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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-10-16 Daily Xml
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Construction Industry

Ms SAVVAS (Newland) (14:22): My question is to the Premier. Can the Premier inform the house how construction is supporting South Australia's economy and delivering benefits to local workers and businesses?

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier, Minister for Defence and Space Industries) (14:22): I thank the member for Newland for her question. The member for Newland, of course, better than anyone understands that in her electorate there is a high value placed on a healthy economy providing opportunities for future generations. Of course, that's a story we see not just throughout metropolitan Adelaide but throughout the state more broadly. I think there wouldn't be a parent around the country, frankly, who doesn't want to have a sense of confidence that in their home community there is going to be a healthy economy that provides opportunities not so much for themselves but for the people they are responsible for bringing into the world.

To that end, there is a lot of good news in our state at the moment. I mentioned the housing numbers earlier, but it is also true that in terms of construction work that is getting done more generally, the numbers are exceptionally pleasing. Obviously, there is a lot of activity happening in construction work in a government sense, in a civil construction sense, but what we are most heartened by are some of the numbers we see in regard to the engineering work that has been undertaken, including within the non-government sector.

Today, for instance, we were at the sod-turning ceremony of a $400 million build on North Terrace.

The Hon. V.A. Tarzia interjecting:

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: The Leader of the Opposition interjects again. The very point that I am making is that the $400 million investment being made by Pelligra, in conjunction with the Freemasons, is all from private capital. The reason they are building the tallest building we have ever seen in the history of our state, including having 300 keys for a brand-new hotel, is because they see the demand in the South Australian economy, not just now but the demand that can be reasonably relied upon as we see future and new industries continuing to choose to call South Australia home.

You wouldn't be building a 300-room hotel in South Australia if you didn't think there were going to be people choosing to travel here to stay in it. That is an investment not in the now, it's an investment in what tomorrow looks like for our state, the tomorrow that we want to seek to realise so that future generations can participate in the sort of strengthened labour market we see the ABS release today.

Today, the ABS numbers, I think it's worthy of mention, reflect not just on the number of people employed, which is a record for South Australia—and it doesn't sound very newsworthy anymore, because it seems that we have to have a few—but the number I thought I would focus on, which doesn't get talked about nearly enough, is the participation rate. We saw today from the ABS that we have the highest participation rate numbers we have seen ever recorded in South Australia.

Why does that matter? Well, traditionally the participation rate within the labour market in South Australia has been below the national average. We have always been structurally below the national average, but we are now creeping up closer to it, to the extent that we are at a record high for the state. South Australians—

Mr Telfer interjecting:

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: Well mate, you are underemployed if you don't participate in the labour market. We want people to choose to participate in the labour market. The sorts of people who choose not to participate are people who are socially disenfranchised or the young, and we want them to know that there are jobs for them too.

When more people put their hand up and say, 'You know what? I'm going to go from being unemployed or potentially structurally unemployed by not even looking to participate in the labour market, to choosing to put my hand up to engage,' you know that things are starting to improve and that investments such as the ones I know the Minister for Education and Skills—he's not here—is leading are actually making a difference, to include people in our economy rather than exclude them. That's important for the sort of society that we choose to live in.

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