HANSARD
SITTING CALENDAR
SEARCH
LIVE BROADCAST
Hansard Dynamic Subject Index
House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-05-19 Daily Xml
Contents
Xml

Address in Reply

Address in Reply

Debate resumed.

Mr SPEIRS (Black—Leader of the Opposition) (11:17): It is a great pleasure to be able to provide my Address in Reply speech this morning as the Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. I would like to begin by thanking Her Excellency the Governor, the Hon. Frances Adamson AC, for her first address to our parliament. Her appointment was one of the many important decisions of the government I was proud to serve in for four years under the leadership of the member for Dunstan.

I regret the loss at the election of those who served in that government as ministers and members. I want to thank them for what they contributed to their local communities and to the state of South Australia either as ministers serving in the cabinet for some or all of those four years or as dedicated local members of parliament, serving their neighbourhoods, their communities, the people and the organisations that make South Australia the great place that it is.

I particularly want to thank Dan van Holst Pellekaan for his service in the seat of Stuart, the former Deputy Premier of South Australia and the former Minister for Energy and Mining. I want to thank my neighbour to the east in the electorate of Davenport, the former member for that seat, Steve Murray. I want to reflect on the contribution that Paula Luethen made in the seat of King, that Richard Harvey made in the seat of Newland and that Rachel Sanderson made both to cabinet as our state's Minister for Child Protection and as the member for the state seat of Adelaide. I want to reflect on the contribution made by Sam Duluk in the seat of Waite.

In particular, I want to thank Corey Wingard, a great friend, who I walked alongside during his journey as the member for Mitchell and the member for Gibson and as a cabinet minister for four years as well. Corey is a real friend of mine and someone I will miss hugely serving with in this chamber.

Finally, I want to pay tribute to the work of Carolyn Power. Carolyn and I served on Marion council together between 2010 and 2014. Her passion for the community that she represented was, in my view, second to none. Her desire to help people from all walks of life, her contribution to her assistant portfolio as Assistant Minister for Domestic and Family Violence Prevention was one of dedication and continuous service to the people of South Australia.

Again, I will miss Carolyn Power in this place, but I will not miss her friendship because we remain in regular contact, hourly contact it seems sometimes, and I believe she has a great future ahead of her serving the people of South Australia and the communities she is part of in some form into the future.

I congratulate all those members who have been returned and the new members of the Liberal team, in particular the member for Frome, the member for Schubert and the member for Flinders and, in another place, the Hon. Laura Curran MLC. They are great contributors to our team going forward and I thank, in particular, the members for Frome, Schubert and Flinders for agreeing to join my shadow cabinet and making a contribution to keeping the government accountable but, possibly more important than that, developing ideas and a vision for our state in their respective portfolio areas.

Mr Speaker, I congratulate you on your reappointment to the office of Speaker and I have no doubt that you will serve in that role diligently, with fairness and with a great level of aptitude. I congratulate the Premier and the Labor Party of South Australia and the new ministry on taking office and on their election victory. It is no small thing to be able to sit around a cabinet table and make decisions that will shape the future of our state. So, no matter which political party you are from, it is a privilege to get that opportunity, and that is an opportunity I have been incredibly privileged to enjoy myself, that opportunity and the immense possibilities that come from that cannot and should not be underestimated or diminished.

I want to thank the electors of Black and my campaign team for their support and their work which enable me to continue to serve in parliament for another four years. I talk a lot about my electorate. It is a place that I call home, and I have lived in and around that part of Adelaide and our city southern suburbs since arriving here in 2002. It is a great part of our city and I think in many ways it is representative of our state—a group of people, a set of communities, neighbourhoods, streets, clubs, footy clubs, surf clubs, service organisations, churches, schools, small businesses.

It is symbolic in my mind of what being an Adelaidean, a South Australian, is all about. It is a group of people who love their state, love the livability of their state, want to work hard for their families, want a hand up rather than a handout, want to get ahead, pay down their mortgage, send their kids to a decent school and be part of a community. I see those characteristics in the people I interact with and meet every day as a local member of parliament representing suburbs like Hallett Cove, Trott Park, Sheidow Park, Marino, Kingston Park, Seacliff, South Brighton, Seacliff Park and Seaview Downs.

I want to thank those who were involved intimately in my campaign and helped me get re-elected: the many volunteers in the local Liberal Party branch but, beyond that, people in those clubs and those organisations who believed in the type of representation that I sought to provide them and have sought to provide them over the last eight years since entering parliament in 2014, and perhaps a bit before that since going onto Marion council in 2010.

I want to thank my electorate office staff, Jana Kranixfeld, Ben Freeman, Rachel Koch and previously Nathan Howse, for their contribution. I want to thank my branch president, Fran Southern; her husband, Dennis; Kym Rampling; and Deanna and James Brine—people who have worked alongside me, both in my branch and in the community, for an extended period of time.

It is only eight years since I first won my seat in parliament, and in fact it is only 19 years since my parents brought me to live in South Australia in December 2002. I did not want to move to South Australia. I wanted to stay in my bleak little Scottish town because that is all I knew. I arrived here as a very difficult teenager, determined to make my parents' life a misery for cursing me with having to move to the other side of the world, leaving behind all that I knew. I had never driven through a traffic light controlled intersection before moving to Adelaide and I was overwhelmed at the thought of living in an immense cosmopolitan city. I arrived here as a shy, pale, Scottish teenager. I am still pale, not quite as shy, no longer a teenager and—

Mr Pederick: A little bit Scottish.

Mr SPEIRS: Still a bit Scottish, although when I go back to Scotland people always say, 'Why do you speak so Australian?' So there you have it. But very early on in my time living here, I realised my parents had made a big sacrifice to move their three boys—I am the oldest, with two younger brothers—to the other side of the world. It was a financial sacrifice. It was a relational sacrifice. It was a sacrifice that put immense strain on our family and extended family, but my mum and dad wanted to create opportunity for their boys.

For my 16th birthday, my mum purchased a watercolour painting for me. It is not really what a 16-year-old boy is after for their 16th birthday present. That watercolour painting is of a tower called Agnew Monument. Agnew Monument was built on a hill above our family's farm on the south-west coast of Scotland and it was built in memory of the life of a local politician Sir Andrew Agnew, who served in the Westminster parliament in the 19th century.

Mum said to me, 'No matter where you are in the world, no matter where you call home, take this painting with you and look at it and it will remind you of where you are from. Never forget your roots.' I do not think when my mum gave me that watercolour painting for my 16th birthday that she expected it to one day hang in the Leader of the Opposition's office in the Parliament of South Australia, but today it does hang in the Leader of the Opposition's office.

The painting always reminds me not only of where I come from but also importantly of the sacrifices my parents made to bring their kids to the other side of the world and the possibilities of what can be achieved in this state and this country if you are willing to give this place a go, roll up your sleeves—and I often have my sleeves rolled up—and give it a really, really good crack, and that is what I have tried to do during my time living here.

I signed off my maiden speech to this place in 2014 by quoting the words of John Smith. John Smith was the Labour leader in the UK from Neil Kinnock's loss in 1992 until two years later, May 1994, when he died very suddenly in his mid-50s of a massive heart attack. He was a Scottish member of parliament who had risen through the Labour ranks representing coalmining interests in the central belt of Scotland. He had been the shadow chancellor of the exchequer through Neil Kinnock's period of time in the British Labour leadership and then had become leader after that election loss.

Just hours before he died he gave a speech, using a form of words that I then paraphrased in my maiden speech, because he asked his audience for the opportunity to serve. I signed off on my maiden statement with this statement, quoting John Smith:

With the heartfelt gratefulness of someone who has been welcomed into a new country as if I had lived here all my life, I say: the opportunity to serve South Australia—that is all I ask.

I have now been given the honour and opportunity to serve our great state as the leader of the Liberal Party and, as a consequence, the Leader of the Opposition. I am humbled by the confidence that my parliamentary colleagues have shown in me, and I will ensure that I do not let them down and that I do not let the people of South Australia down.

I am exceptionally proud of the shadow cabinet I have been able to put together. The election result two months ago, while very bad for the South Australian Liberal Party, did not deny me talent when it came to putting together this shadow ministry. I am immensely grateful to the member for Morialta for his role supporting me as deputy leader of the Liberal Party, but I have also been able to establish a diverse team, a team that is reflective, I believe, of life in South Australia. There are six women in the shadow cabinet, there are seven people aged in their 30s, there are nine people with school-age children, there are seven people who call regional South Australia home and there are two fresh generation migrants, of which of course I am one.

I also want to take a moment to reflect on the contribution made to South Australia by the member for Dunstan, the former Premier of South Australia, the 46th Premier of South Australia. I think history will be kind to the legacy of that government. We lost office for a range of reasons, and there will be an opportunity to analyse those for many years to come, but there was a complexity over the last couple of years, a complexity not seen in modern times for any government anywhere.

It is a complexity shared by other governments in the last couple of years, but it was one that Steven Marshall led this state through. I want to thank him for his friendship, his mentorship, his leadership and his substantial contribution to the state of South Australia. I believe he will be someone who has many more opportunities to serve his community, his city, his state and his nation in the future.

When the government changes, the state changes. That is what happened four years ago when South Australia elected a Liberal government. You will never find me denigrating our time in office. Part of my job, I believe, going forward is to secure the legacy, championing the successes of our time in government, talking about what we have achieved or the things we set in train to be achieved in the future. I will do that with individuals, such as the member for Dunstan, and I will do it with collectives, such as cabinet, government and the Public Service, which of course is the workforce the government of the day has to deliver its agenda.

South Australia elected a Liberal government in March 2018 that created jobs. It built what matters. It opened new opportunities for the state of South Australia. For years, the statistics were very clear: South Australia's economy was lagging. This is because our taxes were too high, our power prices were too high, our water prices were too high, and many of these things had been too high for too long.

Under the 16 years of Labor government between 2002 and 2018 our kids sadly were below average in every single NAPLAN survey. Our public health system was in crisis, after what I believe can fairly be described as the disaster of Transforming Health, the closure of the Repat and the downgrading of other major hospitals. In March 2018, South Australians elected a Liberal government to change our state for the better. I believe that is exactly what we sought out to do and that is what we achieved.

We did more to transform South Australia's economic opportunities than Labor did in 16 years before us. In four years, we delivered South Australia's lowest unemployment in 40 years and the highest economic growth in the nation for the first time in our state's history. We set up our state to seize the opportunities for continuing economic growth in defence, space, cyber, digital technology, high-tech, renewable energy, food, wine and agribusiness and in the creative industries.

We cut taxes for business and investors by eliminating payroll tax for all small businesses and cutting land tax for the vast majority of property owners. We reduced cost-of-living pressures for South Australian households by slashing the emergency services levy, cutting water rates, reducing third-party insurance premiums and driving down the cost of electricity. We supported farmers and exporters through opening new trade offices right across the world, helping make merchandise exports reach over $13 billion for the first time ever.

In our last budget, we committed $17.9 billion over four years to critical state building infrastructure projects, continuing the Marshall government's record program of infrastructure expansion and infrastructure renewal. This includes $3 billion in rural roads, including upgrades to more than 4,800 kilometres of roads in regional South Australia.

As I am out and about—and I have already done a couple of fairly significant regional trips during my time as leader—I am hearing that positive feedback. I hear lots of feedback on these trips about different things but the consistent feedback is that our government committed to improving road infrastructure. That is good for the economy. It is good for moving food and fibre around our state and further afield and, of course, it is good for safety as well. It results, hopefully, in more people getting home to their families night after night without the tragedy of loss on our roads.

We established Lot Fourteen as a beacon of future opportunity. Again, I want to pay tribute to the intellectual contribution that Steven Marshall made to the idea of Lot Fourteen. That will be one of the key things that people look back on when we look at Steven's time as our state's Premier. I note that in one of the debates in the lead-up to the election, when inevitably the person running the debate asks either side to reflect positively on something that the other leader stands for or is about, the now Premier did highlight Lot Fourteen as a real legacy of Steven Marshall's leadership. I think that will just grow and grow into the future.

We know that previously the vision for the old Royal Adelaide Hospital site was not what it could be. Under the previous government, there was talk of potential private accommodation being built there, with flats and the like, but our government had a much loftier ambition for that site. Lot Fourteen now has more than 1,300 people working and collaborating on the site. It is a place where startup businesses and innovative businesses can get off the ground and not only thrive but have the support and the ecosystems around them to thrive into the future.

It is seen as a startup and growth hub to rival anything else in Australia. It is an entrepreneur and innovation centre. It is where we find the national Space Agency, it is the home of the Australian Cyber Collaboration Centre and it is where you can find the Digital Technologies Academy. These are just some of the activities at Lot Fourteen that are ringing in a future of unparalleled opportunity for South Australia, opportunity for young people to pursue their ambitions in their home state.

We have been able to turn around the exodus to other states and overseas that had become a symbol of South Australia in previous decades. The loss of people in droves to other states and overseas is something that we have been able to stem and reverse, and I really do hope that that continues into the future, because having those minds, having those resources, having the capital—both skills and financial—here in this state does really make a difference to the very DNA and the culture of what we are all about.

Under our government, Adelaide became the most livable city in our nation. As the state's Minister for Environment, I was so excited when in December 2021 we were able to secure the mantle of the world's second National Park City, symbolising our connectivity and engagement with nature, with the great outdoors, with our hills, coasts, Parklands and national parks, which find their way weaving around Adelaide. In almost every part of this city you are only a small journey, often a walk, either from the coastline or from one of our state-owned and protected national parks, conservation parks or recreation parks.

This is a vital part of the economic equation, and I hope that during my time as the state's Minister for Environment and Water we saw an increasing relevance and importance of the outdoors in the lives of South Australians. This was not just because I was the environment minister—far from it. I think the time suited this change of connectivity with nature and the environment.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Australia, other states closed their national parks, closed their botanic gardens, discouraged people from going into the outdoors. We actually did the opposite: we encouraged people there. Rather than isolate within four walls, absorbing that terrible news on a daily basis from their iPads and their TV screens, we encouraged people to safely socially distance in the great outdoors. When 21 per cent of your state is national park, there is plenty of opportunity to socially distance in that open space. In fact, if you add all our national parks together, they are about the size of the UK, which is something we should be incredibly proud of.

We worked hard to make our state more livable so that we keep our own achievers here and attract people from elsewhere. Again, following the COVID-19 pandemic, livability and quality of life seem to have risen up the scale of what motivates people to live where they live or to move where they choose to move. So it is not just about having the economic strengths and the opportunities around skills. There is a great opportunity for outdoor lifestyle but also to enjoy the arts and the creative sector as well.

One project that I was so proud of that added to that outdoor connectivity was opening up our reservoirs for the first time in 120 years. Myponga, Bundaleer, South Para, Warren, Hope Valley, Little Para, Mount Bold, Happy Valley: these had been locked up, usually behind barbed wire fences, for a long time, but we felt and believed and knew that, if managed in a methodical, sensible, evidence-based way, we could open up these places to the public.

I often say that we turned Myponga, a great little town on the western Fleurieu Peninsula, from a drive-through to a drive-to. We created a destination there by opening that really stunning reservoir. The suburbs of Aberfoyle Park, Happy Valley, O'Halloran Hill and Flagstaff Hill have been absolutely transformed by the opening of Happy Valley Reservoir, which during summer had up to 2,000 people visiting that site every day.

Since opening those reservoirs I mentioned a moment ago and listed, we have had more than half a million people enjoying walking, cycling, picnicking, birdwatching, kayaking and fishing in these places. This has encouraged a jobs and business boom, and a property price boom, in the surrounding suburbs and regional towns. New cafes and kayak hire businesses have opened, while existing businesses have seen a big increase in their customers.

Opening up our reservoirs was part of our record investment in national parks, ensuring that our precious environment is protected, first and foremost, and that conservation is at the heart of this, while also giving people the opportunity to enjoy our open spaces for generations to come.

We funded a transformation of parts of the River Torrens and the linear park. We revitalised parks across the state from the Flinders Ranges to Eyre Peninsula, to Yorke Peninsula, to the Fleurieu Peninsula, to Kangaroo Island. One of the things I was most proud of being part of, as minister, was taking part in the recovery—both the immediate recovery and the long-term recovery—of the parts of our state impacted by the 2019-20 summer bushfires.

I know that you, Mr Speaker, were intimately involved in many of the projects in the Adelaide Hills and the recovery and resilience-building in that area but, as environment minister, the part of my responsibility most impacted was, of course, the Kangaroo Island region. To be able to visit Kangaroo Island some 14 times in the last couple of years to support, witness and plan the bounce back and recovery of that landscape and that tourism offering was a very satisfying, fulfilling and humbling part of being the state's minister responsible for our environment.

We undertook once-in-a-lifetime projects, such as opening our second metropolitan national park at Glenthorne in the southern suburbs. We increased the total of national parks across the state, adding not only Glenthorne but also Hindmarsh Valley National Park on the Fleurieu Peninsula and Nilpena Ediacara National Park in the Northern Flinders Ranges, part of a World Heritage bid which will see our state's tourism and cultural heritage sector set up for huge success into the future.

We invested more than $48 million to protect our precious coastline, the frontline and the defence against climate change, and establish what I believe to be a nation-leading, if not world-leading, platform for climate resilience, emissions reduction and, importantly, adaptation into the future. I hope, and I do believe, that the Labor government will continue to build on this legacy.

They did not have a great legacy when it came to the natural environment between 2002 and 2018, but I think public sentiments are in a very different place now, and there will be a great opportunity for us to continue what I believe has increasingly become a bipartisan platform around climate policy and conservation, particularly in an area I know both the Deputy Premier and myself are passionate about, stemming biodiversity loss into the future.

For a moment I want to reflect on skills. At the same time as making our state more livable and focusing on economic development and growth, we realised that we needed to concentrate on skills. In particular, I want to thank the member for Morialta, the deputy leader, and the member for Unley for their unrelenting focus on skills development during our time in government.

During our time in government, we built a pipeline of trained and skilled workers to ensure that South Australian businesses get the workers they need with the skills they need, not just for now but for generations in the future. We have to set ourselves up for success 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now by training our young people—and it is not just our young people because people do transition careers, but it is largely young people—for the jobs of the future.

We know that many of those jobs are jobs that involve creating things, making things. That is why it is so important to invest in skills development. We put in place the foundations for building a stronger future for South Australia. We delivered the biggest overhaul of vocational education and training pathways in a generation so that every child and every school and every learning institution can have access to a pathway that will lead to a job.

We undertook major reforms in TAFE SA which under the former Labor government was failing to meet basic training quality standards, and we turned around a legacy of delivering a drastic 66 per cent decline in apprenticeship and traineeship commencements between 2012 and 2018. Under the leadership of the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party and the member for Unley, TAFE SA was ranked number one in the nation for apprenticeship and trainee growth.

We wanted to create opportunities for people in every part of our state—in our regional cities and towns, in our suburbs, from Golden Grove to Hallett Cove. We wanted to create these opportunities for young people to find their way into trades and then into jobs and developing their own small businesses, should that be the ambition that they strive for.

From mid-2018 our Skilling South Australia program created 53,000 apprenticeships and traineeships. In fact, more than 3,300 employers took on an apprentice for the first time. Hopefully, that experience and the support they got will lead them to do that again and again, and they will build the hiring of apprentices into the way that they do business.

The challenge for the new government is to continue to grow South Australia's future workforce while keeping taxes and other costs down so that businesses can make that potentially short-term sacrifice to bring on board an apprentice, to build up the capacity of their business, to build up the skills of the individual so that everyone benefits.

Another enduring achievement of the Marshall government will be our reforms in education. We improved literacy and numeracy outcomes, boosted entrepreneurial and skills-based training in schools, reinvigorated the study of languages, addressed bullying and moved year 7 into high school. We will remain committed to delivering world-class education for our children and young people from early childhood right through to their first jobs and beyond.

Throughout the pandemic we worked exceptionally hard to keep schools and early childhood services open and to keep children learning. They will continue to benefit throughout their time in education from having had less disruption to their learning than any other students across our nation—multiplied many times across the world. There were education systems shut down for more than a year in some parts of the world, and studies are showing the generational impact that that lost education, that reduced education quality, for that period of time will have on their lives.

Our achievement of keeping young people in schools is an outstanding achievement, and I want to pay tribute to the teachers and the workforces within our schools who made that happen, because it was not just the government: far from it. There were thousands of teachers across our state who took a risk—it might have been a small risk in some ways in the scheme of things, but they took a risk—by remaining in school, teaching, at that time. This is an outstanding achievement, and it ought to be celebrated.

Under our government annual education spending increased by around $770 million on Labor's last year in office. This included more than $50 million for an Early Learning Strategy to provide the youngest children in our education system with the best possible start to their journey. We invested $1.5 billion, the largest amount of any state government in history, to build five brand-new schools, upgrade more than 100 schools and undertake maintenance at every government school and preschool in South Australia.

Under the former Labor government, South Australian kids were below average in every single NAPLAN category. Our evidence-backed literacy guarantee delivered real improvement in learning outcomes for our students, while improvements in every year level compared to the national average. To give greater support to our students in the digital age, we delivered high-speed internet to every school in South Australia.

No previous South Australian government implemented more of its commitments for a single term across all portfolios than the Marshall Liberal government, and we did it while lowering taxes and dealing with an unprecedented global pandemic. I will talk about our legacy because that is important to do. I will not obsess on the past, but I will celebrate what we achieved. In politics, it is not what you say that counts: it is what you do and it is what you deliver.

All recent Labor governments have come to office in South Australia promising not to raise taxes, but they all did. Labor has come into office this time promising that it will fix ambulance ramping and make very significant investments in our healthcare system as well as many other things through massive additional expenditure. Words are cheap; they do not wipe out actions, and we want to see real action from this government.

We will give them the benefit of the doubt that they will aspire to and then deliver on these promises, but it is our job as an opposition in the Westminster system of democracy to scrutinise, to hold to account, and of course importantly—and I will put a lot of importance on this—to cast alternative ideas, developing an alternative vision for the state. It might not be entirely different in every policy area. It might have different nuanced focuses in certain areas; it might be completely different in others. But we will work incredibly hard to hold the government to account and relentlessly cast an alternative positive vision for the state of South Australia. Good oppositions mean better governments, and we should never forget this.

Ambulance ramping started 10 years ago under Labor's watch. I have friends who are paramedics, and they send me information about being ramped. They have been doing it for many years. They were doing it before we were elected in 2018. They want to see it end, I want to see it end, South Australians want to see it end, the Liberal opposition want to see it end and I have every belief that the Labor Party want to see ambulance ramping end as well—because who would not want to see it end? It is a far from ideal attribute of the current health system. We need to make sure that the Labor government follow through on their commitments and policy solutions for this. I hope their policy solutions work. Some of them may; some of them may not. We will be watching closely, as we should.

We know that when the now Premier was health minister, the Repat closed and other hospitals were downgraded. These actions only added to the pressures across our hospitals which have contributed to ramping over more recent years. Of course, we tore up Labor's contract to sell off the Repat and expanded and upgraded other hospitals across the state. We had plans to do more. The Labor government have plans to do more. I look forward to seeing those plans come to fruition.

Labor has inherited a public health system with more doctors, more nurses, more midwives and more paramedics than ever before in South Australia's history. Total staffing in the public health system in 2022 is 2,500 higher than the mid-2018 levels. South Australians are being cared for by more health professionals in bigger and better hospitals. This includes upgrades to The Queen Elizabeth Hospital and at Modbury, Noarlunga and Flinders hospitals—either completed or near completion.

The emergency department at Flinders Medical Centre is now the biggest in the state. We did all the work to have a new Women's and Children's Hospital planned and designed, which will allow construction to begin later this year. The Marshall government increased beds in our hospitals and in our emergency departments. We invested in programs that enable more people to be treated in their homes and communities, which the vast majority of South Australians would prefer where appropriate, rather than being transferred to an emergency department or to a hospital.

The last data on ramping available to the Marshall government showed that ramping levels were dropping. The time delays ambulances were experiencing on the ramp at metropolitan hospitals had dropped by almost half since October. Our spending per capita on ambulance services was the second highest in Australia.

At the election, a majority of South Australians put their trust in Labor to fix a problem that Labor created. The now Premier promised he would do so without raising taxes or cutting other services. He was supported by an industrial and a political campaign led by officials of the Ambulance Employees Association. Let me put on record today that I want to establish working relationships with employee representative organisations across all sectors and aspects of our state, none more so than the Ambulance Employees Association because they have a duty to advocate for their members, and that means working with the Labor government and the Liberal opposition.

My door will always be open to Leah Watkins and the team from the Ambulance Employees Association to work with me to hold the government to account and to develop an alternative vision and alternative ideas for how we should manage a resilient, successful, vibrant, service-oriented ambulance service for our state.

We know that the campaign that the Ambulance Employees Association and the Labor Party waged against the Liberal government will cost South Australian taxpayers at least $4 million in revenue lost following union-directed industrial action, which banned the collection of ambulance fees directed by the union.

The Premier and his government were completely compromised in their handling of this matter by the Premier's past union involvement, when he condoned the use of industrial action like this. We will keep a very close eye on how this moves forward to ensure that the eager appearance of the Premier and his now health minister with ambulance union officials at numerous press conferences where statements were made that were often untruthful does not continue into the future.

While he was health minister, the legacy of our new Premier was the Transforming Health disaster, which a Liberal government had to unravel while managing a global pandemic. We did this at the same time as growing our economy at the fastest rate in the nation. Unlike those opposite, who remain ashamed of their record when last in government, we will stand by our record. It is a legacy that again I will repeat: I believe history will treat the Marshall government well and particularly the role of the member for Dunstan will grow over time.

I will work to champion and protect that legacy, but I will not put my head in the sand when reflecting on things we could have done better. Of course, there are things that could have been done better, and we will work to identify those, think about those, reflect on how we can respond to those and build relationships with certain groups better into the future. Our legacy, though, is that South Australia now has a future offering new and exciting opportunities to live and work in an environment that is second to none, not only in the country but in the world. We will be proud of what this state can achieve, and we will ensure that our vision is in step with what the people of South Australia want from their alternative government.

As I mentioned, it is the role in the Westminster system for oppositions to scrutinise and challenge, but it is not the role of oppositions to diminish the state we live in, to pull down individuals, to pull down business opportunities, to trash reputations, and that will not be our approach. We will not be a carping opposition. We will hold the government to account, as is our duty, but I want us to be relentlessly positive.

We have a great opportunity as an opposition. It is an exciting opportunity, to work with the government when we can, to work with South Australian businesses, with NGOs, with service organisations, with employee representative bodies and with academic institutions to cast that new vision for South Australia. We will not oppose for the sake of opposing, but we will participate fully in the debate of new laws and continue to examine the need for existing laws. We will insist that the Labor Party governs for all South Australians, not just those in marginal seats, and we will ensure that our regions are looked after, because our regions do serious heavy lifting for our state's economy.

I will endeavour to visit regional South Australia as often as possible. I have already met with 13 regional councils in the Limestone Coast, in the Mid North and on Yorke Peninsula, and next week I will visit Eyre Peninsula, the member for Flinders' electorate, to visit Ceduna council, Elliston council, Streaky Bay council, the Lower Eyre Peninsula council, Port Lincoln council and Tumby Bay council. I will catch up with the RDA when I am there. I will hopefully speak to representatives of the landscape board. I will meet with local businesses. My job will be to work with my team, the shadow cabinet and the Liberal opposition to listen to South Australians about what they want for their state.

We will fulfil our duty to ensure that South Australians have a credible alternative to the government now in office. We will not keep these benches warm for the sake of it. We will be working to win in 2026 because, if we do not do that, what is the point of us? We have an opportunity to grab hold of new ideas, to look across the globe, to bring those ideas to South Australia and to make this state the very best that it can be.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mr Gardner.

PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS
MEMBERS
GET INVOLVED
ABOUT PARLIAMENT
VISIT
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
CONTACT