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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-03-21 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

Malinauskas Labor Government

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Leader of the Opposition) (15:11): Sunday marked the one-year anniversary of the 2022 state election, and 12 months on—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The leader has the call.

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: Look at this—this is what we mean when we talk about arrogance: their sneering, chortling arrogance—and that's what they are all about—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: —the giggling on the backbench, the sneering, the chortling, the arrogance. And one of the things that we saw when they came back into office after just four years in opposition—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: —was that sort of whooping, that immaturity, the puerile nonsense that comes from the other side, and South Australians are already sick of this gamesmanship. That is what they see from those opposite. They think it is a game: gaslighting, trickery, playing games, spending all sorts of time—

The Hon. N.F. Cook interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, member for Hurtle Vale!

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: —spreading rumours, spreading innuendo, and the usual nonsense and noise from the opposition: smoke and mirrors, selfies and influencers, but very, very little—

The Hon. N.F. Cook interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Hurtle Vale!

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: —in the way of actual delivery from those opposite. We see that firsthand with their central election promise falling apart dramatically within the first 12 months in office. We saw it on all those corflute posters up and down the highways and streets in neighbourhoods and suburbs and towns right across South Australia: 'We will fix the ramping crisis', 'Labor will fix the ramping crisis', yet 12 months on that problem has doubled.

Just last night, there were 108 patients trying to seek urgent attention through the emergency department at Flinders Medical Centre, yet those patients were not getting the care that they needed. Our hospital system, whether it is in the regional communities of South Australia or whether it is across metropolitan Adelaide, is in a far worse crisis than it was just 12 months ago. You could not open social media 12 months ago without seeing those claims that 'Labor will fix the ramping crisis'. In fact, some members opposite went even further. The now member for Elder claimed that Labor would be ending ramping. Conveniently, we have the member for Hurtle Vale in the audience today, and she said that Labor would stop ramping—stop ramping.

The Hon. N.F. Cook interjecting:

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: She shouts, she distracts, but the reality is that the member for Hurtle Vale will not accept the truth that her government—the government that she is part of—has failed spectacularly on their primary election commitment. No, Mr Speaker, instead the Malinauskas Labor government has presided over the worst ramping on record.

The statistics are clear. Over the last 10 months, we have had the worst ramping in South Australia's history. In fact, a year on from the election, ramping statistics are twice as bad as they were in comparison to the last full month under the former Liberal government. Despite staggering attempts from both the Premier and his health minister to shift the goalposts, everyone in South Australia who was present during that election campaign remembers that they said they would fix ramping.

Now they are talking about response times, now they are talking about reducing ramping to 2018 levels by 2026. I did not see the asterisk on those corflute posters, and let me tell you that neither did South Australians. When I am out and about, when the member for Schubert is out and about, when members on this side of the house are out and about meeting people in shopping centres, community groups, on the doorstep, in sporting clubs, they hear that South Australians are equally as concerned about this matter.

We also know that while we are getting selfies, and bread and circuses, and smoke and mirrors, and expensive overseas trips, minor royals, and Sam Smith, we are not having any response around our soaring cost-of-living crisis. Inflation is rocketing. The average mortgage is up by more than $1,000 a month since they came to office. Petrol has skyrocketed by almost 16 per cent. But there are no solutions from those opposite.

This state is facing a triple crisis: a crisis in health, a crisis in the cost of living and a crisis because they are stuck with this lot.

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