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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-05-14 Daily Xml
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SUPPLY BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading (resumed on motion).

(Continued from page 2350.)

The Hon. C.V. SCHAEFER (11:49): I rise to make what will be my last contribution to a Supply Bill, and I look back at the 16 years that I have been here and, in particular, the seven years of a Rann Labor government and I find it utterly depressing. The purpose of a Supply Bill is to guarantee money so that the government of the day can meet its obligations, particularly in payment to the Public Service. Given that the Public Service has traditionally been the darling of the ALP, it must find this as depressing as I do. This government has reduced and continues to reduce the Public Service to an extent where it cannot possibly be expected to fulfil its obligations and, in particular, it cannot be expected to fulfil its obligations in rural South Australia.

I have made no secret of the fact that, for the 16 years that I have been here, I have seen my primary role as representing people from outside the metropolitan area and the larger cities of South Australia, and I do not shrink from that at this stage. Having said that, I find it extremely depressing, as I have said, to watch the shrinking of services and, in particular, government services either north of Gepps Cross or south of the tollgate.

An example of this is, indeed, the primary industries department, which has taken a cut of 70-odd staff, together with 75 FTEs to go to the magical Shared Services department. In my role as simply a backup to the brilliance of the Hon. Rob Lucas, I have learned that Shared Services rented an entire building, two floors of which still sit empty. We have what is typical of this government: it is vintage Yes Minister. This is an extremely efficient department because no-one is in it. No-one is working on those two floors, so they do not cause the government any great pain whatsoever.

Primary Industries, in particular, languishes as the forgotten cousin in South Australia, in spite of the fact that we are still dependent on Primary Industries' income for the majority of our income and certainly the majority of our exports in South Australia. In that, of course, I include mining, but I wish to speak particularly about agriculture.

We have seen a shrinkage, to the stage where it is almost invisible, of any research and development, particularly in the grain and wine grape industries. There is no research paid for within this state or, if there is, it is eked out like a miser throwing a few coins to a beggar. On top of that, we have seen the Rudd government cut $95 million from CSIRO research and another $66 million from grain and agricultural research across Australia.

We have seen it within this state. Yesterday, I raised the fact that, unfortunately, if you have children and choose to live outside of a major town and your isolated children have to undertake distance education, you will be disadvantaged not only against every other child in South Australia but against every other child who has isolated education across Australia. We are the only state which does not meet its obligations to provide broadband coverage for those children.

We have seen the debacle of this government's attempt to close most of our country hospitals. For once, country people—who generally simply shrug their shoulders and get on with it—stood up and said, 'No, you will not take our hospitals from us.' Having said that, what we are seeing is that they are slowly being starved to death. I expect that, in my lifetime, the place where I was born and my three children were born will be little more than a nursing home.

We saw just last night this government putting pressure on parents in the Mid-North, Whyalla and Port Augusta to amalgamate (which is a nice word for close) 44 schools and turn them into five schools. We have no details of what schools; we have no details of how much notice these parents will have; no-one has been told and, yet, they have to give notice by the end of June.

I have covered health, education, agriculture and, just to top it off, we now have a bill before us which talks about imposing a system of rating on people who live in isolated areas. We have a process put before us by this government, hand-in-hand with the Rudd government, which will see our regional development boards shrink from the 13 that are there now to five. I serve proudly on the Natural Resources Management Committee and what we see there is that, after seven years, the local natural resources management boards are still writing plans.

I keep hearing about weeds being out of control, about feral pests being out of control, about goats in the north that need shooting, but no-one sprays weeds any more, no-one shoots goats any more; what they do is write plans. They are so busy writing plans and handing those plans down to the next layer down and the next layer down that no-one has any funding to do on-ground works.

So, after 16 years, I have watched, in the past seven years, rural South Australia be absolutely forgotten, cast off and become an area to be pitied. They will not be pitied because they will—most of them—survive but it will be in spite of the Rann government and in spite of the Rudd government, not because there is any care factor whatsoever. As the kids would say, 'Care factor: zero.'

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. I.K. Hunter.

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