government existing schools and preschool infrastructure. I know that is something that my local community is keeping their eyes on and looking forward to, hopefully into the future, benefiting from that.

There was $1.5 million over four years to support the full suite of Embrace programs across the state, helping young people build positive body image, develop resilience, reduce the risk of mental illness and eating disorders, and increase participation in sport and learning. It is good to know that right across the parliament people are listening to that. Questions on all of these matters were asked during budget estimates.

An estimated $50 million over years is allocated to provide schools with greater autonomy to respond to students with disability, including to establish new specialised education options in schools. From this school year, $48.3 million is allocated over three years to support secondary students at risk of disengaging from learning. This is going to address greater school oversight and provide more appropriately trained and resourced school staff. It is so important that we do what we can to help these students stay connected and to re-engage.

I know that the Minister for Education truly values these programs, knowing that it is not just about today but about the future of these students. The Malinauskas government also committed to investing in early childhood services, with the investment in the introduction of preschool for three year olds. Again, this program featured in budget estimates.

Reintroducing technical colleges in our high schools and delivering what can only be described as a historic boost in skills and training attracted a number of questions for the minister. Just last weekend, I had the pleasure of joining the minister, along with the member for Newland and the member for Playford, on a visit to The Heights Technical College, where aerospace leader Boeing Defence Australia (BDA) signed on as an employee partner. They will work with the Department for Education on the design of learning programs and the workplace experience needed for students to prepare themselves for a career in the industry.

The technical college will address the limited vocational pathways to entry-level roles within the state, assisting with the provision of skilled workers at the $200 million Deep Maintenance and Modification Facility at Edinburgh being delivered by both the Malinauskas and Albanese Labor governments. The huge four-bay aircraft hangar will facilitate the specialist maintenance of the Australian Defence Force's Boeing 737 variant military aircraft. I was particularly interested in the comments by the managing director of Boeing Defence Australia.

I say that because the member for Chaffey was talking about programs and putting money into programs when there were not going to be jobs. This is a quote from the managing director of Boeing Defence Australia, when she said:

Our agreement with The Heights Technical College will give more young South Australians the opportunity of working at the cutting edge of aerospace with companies like Boeing.

With one of the largest aircraft maintenance workforces in South Australia, focused particularly on the support of Royal Australian Air Force P-8A Poseidons, and with more than 30 aircraft technician roles to fill over the next two years, we rely on a pipeline of candidates who are equipped to support the frontline aircraft we maintain and upgrade for the Australian Defence Force.

The Heights will support the future growth of local aerospace companies like Boeing Defence Australia…

She then went on to thank the South Australian government for the opportunity of being able to partner with The Heights Technical College. The Heights Technical College, as we saw on the visit, is in the final stages of construction. It has been designed to feel like a workplace to help students obtain the necessary skills and experience to transition to work. This was revealed in the questions being asked of the minister in budget estimates.

This purpose-built facility includes workshops where students can focus on industry pathways, including aero skills for careers as aircraft maintenance technicians in defence and civil aviation, advanced manufacturing and engineering for careers as fabricators, welders and engineers, building and construction for careers in those industries, and a state-of-the-art 270º screen.

We had students from Findon Technical College there. They were really interested in this and they were very much impressed by what they saw. It is a state-of-the-art 270º wraparound projection screen covering three entire walls. This will further create an immersive learning experience for students, simulating what it is like to fix the underside of an aircraft. Other technologies on site included welding simulators, 3D printers and an IT suite with industry-standard software and equipment.

During the budget estimates we heard that The Heights, like the other four colleges, is open for enrolments from students currently in years 9 and 10 for enrolment in years 10 and 11. These opportunities for students were made very clear by the minister in answering his questions. There were a whole lot of areas surrounding education. There are so many that we could talk about, but on this occasion we need to stick to the budget estimates committees. I would like to conclude by mentioning some of the other areas that I am so pleased we were able to touch on: the initiatives advancing gender equality; addressing domestic, family and sexual violence; improving health and wellbeing; and empowering women to fully engage in the South Australian economy.

Budget estimates is an opportunity for both sides, in a sense, to highlight whatever it is that they want to raise and put out there in the public arena. I know that in opposition, budget estimates is something that is quite exciting. Sometimes in government when you are on the backbench you sit there, you listen and you have the opportunity to ask some questions that you want to ask, and it flows a bit like that.

I think it is fair to say that this budget estimates round, from my perspective and from what I saw on the days that I appeared in budget estimates as a backbencher, was a very successful budget estimates in getting information out that needed to be out there for the community. I know that the ministers put so much work into it, as do their staff, and we really appreciate the work that the staff and the departments put in throughout the budget estimates process.

Mr TEAGUE (Heysen—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (17:12): I rise and indicate I am the lead speaker for the opposition. I will reflect somewhat on the estimates committee process that has just passed, and I might flag that I am going to focus—obviously it was wideranging, covering the whole of the Appropriation Bill—on the results of the estimates process in child protection and I will have a word or two to say about the Attorney-General's Department, more particularly the Forensic Science SA centre that has been long awaited.

First, in terms of framing where we are at, I think really in the first moments after the Treasurer made his second reading contribution, now a couple of weeks ago, my first thought in this regard was, 'Well, what a disappointment.' I think the member for Elizabeth was in the chair at the time. I just want to mark that moment because nothing that I have heard—and I was in a fair bit of the estimates, although obviously not all of it—has moved me from that initial observation: what a disappointment.

I flag two matters that I then addressed in that immediate aftermath of the Treasurer's second reading contribution to this bill. The first is that South Australians had just then heard that the state's debt was blowing out from an all-time record with a great big Advertiser newspaper front page, the Treasurer's face emblazoned on it, with $44 billion of state debt—that was last year—to this year having been told by the government that state debt blows out to $48.5 billion. That ought to send a shudder up the spine of all South Australians, particularly those of us who plan on remaining here, along with our children and future generations, who are being lumbered with this truly extraordinary staggering amount of debt.

I am alive to the political mood of the day, and we all do our best to be tuned into it, and state debt remains not the most fashionable topic in South Australia, but to put it bluntly, a Premier who took his shirt off a few years ago remains the flavour of the month. Just around the corner, South Australians are going to zero in on what The Advertiser has already well and truly belled the cat on as early as the very next day after this second reading contribution from the Treasurer, saying, 'Debt bomb, $48.5 billion announced by Malinauskas Labor three years in.' So $44 billion goes to $48.5  billion and I think I said the next time we all look at it, lookout folks, because South Australia is going to be staring down the barrel of being known as the $50 billion state debt territory.

You do not have to look very far to the east to see that Victoria now well and truly uncontroversially is regarded as an economic basket case, the result of far too many years of Labor in government in that state. You do not even have to look very much further to see the turmoil that has afflicted Tasmania, as they are all grappling with a state debt that is a tiny proportion of what South Australia is going to now be saddled with for the years ahead. And that is figure number one: state debt.

Going along with that is very much what we then grapple with in the course of the estimates, that is agency by agency working on performance and competence. What we have seen year on year from this government—and it contributes to that state debt—is incompetence, agency by agency, to the tune of a total of more than a billion dollars again this year.

I have used the words 'budget blowout' a few times in the course of these agency processes. What has been clear again is that one of the significant contributors to overall state debt is simple agency incompetence by individual ministers blowing their portfolio budgets, in many cases, by hundreds of millions of dollars.

I have said I will focus on Child Protection and subsequently on the Attorney-General's Department. The Department for Child Protection was the subject of estimates last Friday, 20 June. I had the opportunity to ask questions of the minister, first in relation to that budget management task, secondly, the matter of full-time equivalents employed in the department, and thirdly, some revisiting of the performance indicators that tell a story of success or failure to some extent on the face of those budget papers.

The first of those matters, agency performance, is yet again a tale of complete incompetence. In fact, I would go so far as to say it is a wilful dereliction of any sense of duty to respond to budget constraints and to explain reasons for overspend. I think what the estimates process revealed, and I think I said so in the course of it, was that we saw a minister who—far from having a command of the budget, the budget process and budget oversight for that department, and far from having explained the making of a case to the Treasurer, let alone explaining the reasons for the failure of budget performance against budgets year on year—was at no point referring in any coherent way to the management of the Department for Child Protection's budget at all.

I put at the outset the proposition—and I think this appears at page 82 of the relevant Hansard—that the budget for 2024-25 had allocated to the Department for Child Protection the amount of $793 million and that that is a really large amount of money. It is significantly more money than we have seen year on year, and it continues to grow.

While we are putting that into some context, for several years now I have been saying to the minister, 'Is more money in child protection a sign of success or is it a sign of failure?'—let alone budget management from there.

Just using the budget figures for this year—and I can tell the house that the same story has applied year on year in the past as well—the Department for Child Protection's budget of $793 million for this past year is an enormous amount of money. The estimates committee is well within its rights to ask the minister, 'What have you done with that money? Why haven't you managed to discharge your obligations to serve the best interests of South Australia's most vulnerable children while applying budget discipline when provided with that very substantial amount of money?'

The Department for Child Protection, under the responsibility of the minister, reported a projected budget performance for this last year not of $793 million spent, not of some kind of variance at the margins—the Department for Child Protection's actual spend was a bit in excess of $948 million. It is $156 million more than what was very generously budgeted for in the last budget. So, as members might expect of me, I asked the minister to explain: what was the need for that $155 million, how did that occur, and how are you going to address the year ahead?

What we also see on the face of those budget papers is that such is the profligate overspend in this year's budget papers, from $793 million out to $948 million, that the minister's own government, in the budget that the Treasurer has presented to this parliament, provides for an $82 million cut against that budget performance for the year ahead.

So the house has seen, on the face of the budget papers, first a startling overspend in budget by the agency. I can stand here and tell the house that from my perspective, and on the face of the record as well, the committee was afforded no explanation, or certainly no substantial coherent explanation, for that at all. Let alone that, there was absolutely zero to explain how the Department for Child Protection was going to reduce spending for the year ahead by the necessary $82 million in order to meet the budget for the year ahead. Now, just flash back for a minute to the first year of the incoming Malinauskas Labor government a few years ago.

The Department for Child Protection was an exception to what were then generally applied operating efficiencies across agencies: budget cuts, budget reductions across agencies. Agencies were expected to perform better. They did not on the whole—but leave that aside. The Department for Child Protection was an exception. Hence, my question in the first year of budget estimates: is more money for child protection a sign of success or failure? We have been on that course ever since, and we can have that argument.

But the point is that child protection has been afforded lots of money—more and more and more. What it has done each year is it has blown the budget by a substantial amount and, in the last couple of years including this one, by so much that even where the Treasurer—in all of his capacity to adjust and provide in areas of need—has not be able to come at the child protection performance with anything remotely close to what the Department for Child Protection actually spends.

In what might be interpreted as the minister endeavouring to own certain virtues about the way in which the Department for Child Protection is going to be run under this government, the minister told the committee that the minister would just continue to spend and spend and spend, and claimed to be proud of that, and that would be endless. That extended to the second topic that I raised, which was by direct reference to full-time equivalents employed at the Department for Child Protection, which had exceeded by I think 31 the number of full-time equivalents that were budgeted for for the year.

So the Department for Child Protection spent $155 million more than was budgeted, ended up employing 31 or so FTEs more than were budgeted, and the minister—who was given plenty of opportunities in different ways, including by analogy to individual unidentified cases, and by any range of reference points—could not or would not provide any explanation as to how South Australians can have confidence that money applied in child protection is money well spent, and money blowing the budget of child protection is budgets well blown, as it were.

Leave alone any kind of resemblance of a concept of how you are going to meet this $82 million cut that the government is requiring of child protection. To put it bluntly, the minister did what the minister has done repeatedly now at budget estimates processes and provided, in answer to fairly straightforward questions about the budget, long, generalised answers that were non-responsive to questions and appeared to me to consider that that was somehow satisfactory. It was not—far from it.

I go a step further to say that the minister displayed a lack of command of the budget—but more than that: it was an apparent disengagement with the process of seeking new money, because the budget also contained what I described as a so-called measure for the provision of additional funds to the Department for Child Protection over the course of the budget estimates. That was described in very specific terms—first year, second year, going out to the third year, diminishing amounts of money—and the minister was given an opportunity to address the committee to answer: what are those additional funds going to be spent on? The best that the minister could come up with in response to any of these questions was, 'Well, we'll spend and spend and spend, whatever it takes, and we'll employ and employ and employ, and we will continue to do that and we are proud of it, and we will just do that.' I was left putting the proposition: is the budget in child protection really essentially a meaningless exercise?

You do not apparently go to the Treasurer and say, 'Treasurer, I really need this amount of money to achieve these outcomes, so I can talk to the budget process about what will be achieved with those funds.' That is what we saw across the board in so many different agencies. We saw a very specific analysis of what you get for your money, whether there has been responsible output for input and what we can derive in terms of confidence for budgets provided to agencies.

I have some thought about what the Treasurer must have to go through in terms of having to work out how to deal with the Minister for Child Protection in a budgetary sense, and what we are left with, if one is looking at the budget, the best you can do is you can say, 'Whatever you see written on the page in terms of the budget, don't rely on a word of it, and what you see next year will tell you an even more startling story of a complete disconnection between what is budgeted and what is spent.'

So there is $793 million in the budget, $948 million spent, a $155 million blowout contributing to a $1 billion-plus blowout to budget in spending, all without any substantial rationale. To the extent that performance was revealed and addressed on the face of the budget papers, it was further curious to see that the government this year has walked away from a standard that has been applied consistently for many years, in terms of the response time for responding to cases. A completely different measure was applied this year, and once again on that measure the government was called out for what looked like a process of applying a gloss to a department that has been, in one form or another, in a continuous state of crisis now for years and years.

The Treasurer knows about this, the Premier knows about this. Both of those ministers addressed public inquiries last year about reasons for the overspend in child protection. Both of them addressed the fact that that was due to costs of employees and service providers in various ways. They have been on notice about this for at least the last year, and yet, what do we see, this startling and extraordinary and staggering budget blowout in child protection.

To paraphrase the words of Simon Schrapel back in February this year, Simon Schrapel who was recently farewelled after his storied career leading Uniting Communities, 'Child protection does not need to be something that is characterised by crisis. It can be something that we are proud of in South Australia. It can be a source of confidence. It can be, with proper reform, an area in which government can be proud of the way that it stands in and steps up for our state's most vulnerable.' However, right now it is a story of budgetary dysfunction that is coupled with performance that one expects to see in what has been a multiyear and ongoing crisis.

In the short time that is available just now, I said I would briefly address the Attorney-General's Department and one or two specific matters that emerged. I want to stress, as I do each year in budget estimates, when it comes to the Courts Administration Authority and the administration of our justice system, that I addressed at the outset a question via the Attorney-General to the Chief Justice or the Chief Justice's representative, first a question in general terms of, 'Are the courts adequately provided for?' Having that assurance that a provision is made, I thank the courts for the work that they do in the interests of our state's justice system and the people of South Australia.

However, there were a number of key examples of what I have described in the broadest sense at the outset of these remarks. Perhaps given their singularity in terms of being individual projects that are able to be analysed—and I might say I got a relatively more straightforward and candid response from the Attorney-General than what I got from the Minister for Child Protection—first of all, we saw a further two-year blowout in the time for completion of the Sir Samuel Way facade repairs. That is a relatively discrete project.

Surprisingly, a bit like the government's hydrogen project that was continually flagged as being at this fixed cost of $593 million that was not changing, we see it still in the budget papers as a project costing $11.5 million, despite having a two-year blowout. That is all on the record, so we can analyse that to our heart's content. What that led to was something far more serious, and that is something that South Australians might view as a subset or as a relative comparator to another significant project, the new Women's and Children's Hospital. That is costing somewhere in the region of over $3 billion.

The new Forensic Science SA centre is costing somewhere around one-tenth of that, but for years now we have seen it recorded in the budget papers as a project with a cost of $348 million and a completion date of June 2028. This year, in the budget, out of the blue, the figure has changed on both the completion date and on the project cost. What do you know, we now see it is now going to be three years later, off beyond the horizon in June 2031 and, by the way, it is going to cost somewhere close to $14 million more than we thought. Instead, it is now going to come in at around $362 million.

The people of South Australia would expect me to ask the Attorney-General, 'What does that mean? What is the reason for the delay and what is the reason for the cost blowout?' This only happened on Tuesday, and I had already been the subject of the minister's responses on Friday in child protection which were, frankly, not terribly responsive. So I was really pleased actually by how clear and to the point the Attorney was in the sense that I had a clear answer that the reason for the three-year delay is purportedly justified by nothing more than someone turning their mind to the lease and seeing that the lease runs a bit longer than 2028 so maybe we can hang our hat on that.

It is something that has been known at all times, as far as I am aware. The premises at Divett Place is dilapidated and in urgent need of replacement. We have all known that and applauded the project being underway. No longer is it going to be completed in June 2028 but, for the reason only that somebody has had a look at the lease and said, 'Well, they can stick there a bit longer,' we now see project delivery three years late, in 2031, and $14 million more associated with the build. I was prepared to give the Attorney credit and say, alright, three years late probably comes with $14 million of extra costs.

I will come back to this in just a moment, I am assured. I will not be all that terribly much longer, but it is important to get this on the record, reporting out of the estimates process. I seek leave to continue my remarks and will continue in a moment.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Sitting extended beyond 18:00 on motion of Hon. A. Koutsantonis.

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