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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-05-18 Daily Xml
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Privatisation

Mr FULBROOK (Playford) (14:35): My question is to the Treasurer. Can the Treasurer update the house on the government's position on privatisation and advise if he is aware of any alternative approaches?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Treasurer) (14:35): I thank the member for Playford for his question—and indeed I can. This government made our position clear on privatisation at the recent state election. We don't support the Liberals' fire sale of government assets and services, and our position was informed by the behaviour of those opposite over the last four years.

Mr Speaker, you might remember that a little over four years ago the member for Dunstan told the people of South Australia that the Liberals 'don't have a privatisation agenda'. Well, during the government's one term in office they got very busy breaking that election commitment to the people of South Australia. Straight off the bat, they privatised the Adelaide Remand Centre in their first budget—and what a success that was. Under the stewardship of the member for Hartley, prisoners were escaping out of the kitchen window. What a great achievement under that new privatised contract.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: They also, of course, sold the right to operate our trains and trams to Keolis Downer.

Mr Tarzia: Don't mislead the house. You had better check where it was.

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Hartley is called to order.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Was it a bathroom window?

The SPEAKER: The Treasurer has the call.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Was it a Joe Cocker lyric, was it? It was a bathroom window and not a kitchen window?

Mr Tarzia: You said it. Don't mislead the house. It's a very serious offence.

The SPEAKER: Order! Member for Hartley!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: If it was another room of the prison, I stand corrected. I am grateful to the member for Hartley for his superintendence of that portfolio. Not only did they privatise the right to operate our trains and trams to Keolis Downer but they also sold the rights to operate South Australia's road maintenance functions to various private contractors. This privatisation included Field Services, its functions of course operating our traffic lights across metropolitan Adelaide and roadside infrastructure management.

They also privatised the government's interest in world-leading technology Addinsight. They privatised patient transport services from Modbury Hospital, and they were just the privatisations that actually proceeded. The former government, led by the member for Dunstan, also hung the sword of Damocles of privatisation over SA Pathology. They said, 'If you don't cut your budget by over $100 million, you're going to get privatised.' That is what they said and it took the member for Dunstan, at the beginning of a global pandemic—

Mr Pederick interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Hammond!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: —to be humiliated into a backdown from that privatisation.

Mr GARDNER: Point of order.

The SPEAKER: Treasurer, there is a point of order. I will hear the member for Morialta on the point of order.

Mr GARDNER: The minister is debating the matter: standing order 98.

The SPEAKER: There is some force in the point of order. The Treasurer knows the question, has the question and will come to the question.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Could you imagine what would have happened, Mr Speaker, if SA Pathology had been privatised during a global pandemic? But there was another privatisation that the former government managed to slip through without too much notice, and that was the sale of a state-owned, profitable training company called Scope Global. Formerly called Austraining International, it was established in 1991 and renamed Scope Global in August 2014. Scope Global is a specialist project management, international development and training agency, wholly owned, it was, by the South Australian government.

The review of the South Australian government's international and interstate engagement bodies and functions, known as the Joyce Review—Mr Speaker, you will remember the success of that, appointing the Hon. David Ridgway as Agent General—recommended that this Scope Global organisation be transferred to the Treasurer. That occurred and then didn't they get their privatisation act into gear once again?

Mr Pederick interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Hammond!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: So it came as little surprise for me to find out on coming to government that this had quietly been flogged off to a company established as little as less than two years ago in another privatisation. Shame on those opposite. We won't be following their decrepit example.

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