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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-10-17 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

Malinauskas Labor Government

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (15:09): On 16 November the people of Black have a very important decision to make. Either they send a message to a government that is obsessed with bread and circuses, or they can choose to hold them to account for their broken promises. Nothing quite demonstrates their broken promises like the $956 million health budget blowout revealed by the Auditor-General only this week.

What did the government tell South Australians in March 2022? They said to vote Labor like their lives depended on it. Now they have gone on to deliver more ramping hours in the 2½ years under this government than the entire Liberal government did in its entire four-year term. But wait, there's more.

Instead of investing in more doctors and nurses to fix the ramping crisis, we now learn that they have spent $1.9 million of taxpayer money on an advertising campaign to tell, amongst other things, South Australians how good supposedly the health system is. This is from the Labor Party who in recent times did things like Transforming Health and shut the Repat. They do not say that anymore, but what they do say is they are building a bigger health system with their campaign, Labor's latest taxpayer funded propaganda. Let me emphasise that they claim that they are building a bigger but not a better health system. It may be that they have learnt their lesson after saying they would fix the ramping crisis, for example.

This week the opposition asked the government what they are doing to support our primary producers and rural communities experiencing what are some of the worst drought conditions in memory. Recently I went to Jamestown where people were telling me that this is the driest season that they have ever seen; that is how bad it is at the moment. We found out that the government is still trying to sort out the flood recovery, let alone turn their minds to the drought.

The truth is that this government is not interested in the regions. We know this because at a time when the government's mishandling of the tomato virus resulted in the loss of around 500 jobs in just a single day, the Premier was more concerned and too busy rubbing shoulders with celebrities like Katy Perry than to even give the owner of Perfection Fresh a phone call. Labor says, 'Let them eat cake.' This is the Premier's answer to the cost-of-living crisis gripping households and businesses, record ramping levels and our drought-ridden regions.

Morning after morning we have also seen in recent days that South Australians are waking up to the news of yet another illegal tobacco firebombing, whether it is Cowandilla or Stonyfell. This is happening right across metropolitan Adelaide. It is just simply not good enough. We asked many questions today but we did not really get a lot of answers. Barely any—if any—prosecutions have been made in this regard. The government has absolutely lost control on law and order and there is no pocket in Adelaide at the moment that is safe from these firebombings.

Residents and business owners live in fear. We have organised crime gangs that have taken over parts of our streets, we have Molotov cocktails flying loose and fast, as I said, from Stonyfell to Cowandilla. They are saying that there are around 200 illegal tobacco stores that are operating in South Australia. The government has been warned about this for a long time now and they have absolutely lost the plot. When it comes to crime, this government spends more time doing press conferences than actually pursuing busts and prosecutions.

Only recently I visited the town of Whyalla with the very hardworking shadow minister for energy, following concerns around the Whyalla Steelworks, the viability of this government's around $600 million experimental hydrogen plant. Let me tell you, pockets of that town are doing it tough. We have seen a number of job losses in that town recently. We know that small businesses are doing it tough. But when asked, only this week, what support the government was planning to announce when it takes the entire cabinet to Whyalla on Monday, let me say we did not get many answers. We asked is GFG still in arrears? We did not get any answers really there at all. We asked about relief for small businesses and did not get many answers at all. It is clearly just another smoke and mirrors exercise on the taxpayer dollar.

So far in this term the Premier and his team have spent over $100 million in taxpayer money on government advertising, using South Australians' hard-earned money to tell them what a good job he is doing. But the truth is that this is a government who, by its own metrics, has failed the people of South Australia. They have failed on their promise to fix ramping, they have failed on their promise to lower electricity prices, and they have failed on their promise to not introduce any more taxes as well. When they run out of their own money they come after yours.

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