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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-09-08 Daily Xml
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State Government

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Leader of the Opposition) (15:12): After an eight-week break, I would have expected that the government would be ready and raring to go into a new sitting period with lots of legislation, lots of ideas, lots of vigour and energy and even some brushing up on their skills of how to be a minister. How wrong I was. Each and every day of this sitting week, we have seen stumbles and fumbles from the government, and it has been, quite frankly, embarrassing.

On Tuesday, we saw the Minister for Planning release the review into decision-making around the Brompton Gasworks. That revealed that the whole thing had been a popular charade, simply set up to attract the attention of Crows supporters in the lead-up to the election. To quote David Bevan, he would have thought that the Minister for Planning would have 'done a little bit better' in this place than he has shown over his few months as a minister. He is someone who is all too quick to get noisy on these benches, to throw his hands up and to make smart comments, but when it comes to administering his portfolio he leaves a huge amount to be desired.

Yesterday, I think that even the Minister for Planning was trumped in terms of incompetence when we saw the Minister for Human Services. Our line of questioning sought to expose what we thought were failings among staff members in her office and what we thought was actually misuse of private emails by her staff members.

We stand behind the fact that those staff members were doing the wrong thing. Little did we realise, and certainly little did the Premier's office realise, that the Minister for Human Services would out herself as also the Hillary Clinton of South Australia. She admitted to also probably breaching the State Records Act, probably breaching cybersecurity rules and breaching the Ministerial Code of Conduct by using a personal email to administer affairs of the state.

We did not even ask her for that information. We should have but we did not. She volunteered it. It was a 'I saw him down at Bunnings' moment for those who were here between 2014 and 2018, when former minister Leesa Vlahos made one of the most stunning errors in parliamentary history. But that was probably trumped yesterday by the Minister for Human Services. The great challenge for the Minister for Human Services is that she pairs arrogance with stupidity. Those things, where separated from one another, can be dealt with, but when they come together it leads to disaster as a minister. She thinks she is so good at administering her portfolio—

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: Just ask her.

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: Just ask her. She gets up every morning, looks in the mirror and says 'Wow!' and, as she goes up the elevator, 'Look at me, look at me, I'm fig jam.' Look at the Minister for Human Services: she is her biggest fan. The Labor Party are quickly waking up to the great risk that she not only poses their government but, in fact, more worryingly, she poses the vulnerable South Australians she has charge of as a minister of the Crown.

I suspect that there will be moves afoot in the coming months to see her cease to be a minister of the Crown and head onto the back bench. She has been identified by Labor members as their weakest link, by us as their weakest link, by the media as their weakest link, and there is no doubt that very soon, I am sure, the Labor Party will be saying goodbye to their weakest link.

This week has been topped off by the Premier heading out to a Great Gatsby-style party in Canberra. He left the poor, unfortunate, bumbling, stumbling Minister for Local Government to sit there taking through their supposedly urgent legislation on a plebiscite around council amalgamations, and he jetted off first class to Canberra to toast himself and his Labor mates over there. He claimed it was a networking event. I am sure it was, but all the time his urgent legislation had to be stewarded through by the poor, unfortunate member for Stuart trying his best but abandoned by his Labor friends.

It has been a woeful week for the government. The honeymoon is well and truly over, and South Australians are waking up to the shambles that sits on the benches opposite.

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