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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-10-30 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

Malinauskas Labor Government

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (15:10): It has been another disastrous week for this state Labor government, let me tell you. Today, thousands of frontline workers who are not being listened to by this government are taking to the steps of Parliament House, walking between the Royal Adelaide Hospital and parliament, because they have an arrogant government that is just not listening to their concerns.

This week, the bandaid job that this Labor government has been doing in managing our state's economy has been laid bare for all to see. You cannot just put a bandaid on the bullet hole that Labor has shot through our state's finances. What a debacle: $500 million literally poured down the drain, half a billion dollars that has been wiped out of our state's coffers for nothing but a complete vanity project. What a complete embarrassment—an embarrassment that generations are going to have to pay for.

Did the Premier or his merry men do any due diligence whatsoever before they promised South Australians that their Hydrogen Jobs Plan would be the way of the future? It seems not. Not only has the hydrogen vanity project been a broken promise and a spectacular failure but it has done nothing, absolutely nothing, to bring down record power prices in South Australia. We know that South Australians are battling with some of the highest power prices in not only Australia but the world.

Where is the accountability? There is none. Heads must roll, yet not a single person has been held accountable—not one single person. Quite the opposite, in fact: this government is actually rewarding those who are responsible for this debacle. Have a look at what they have done. For wasting half a billion dollars, we have now seen that the energy minister has actually received a promotion to Treasurer so that he can go and waste even more of South Australia's hardworking taxpayers' dollars. What about the chief executive who oversaw the failed plan? It is all good for him: he kept his $600,000 or so a year salary to work on another important project, the Whyalla transformation. He will probably stuff that one up as well.

This week, we learned about one particular staffer. How much did they receive? Not $100,000, not $200,000, not $300,000, not $500,000, but $800,000 in wages and, effectively, a golden handshake—$800,000. It must be nice. It was not one of the Daicos boys, let me tell you. Eight hundred thousand dollars is more than five times the average salary of the nurses who were rallying on the steps of Parliament House today because this government will not listen to them.

That brings me to my next bandaid that this government has tried to put on our healthcare system. The government promised to fix the ramping crisis and they have not delivered. We have had 40 months of the worst ramping in South Australia's history—40 months. What is their solution? They say that they will build more beds, but what have we learned this week? Do not just take my word for it; look at the Auditor-General's Report. Their revelations show that a number of hospitals are actually delayed. The new Women's and Children's Hospital, the Mount Barker hospital and the Flinders Medical Centre expansion are all delayed. We know what that means: prices are only going to go up.

At this rate, what will happen is that toddlers will actually be teenagers before the doors open at the new Women's and Children's Hospital. And 12 years after Labor first promised to deliver the project, just 20 per cent of the design work has actually been completed.

Mrs Hurn: Not even the car park.

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA: Not even that car park. Well, Labor has form when it comes to failing to deliver major health infrastructure projects or just generally health infrastructure, or infrastructure projects generally. We saw this with the Royal Adelaide Hospital which was delayed. It was over budget and it was already too small the day that it opened.

South Australians need a government that they can trust to deliver on these projects—big projects that are essential to alleviating pressure on our EDs and also on our hospital ramps. We were told that fixing ramping would be the priority of this Labor government, but the reality could not be further from the truth. Yet again, though, there is no accountability for this complete failure, only spin and, quite frankly, a whole heap of hot air. It is time for this Premier to be up-front and to admit that these projects are in strife. And he has broken another election promise.

Unsurprisingly, we also saw another bandaid pulled out of the packet this week, this time where they placed a single mother and her child with disabilities into a Housing Trust home. Do you know what it used to be? A meth lab. Can you believe it? This is what they do to some of the most vulnerable in our community. It was a series of events that could only be described as a horror story for this family, yet all they got from North Adelaide Nick was gaslighting—that is all they got from North Adelaide Nick. Vulnerable families deserve safety and dignity, but all they are getting is substandard living under Labor.

We will keep fighting for people who are being left behind by this government's failures, because South Australians deserve far better than bandaids over the holes that Labor has created in our economy, in our healthcare system and in our housing crisis.

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