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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
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STATUTES AMENDMENT (BUDGET 2010) BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 30 September 2010.)

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (17:05): In previous budgets, I have been able to give successive governments accolades for good initiatives, good budget management and good outcomes for the state. Clearly, every budget is going to have some measures in it that are not acceptable to certain elements of the community.

This particular budget will go down in history as a budget that has worked against the best interests of many sectors in South Australia. It is a budget that did not have to be framed as it has been. In fact, I believe that Treasury has had far too much input and that people on the Sustainable Budget Commission—although they obviously did not have all of their wishes granted—have far too much say in the way government is run.

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: The honourable member raises the issue of the caucus, that is, the backbench of the Labor Party in government. Sadly, I do not believe that caucus is being listened to, and that takes away the democracy of government. I say that because I have spoken quietly in the corridors of this parliament to a number of colleagues in the Labor Party who have quietly expressed major concern about what the executive and cabinet of this government have put to the community.

In a moment, I want to speak particularly about job losses and what I believe are illegal initiatives in this budget process with respect to worker entitlements. I am sure, sir, you feel very much the way I do—as do many other members in this house and, I trust, the House of Assembly—when I start to talk about some of these issues. They are unprecedented not only in my time as a member of parliament but in my living memory.

First, I want to get into the management side of this and touch on the leak. I do not think the parliament or the community of South Australia will ever be told where the leak came from, with the Sustainable Budget Commission full report going to some of the media the day before the budget. There was hype about how tough and draconian this budget was going to be, and there was specific build-up by the government to shock and horrify people.

I believe that the government did leak the Sustainable Budget Commission report, and I will say why: if you were a senior manager with electronic access to the Sustainable Budget Commission report, and you were genuinely concerned about what was going to happen to the state, to the Public Service, to the delivery of services to South Australians and the disgraceful way in which the government addressed issues like the closure of the Parks and the issues around entitlements and agreements being broken and torn up and expected to be ratified by the parliament, particularly here in the house of review, where they will have a shock, I think, coming to them (I hope so anyway), you would have released it weeks before. Why? Because that would have given the Public Service Association, members of parliament, the community of South Australia, interest groups, etc., time to go in there and lobby. They would not leak it the day before the budget.

We had outrageous things happening like the suggested closure of the Repat Hospital, which I know many of us would block; we would be there day and night to block it if they tried that. However, it was all part of the game—the game to try to shock and terrorise the South Australian community and then come in with an allegedly softer budget. I want to go back to why this budget is like it is today.

Only 8½ years ago, the state government's revenue was about $7 billion. This budget has a revenue of about $15 billion, and it has doubled—within a few hundred million dollars—just in that period of time. I ask you: how many people in the workforce have had their wages doubled in that eight-year period? Except for executives and some people in senior positions in government and the private sector, the answer is none. In fact, in real terms many have struggled to keep up with inflation. I will come to that point of struggling to keep up with inflation and the issues around CPI, and of the goodwill that was put forward by the Public Service Association, by Unions SA and by the workers with respect to the Treasurer saying that he could afford only 2.5 per cent.

I have sat here and watched waste after waste after waste—and there is waste, when you have a budget nearly doubling. All of us would love our budget to double in eight years. I am a farmer, and I would love the revenue stream to double in eight years; you would love your household budget to do that. You would be able to go out and do things you have wanted to do for a long time, but in your own personal business or private household budget you just cannot do them. There is waste after waste, and I will highlight a couple of instances because I want to put them on the public record. These things slipped into the budget very quietly; not even the media took much notice of them.

The RAH, the new greenfield site, is one. The government said that would be $1.7 billion. It also said that it would do a public-private partnership and—before it came into office—that it would not privatise. So, again we are getting mixed messages from the government. There is $100 million built into this budget. Imagine what that could do for workers' entitlements, imagine what that could do for community centres, and what it could do for young people trying to get into child and adolescent mental health services, or for speech pathologists, psychologists, etc. The list goes on.

That $100 million was sneakily put in there. We cannot even imagine how $100 million could be spent. But that is where this mismanagement has occurred. I understand that the $100 million is there because there has not been a good result in respect of expressions of interest for the public-private partnership, so the worst-case scenario is that this government may have to take the project on itself.

There are other projects, such as the Adelaide Oval. I understand that the AFL effectively held a gun to the head of the government and said, 'We want to get these other clubs going on the Gold Coast and in New South Wales. We're sick of financing Port Power. We need to get this location happening in Adelaide.' This government rolled over for the AFL more than it bowed to public pressure, and suddenly there was $485 million or thereabouts, and then another $35 million. Time after time when the government is pressured by the big end of town, or when it pursues its own pet projects, it just pumps in more money. We now have a situation where we have a bill (to which I foreshadow I will move amendments) to give the government an out on what is, in my opinion, the most deplorable part of this budget.

On budget day we saw honourable members gathered around the Treasurer and cabinet members, in particular, who, we are told, unanimously signed off on the budget. I do not believe that a lot of those cabinet ministers were involved in much of that process; if they were, why did they sign off on cutting workers' entitlements? Some of them are ministers only because the unions backed them in. They are actually here, endorsed by the union, in a privileged position and earning a pretty good salary, yet apparently they unanimously signed off on doing over workers when it came to wages and conditions, and unanimously signed off on bulldozing the Parks, affecting people who are most vulnerable in the western suburbs.

It is time we exposed what is really going on in cabinet, and I appeal to backbenchers. They are in a difficult position. They know that there will be a cabinet reshuffle in the next year or so, that there will allegedly be a change of leadership and senior members of the executive, and they do not want to rock the boat. However, for the sake of bona fide South Australian citizens, they need to rock the boat.

Today we had a rally—a very good rally, one that surprised the government—and it is probably only the first surprise for the government, if it does not wake up. This government is good at gymnastics and doing backflips. What it is saying is that there will be some hue and cry for a little while but that it is 3½ years before the next election and people will not remember.

The government will get its budget savings out of kicking families: families that I see day in and day out—families that Labor backbenchers, the crossbenchers and opposition members also see. They are bleeding hard because their wages are not going up at CPI in real terms. Their input costs to their household budget are exceeding CPI. We have not even started to see yet just how far that is going to go. Look at what the government is going to do with water, and then have a look at issues like electricity and other utility costs, and it goes on.

I want to touch on the desal plant because it is mentioned in the budget papers and it is another example of pretty ordinary management. Recycling; aquifer recharge, storage and recovery; stormwater harvesting projects—all those things were opposed. Opposition to a desal plant—let's just have a look at that. We are talking about a $1.8 billion desal plant which was not costed and funded. The government actually refused even to look at it.

When polling said that the government was in trouble with water, they backflipped and said they would build a desal plant. Apparently, the Premier and the then prime minister, Kevin Rudd, went for a late night walk and Kevin said, 'We need votes in South Australia, too. We will give you some more money and you can double it from 50 gigalitres to 100 gigalitres.' Then what happens? They find out that there are cost pressures there, so again the easy way out is to kick the workers.

I want to talk about the workers, funding cuts to adult re-entry education, and rent increases to pensioners in Housing Trust homes, and then I want to talk about a personal passion of mine where I declare my interests as a farmer, and that is how they are gutting PIRSA. They are ruining agricultural opportunity in this state at a time when we need to reflect and remember that we did not get out of the global financial crisis because of mining. We got out of the global financial crisis through our agricultural exports.

We have grown this state through agricultural exports, yet they are ripping PIRSA apart. They are pushing the dedicated public servants from PIRSA, who I have worked with for years, into the private sector. They are shutting down research centres. It is just a disgrace what is going on, and they talk about the fact that they are a strategic government. Well, if they were, I would be giving them credit here today, but there is no strategy other than the polling and 'what do we do when we get a bad media story and what we do to try to get on the front page with a good news story?'

I am foreshadowing some amendments, and I ask honourable members to have a close look at them. Today we had indications from the crossbenchers, for which I thank the Greens and the Hon. Ann Bressington. While the Hon. John Darley was not there because of other business with the parliament, he indicated, as was read out, that he was very concerned about what was happening with these issues. The Hon. Kelly Vincent also spoke very strongly about the fact that she was absolutely frustrated and angry at what was happening to these workers at the coalface.

We hear the Treasurer talk about rack 'em, pack 'em and stack 'em. That was a throwaway line because one of the things some of these senior cabinet ministers have been trained in, probably at our expense as taxpayers, is one-liners. We have this massive team of spin doctors—64, I believe. There were no cuts there. There were no cuts to the ministers even though the Sustainable Budget Commission recommended cutting ministers. Do you know how much it costs? I know because I had the privilege. It was about $2 million a year when I was a minister to run my office and everything else. It is over that now. So you could have saved $6 million easily. In fact, the Sustainable Budget Commission says that you could have saved more, but I think we will say $6 million—not a bad recurrent saving. We did not see any cuts there at all.

What do we see? About the Public Service, we will get into the real debate on the amendments to the issues around these targeted separation packages that are allegedly voluntary but rumoured to be potentially 'push comes to shove' if they do not get their numbers. I want to talk about some basic morals here. I want to talk about some fairness and the fact that I believe that with this budget the government wants us to support them in what I believe is an illegal activity. I will say why it is an illegal activity.

I am no lawyer, and many members often say they are not either, but we have probably all studied enough law in other studies we have done, and become involved in enough law working with parliamentary counsel and legislation day in day out, to know that a contract is a contract. If the central elements of a contract are in a contract—and I know essential elements of a contract are in an enterprise bargaining agreement—then that is a contract at law. If either party breaches it, they have broken the contract and they have broken contractual law.

I believe what the government is trying to get us to do here is override the fact that they are breaking the law and get us as a parliament to rubber-stamp its breaking the law. That is how serious I think this issue is. If the government does not agree with that, I would like to see some detailed explanation at committee stage to show us what legal advice they have from crown law that says that they can do this to people and that says that they can bring this into this house.

We have been bought out before. We have been intimidated before: it was called the Murray-Darling Basin handover bill in 2008. Remember that? It was all agreed to federally, it was supposed to come back through here and we were supposed to shut up, say nothing, sit down and say, 'Well done, Premier; well done, government; well done, COAG; well done, Prime Minister; we now have a save the Murray bill and it is going to be handed over.' Have a look at the mess we have got!

What happened when I moved one amendment? You sometimes know when people are behind your back and, when I looked around, in the President's Gallery were two ministers who were very unhappy with me. I reckon that, if it were legal, they would have shot me because I moved an amendment to try to protect the irrigators and to try to protect businesses.

Do you know what the government said when I moved the amendment and asked some questions? They said, 'We will not support your amendment.' I asked, 'Why won't you? You have critical human needs part A. This is part B of critical human needs. You need water to drink to live and you need food to eat to live, and we don't want to import it all from China and India. We want to grow it here and we want to export that food.' They said, 'Well, we will let industry have as much water as they want, but we will not let irrigators.' I asked why not, and they said, 'Because industry creates jobs.' Do agriculture and horticulture not create jobs?

I raise this because the government simply just does not get it, in my opinion. They forced us into this in 2008; let's not let them force us into a precedent here that will destroy the working conditions that successive Labor and Liberal governments in this state have worked hard for. As I said on the steps, a Dunstan government, a Bannon government, an Arnold government, a Brown, an Olsen or a Kerin government would not have done anything like this retrospectively.

The Hon. B.V. Finnigan: Oh, come on!

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: Retrospectively. We will hear from the Hon. Bernie Finnigan later on, because he is actually here—

The Hon. B.V. Finnigan interjecting:

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: We did not sign an agreement with workers and then do them over a few months later. I would also like to know—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: Here are the people the union put here now defending, and we will hear from them. We will hear from them, and we will hear how hard they fought in caucus to stop these measures. I do not think so.

The Hon. R.P. Wortley: You're a hypocrite.

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: No, Russell, I am not a hypocrite.

The Hon. R.P. Wortley: You wanted to destroy the unions.

The PRESIDENT: Order! The Hon. Mr Wortley should not provoke the person on his feet.

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: Thank you, Mr President. The Hon. Russell Wortley can say what he wants; I am not a hypocrite. As a farmer, I have been proud to be a member of an association, and I have been a member of that association because I need protection and someone to collectively bargain for me against the big milk processors. That is why the unions are here, too.

The one good thing the government is doing is to allow the strengthening and building up of union membership because people are going to wake up. All along the line, previous governments worked to try to come up with a better working relationship between workers and government publicly to avoid strikes and get efficiency dividends within the workforce, but in a fair way so that, if you trade off in one area, you get a gain in the other.

That was not bad, but if this legislation gets through—and it will be unfortunate economically for the state, as we probably have the best track record in Australia in regard to the lack of strikes—in my opinion, the only hope left for these workers will be to strike. Have the government thought about that? What other hope will they have? How can a union go to a government and feel confident in taking something to their members if the government says one thing and after an election does another?

One of the other things that I want to foreshadow is whether the government had actually done any work on plans to cut workers' entitlements, because it did flag that it was going to look at reducing the workforce with voluntary separation packages. I will give the government that—it probably talked about it for a year. However, on the issue of entitlements, the government did not flag that at all, and the first time we found out about it was on budget day.

I want the government to have the guts to actually tell us and show us in documentation (in committee) whether or not it had already planned this before the election, because it was framing that budget. I just want the government to be honest with workers and with the parliament on that matter. Was this something that came up two weeks before the budget was printed? Let's find out the truth about all that.

Irrespective of what other members say, as I said, morally, it is wrong and, contractually, there is a legal agreement. I am being hard with the government in my comments, but I am also being honest and fair. The government has an opportunity to support these amendments and actually find a pathway through a very bad decision. So, there is an opportunity here for the government to revisit this issue. While we are debating this bill, the government could actually say, 'We've made a mistake. You can't breach an enterprise agreement that you have signed off on,' and I understand that the Premier actually signed documentation with the unions prior to the election about some of these matters. This is wrong and it has to be fixed—

The Hon. R.P. Wortley interjecting:

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: I find this ironic. The Hon. Russell Wortley calls me a hypocrite. I take a great deal of pleasure in looking after the workers who work for me. It is actually a huge privilege to be able to employ people, but I do not think that this government thinks that any more: it is putting people on contracts and treating them in a shabby way. Morale is not good in the Public Service, and why should it be? We have a rack 'em, stack 'em and pack 'em attitude with the DCS.

Having been the minister, I am fearful about what is happening with security and safety for DCS officers. We are apparently jamming more and more people into the prison system; we are not building any more prisons. It is not a nice place to manage when things are reasonable, but when you are racking, stacking and packing 'em and you are not putting in officers to complement that, it is even worse. That is just one example.

Another example is the downsizing of the services. When I went to the Parks rally with Tammy and others on Sunday, I saw all those government cars locked up. Those cars provide services. The government wanted to close and bulldoze all that.

Another point I want to make involves workers' conditions. Of course, labour is a cost to business, but we need people to provide services. In fact, 70 per cent of the government's budget is wages, but it comes back to the government, because the workers go home and feed families and spend that money, and it comes back around. It is an essential part of the economy.

We heard what was said out there today by one of the heads of the union movement—the engine room of an economy these days, and you can look at it on a scale every time productivity commissioners bring down a report. Public Service expenditure and expenditure in the public sector and on capital works are significant ways to ensure strong economic growth. The people to whom I refer do not get so much money that they go and put it in the bank and invest it for their retirement; they spend every damn dollar of it and, most of the time, both adults in the family have to work, anyway—that is how tight it is getting. Not only is the Public Service being done over here, but what message does this send to the private sector? If it is good enough for the government to break an agreement, it is good enough for the private sector to do so. As a state, we will really go backwards.

The final point I want to make is the irony of this situation. The Hon. Russell Wortley talks about me being a hypocrite. I do not mind—sticks and stones! Names do not hurt me, but not looking after workers does hurt me. I want to see them looked—

The Hon. R.P. Wortley interjecting:

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: How many workers have you ever employed? I want to finish with this point: if the private sector tried to do in an enterprise agreement what the government has just done to the union and the workers in the Public Service, do you know what would happen? The government would pay—rightly so—with taxpayers' money—rightly so—to take the private enterprise in question to the Industrial Relations Commission. Yet they think it is all right to have one set of rules for some workers and some sectors and another set of rules for government. Well, I am sorry, but whether you are a government or private employer, there are rules and laws that are set down in this state and this nation, and the government has to abide by them in the same way as the private sector does—and a lot more will be said by my colleagues about this issue.

This issue will not go away. We have already seen what happened with WorkCover, and we are now seeing the mess coming into our offices, day in and day out, as a result of what is happening. We are seeing people such as Rosemary McKenzie-Ferguson handing out hampers and vouchers just to keep families going. We have seen what happened, and that was bad enough. This is equally as bad, and this time we have a chance to reverse the decision.

I will say more about this when I introduce the cuts, but you cannot have retrospective legislation. Whether Labor or Liberal, very, very rarely do governments ever bring retrospective legislation into this house. In fact, I can recall only a handful of times when retrospective legislation has been introduced. This is retrospective legislation. I will just touch on three examples of what has happened, and lots of colleagues would have had this. This is from a police officer:

It has come to my attention that, as a result of the latest State Budget release, a proposal is being presented to reduce long service leave in the public sector from 15 days to nine days. This reduction will affect about 3,500 members of South Australia Police.

So, forgetting a huge part of the Public Service per se, just in police, 3,500 police officers, plus 3,500 police officers' families. If you make a decision to do certain things, such as getting money to buy a car or to put carpet in your home, or maybe to send your kids to a special sporting event or whatever, you budget on the fact that once your union, boss or you yourself, by collective bargaining (whichever way you do it because there are a lot of ways) signs off on a deal, you can budget on that. You can go home to your spouse and say, 'Well, here's what we have to spend each week.' So, 3,500 officers and their families there—people who have devoted years of service to the community of South Australia. Another one says:

I work alongside of them. They are deeply concerned, and they ask that members of parliament do not support the government bill. The members of the South Australian police force strongly ask that you do not support this change.

I have another one here, which says:

I would like to sincerely and vehemently express my disgust and shock at the behaviour and intentions of the current state government. I am the next generation of public servant, a generation the South Australian community needs to attract and retain in the Public Service to ensure that the South Australian public is supported through the next two decades, during which—

and this is important, too—

the majority of public servants, the baby boomer generation, will be retiring and taking their 30 long and dedicated years of public service away from us.

We did some research on the reason long service entitlements in the public sector went initially from seven days for every year after qualification, to nine and then to 15, and the reason, really, when you simplify it, is two things: brain drain and losing experience. I understand that 15 days after 15 years came in to stop the brain drain and to prevent losing the experience—and both are very important. That was in the 1970s and early 1980s, I am advised.

Since then, we have seen massive changes in the private sector which now entice people out of the public sector. I did not really understand this when I was a farmer; most of the time, I just received the bureaucratic material that came through. When you become a member of parliament, you work with public servants every day, and when you are privileged to be a minister you work with them even more closely, and you realise that they are rightly proud of what they do and that they are delivering a very important service in whatever sector they work for the benefit of the community.

So, whilst pay is a pretty important part of everyone's interest, for the right reasons, they are prepared to accept, in a lot of cases, a lower rate of pay in the Public Service for so-called job security. I suggest to honourable members today that job security has been thrown out the door.

They are already heading down a contract path, there is not the job security there used to be and now you are going to rip up an agreement with respect to entitlement. So, where is the job security? Where are the entitlements, the benefits which might mean, over a very long period of time if you are a loyal foot soldier working for the Public Service, that you might recoup some of the money you could have earned had you been in and out of the public and private sectors? Some, unfortunately, now have no choice. That is why it was brought in—we need to remember that today.

What will happen to experience and the brain drain? With experience, if you are two or three years away from retiring—and the government argues that it has put up a good package; let us assume that that is correct—you will contemplate leaving early because it gives you an extra two or three years' retirement. So, there is experience gone.

If you are a young person who is enthusiastic and keen because you have a job delivering services for the community in the so-called security of the Public Service, you will think that there is no security here and that you might as well become one of those who has seven job changes in their lifetime and surfs the best possible salary increases you can get. This is a very downward, slippery slope for the state's future when it comes to good Public Service delivery. I will read another letter:

It has come to my attention, as a result of the state budget release, of a proposal being presented to reduce long service leave.

I received many such letters from police when I was police minister and I still keep in touch with them, and I am sure a lot of other members have had letters from police. I have also received a lot of letters from other public servants. The bottom line is that they are all appealing to us, as their last possible chance to get some fairness, some equity and some decency back into the employer/employee relationship. At the moment, I suggest, any goodwill that existed between the Public Service and the government is at risk of being totally destroyed, and that is wrong.

I now wish to speak about a few other issues with respect to the budget, in particular funding cuts to adult entry education. Not all of us had the opportunity years ago to go through SACE and tertiary education. In fact, a lot of people up until the last 10 or 15 years were not able to go into year 12 and SACE, but they wanted to be able to re-enter at 21 years for a variety of reasons.

Places like Christies Beach High School and Hamilton High School at Marion do a wonderful job when it comes to re-entry. Some of those people in the southern, northern, western and south-western suburbs are vulnerable and did not have access to additional funding. Those re-entry opportunities at those high schools gave those people a new chance of a career path, a new chance of hope. I have been told that they are at risk of closure as a result of this. We will lose these specialist high schools, which is a disgrace again.

I tell the government today that it has been jacking up its TAFE fees and cutting back what is being delivered at TAFE. This cost recovery in this budget—everything is about full cost recovery—is nonsense. What do we pay taxes for if, on top of the paying the taxes, we have to have full cost recovery for everything, for goodness sake? It is lunacy.

Teachers have told me that these people will not go to TAFE. I asked, 'Why won't they go to TAFE? TAFE is good—I've been to TAFE.' They said, 'Robert, they can't afford it, first, and secondly they won't go to TAFE because they will be intimidated because TAFE is part of a huge department.' These teachers, student counsellors and students themselves are encouraged and trained to develop interaction between students in their standard years in these high schools and adults, and they feel comfortable there.

We are going to put those people on the scrapheap, and obviously that is bad for them; it is irresponsible. I do not have problems with governments—and all of us, for that matter, being economically prudent—but if we are going to be rationalist and extreme, which we are seeing here with some of these issues, it will cost. It will cost in mental health, public housing, medical health and Centrelink payments.

Here we are, going out and targeting overseas, and saying we have to get other people here for jobs. I do not have a problem with that—that is great. That is how the nation was built. All of our ancestors come from overseas—

The Hon. T.A. Franks interjecting:

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: —except for our Indigenous people, of course. Certainly, in the case of all us Anglo-Saxons and non-Indigenous people, our ancestors came from overseas. The fact of the matter is that we are going to put people on the scrapheap, and then we are going to give incentive packages to bring other people in to pick up the skilled jobs.

Again, it is just about getting to the next election. I do not know about other colleagues, but I am sick and tired of listening to initiatives that are just meant to win the next election. Do we not have a responsibility, as our ancestors had, to ensure that we make this place better for our children and for their children? That really is not happening with this budget.

I will be saying more to the minister himself about this matter. Ministers will go to a CEO and say, 'The Treasurer tells me that I have to get a 5 per cent efficiency dividend in my portfolios.' The CEOs are on incredible amounts of money now—far more than the Premier; CEOs' salaries have jumped up like you wouldn't believe in the last few years. So, a lot of these CEOs are on $300,000 or more. For a lot of workers in this state, that is six years' wages; they have to work six years to get what the CEO gets in one year.

So, it does not affect the CEO. In fact, the CEO will probably get a pat on the back and be taken out privately to dinner, with the minister saying, 'Well done, thanks very much. You helped me get through this difficult period when I had to come up with my efficiency dividends.' The CEOs are going to recommend things that they think are okay, but they will not have any consideration for social inclusion or issues affecting our society—and that is wrong. It is not necessarily the responsibility of the CEO, who is merely delivering for the minister.

It is wrong, because I do not think that in bilateral budget processes this government has considered the consequences enough. I think it has left it to the minister concerned, as much as to say, 'This is your target. You have to save $150-$200 million here. I really probably don't care that much how you do it—just save it.'

I do not believe that this cabinet actually sat in the last couple of weeks as a cabinet looking at crossing the t's and dotting the i's, which is what a cabinet should be doing. You should not have been out of this state in the last two weeks, in my opinion, running around everywhere before you deliver a budget. You should be finetuning that budget, and you should be having special cabinet budget committees just looking at the ramifications and challenging the Treasurer. I do not believe that the cabinet has challenged the Treasurer at all, and that is why we have a mess here that we are debating today.

I want to talk about rent increases. I met a lady down at the Parks on Sunday who is furious about the $7.50 a week increase in her housing trust pension. Now, I know the minister was in a difficult spot in the media, but she was very flippant when challenged about this $7.50 increase. She basically tried to flick-pass it across and said, 'Well, it won't be any more than 25 per cent of their income.'

Well, with good maths, no; it might have been 24 per cent but that is not the point. The point is that that $7.50 a week was not given by the Rann government. By the way, it is not the Rann government's money, and it is not the parliament's money: it is taxpayers' money, of which the government is custodian. It is not the government dishing out its money: it is money belonging to the people who work and pay the taxes.

In this case, it was the commonwealth government using money obtained from our commonwealth taxes, where prime minister Rudd said, 'Here is $7.50 a week because utility costs are going up and we feel for the pensioners. We have heard the message.' He said to them, I understand possibly at COAG, when they were all sitting around there listening intently, 'COAG, this is what we're doing. We're giving pensioners $7.50 a week rise and we want the $7.50 to stay in their pocket.'

Within a flash (as quickly as the Melbourne Cup in 2007), before prime minister Howard could make a sensible statement about what had happened in COAG with respect to the start of the botched Murray-Darling handover bill and discussions on weirs and things, the Premier raced out of that COAG and got a press release out saying they were going to build a weir and spend $25 million or $50 million or something on it. If they build it now it is $250 million. The point is that, like a knee-jerk reaction, as quick as a flash out comes a press release from the government saying, 'We agree; we sign off. This government will not hit the pensioners through Housing Trust for any of that $7.50.' It did not last more than a year. They have broken another promise.

I am privileged because my mum happens to be, unfortunately, a war veteran so she gets a better pension than the base pension. She deserves it from the point of view of what my father, and many other men and women in World War II, went through. The point is that, even on a war widow's pension, it is very hard to make ends meet. You see people who are aged 75 and 80 years of age who will not turn their heater on in the wintertime and sit with a blanket or go to bed at 7 o'clock at night.

They might be able to go down to the senior citizens club or the RSL that night but they are counting money all the time. They might have a few hundred or a few thousand dollars saved up in a bank account but they are scared to touch it. You say to them, 'Take a bit of it; you can't be cold.' No, they will sit there with a blanket. It is the same when it is hot: there is an air conditioner but they will not turn it on; they will get a fan. This is wrong. Here we have a government that has done in pensioners for $7.50 a week.

I want to talk about the Parks Community Centre. All my colleagues have something to add so I will keep it short. This is pretty passionate stuff for all of us because the priorities are wrong. I think that cabinet should be able to work out the priorities better than this. Why would a cabinet sign off on bulldozing the Parks Community Centre? Because developers are knocking on the door. I have nothing against developers. We need more houses, and so on, but I question whether or not we can put development ahead of responsibility for social service delivery. I think we have to do some social service delivery responsibility first.

There was a grand plan to extend Westwood Park and reinvigorate that area but they said, 'The new community coming in here won't need the Parks. They won't need that, and the old community, well, we will negotiate with the council for something. We will build some shop front and we'll put family and community services in, and we will put primary health care, Housing SA and some other government services into those shops.' I look back through the history of that and, whether you like them or not, former premiers Don Dunstan and John Bannon did a damn good job with the Parks Community Centre. It was purpose built because of the special needs of the western suburbs. The special needs of the western suburbs have not changed. In fact, I would argue that they have increased.

I want to put this on the public record because, like other colleagues, I will be sending this to some people: the western suburbs have the least amount of open space of any area—north, south, east and west. The western suburbs have the least amount of open space. We saw them promise the western suburbs people, loyal voters for the Labor Party, that they would never sell Cheltenham. Straight after the election they sold Cheltenham; now they are trying to sell St Clair.

The Hon. R.P. Wortley: Who owns Cheltenham? We don't own Cheltenham.

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: Let us have the select committee going again and we might get the truth this time about the deal that was done between the owners, the SAJC, and the hundreds of millions of dollars that goes in from the government to the racing industry. We might get to the truth if we have another select committee. If you want another select committee I am happy.

There was St Clair, now we have the Parks, and six schools are being closed. The point I want to raise is that, if the government were innovative, strategic and responsible, do you know what we would do to the Parks? You would not keep running the Parks down so that you could say it is tired and dilapidated. To those of us who were there on Sunday: is it tired and dilapidated? I do not think so. It has purposely had a lot less money put into it over the last couple of years in an effort to make it look that way, but it is actually structurally good. In my opinion, it is sound and modern; it is about 30 years old.

If the government really means social inclusion, why does it not say, 'We are going to use this as a model, because it is a damn good model. We are going to put one of these in each region in the state. Not only that, we will get people trained in the Public Service to strategically work through the Parks Community Centre model and we will export the concept and bring some dollars back in. We will sell some intellectual property on how to improve the social wellbeing and fabric of the community'?

The world is screaming out for that. We have it at the Parks but, no, we will bulldoze it to put some short-term money back into Treasury—wrong again. Fortunately, we had a great opportunity, with a total bombardment by the media. It must have been pretty hard for a lot of senior government ministers to even eat their breakfast in the morning when they picked up The Advertiser and the Sunday Mail, because the papers got behind it and they flogged them.

The community came together and it flogged the government, and a lot of members of parliament also got involved and worked with them to flog the government. Push came to shove, and the government backflipped. I say that is good. We want to see a backflip on some of the other draconian measures in this budget, not the least of which is breaking a legal contract through an enterprise agreement.

I would like to finish with PIRSA and SARDI. When you go into the House of Assembly, you see two things on the carpet: wheat sheaves and wine grapes. They are there as a symbol of the fact that this great state was built on an agricultural base. We will see the world grow from 7 billion to 9 billion people over the next 20 years or thereabouts. That is a massive increase, and all those people will be hungry and want food. Mining is good too, but it is not sustainable. It is an easy one for a government when China and India are building all their infrastructure and need those commodities to support that; it is a no-brainer. However, why would you destroy opportunities to grow your food and agriculture?

In this budget, the government set a 10 per cent cut in SARDI's research budget. Go to the South Australian Research Development Institute headquarters at West Beach and look at what it has done with research in agriculture and aquaculture; it has been fantastic. I was worried a while ago when I heard that the CEO was retiring; I thought it was strange. I have a SARDI tie he presented to me. He is a proud man and he led a great SARDI, and I wondered why he was leaving.

I know now: he knew what would happen to his budget. He could not look after his staff and he could no longer look after his responsibility to develop opportunities for growing economic agriculture and aquaculture in this state. I believe that is why he left. Of course, he has not been questioned on that, but why else would he leave when he was doing such a great job? He is not an old man.

The government now wants full cost recovery. Farmers have done it pretty tough over most of this decade, and overdrafts are up and mortgages up. When times were nowhere near as affluent for government in terms of its coffers—in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s—successive governments, Labor and Liberal, through the department of agriculture, did not talk about full cost recovery. They did not get rid of agronomists from the department of agriculture who were writing bulletin sheets and fact sheets and who were doing research and working with farmers.

They were there, and there was no cost recovery. That was part of what government did: provide services for people to grow and enhance the state economically and socially for the betterment of all. That is not happening now. We saw 110 PIRSA staff flicked with the budget in 2009, and in this budget the government wants to get rid of another 180. It is wrong, and we will rue the day it happens.

It is not acceptable for the government to say that the private sector will do this. Yes, some of those scientists, agronomists and researchers will go and work for Landmark, Elders, CRT and the rest of them, but they will not do the research, and information will not be as pristine as the information that farmers get from PIRSA because the carrot for people working in the private sector is that they have to sell certain products at big margins. That was not the case with PIRSA when they were giving extension agronomy services and the like.

To conclude, this budget was not the roaring success that might have been indicated in the following days, with Kevin Foley shaking hands with ministers and backbenchers, getting pats on the back, and all the spin of his PowerPoint presentations. It is not a good budget. The core debt in this budget is way up towards where it was back in the State Bank days, with all the other things we could go through, involving 333 Collins Street and investments like Scrimber. We now have core debt up there at a time when, as was said today at the rally, the revenue has never been better for government, state and nationwide.

It is not right that decent people who are just trying to do their job and contribute to this community are being hit the way they are, and there were many other ways that the government could have recurrently addressed its problems. The government made the problems; it should fix them with the least stress on the community. I am not happy with this budget, and I look forward to hearing from colleagues.

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (17:57): I know that the evening is drawing to a close, so I will make a start on my speech to this budget. I would like to flag that the Greens are opposed to many sections of this budget, not least being the cuts to the public sector both in numbers and in entitlements of public sector workers. We have also been quite critical of the attacks on education, specifically the moves to amalgamate co-located schools. We have some grave reservations there, that that be done in a consultative manner.

Particularly, we have voiced our opposition to the changes in this budget to adult re-entry. I note that we are not looking at closing down those schools. I do understand that we are looking at restricting access in those schools to those students who are under 21. There was a lot of talk in estimates that this is being done because students are using those schools as leisure courses or WEA courses. We would dispute that and say that, if that is the problem, then tackle that as the problem and do not cut access to everyone who is over 21 to those schools.

We will also address the Parks issue and we are very happy that the government has made some concessions there. The Greens spoke to the Supply Bill just before the end of the financial year, and it was quite odd at the time that we did not yet have an appropriation bill or a budget. Of course, we went to the election here in this state on 20 March, so we have been told that we needed all this time until September to get that budget together.

In Tasmania, where they also went to the polls on 20 March, they had their budget well in time for the appropriation and supply bills to be considered. Also, in the UK it took them only 50 days after the election, and they have a much larger budget to deal with than ours—and that was a change of government, not a continuing stagnant government. I think that the Tasmanian budget, which was brought down on 17 June, was helped by the Labor coalition Greens government which perhaps gave them a little bit of a push along to get their budget well in time before the end of the financial year.

We have seen with this budget an unusual process, which I hope that other states do not replicate, where we have had the referral of advising on budget cuts which, as the Hon. Robert Brokenshire said, did not come from government itself but in fact a Sustainable Budget Commission. This was a body which was not actually funded when it was first announced, and that boded really badly. I think the fear is well founded that perhaps it was an ill thought out approach.

That $2.5 million was eventually found to fund the Sustainable Budget Commission and we, of course, saw the leaked documents of all the recommendations from that Sustainable Budget Commission. I note that there was a range of recommendations in there that did not see the light of day under this budget that we have before us, that would have been far preferable to the Greens. Some other measures as well: we would like to see the superway not given the priority it has. We have grave concerns that the Adelaide Oval redevelopment seems to be skyrocketing in costs.

Let us get to the heart of this particular budget before us. We have attacks on the public sector. We have an announced 3,740 jobs to be lost in the public sector through taps on the shoulder. We are told at this stage that it will not be a mandatory move; it will be in fact through voluntary separation packages that those jobs will go, and those packages will in fact be quite generous. I express concern that that many packages are actually going to cost an awful lot of money and take away an awful lot of capacity from our public service that we may never replace in this state.

I do admit and I do acknowledge, as the Labor government will be quick to point out if I do not notice this at the moment, that we will see new jobs in the public sector as well, but by no means on the same scale as the cuts we are about to see. Those new jobs may not have the history and the expertise, and they will in fact spend a lot of their time reinventing the wheel; and again I am not so sure that that is a positive way to move forward.

The fundamental premise upon which the Greens oppose these cuts is the way in which the government has gone around announcing both cuts for the public sector, when we have been assured previously, before the election, that these things would not be happening, and cuts to public servants' conditions, and particularly leave, that we know were not the subject of any discussion in any enterprise bargaining with the unions and we know were not ever put on the table by the government in these bargaining negotiations. They have simply been legislated after the fact, after people have bargained and negotiated in good faith with this government which is a Labor government and which purports to stand up for the working people of this state. This government has lost its way.

I would note that I stood with other members of the crossbench: the Hon. Kelly Vincent; John Darley, who sent his good messages of support; the Hon. Ann Bressington; the Hon. Robert Brokenshire; and the Hon. David Ridgeway today on the steps of Parliament House at a public sector rally, united in opposition to these cuts to entitlements for public servants. I said at that rally that the government, when announcing these cuts, said that this was an internal blow, and that this was trimming the fat, if you like. It did not describe public servants as what they in fact are: those who create the social capital of this state.

It did not actually name the public servants' occupations when it talked about these cuts to the leave entitlements. It did not say that this is going to affect nurses and midwives and firefighters and ambulance officers and student support officers and people who work in the health services and people who work with the most vulnerable in our community. Again I will say that, when you cut these people in their positions and also you cut their entitlements, you will lose capacity in our public sector.

One area where I have grave concern that we will lose a lot of capacity, because we have no fat to trim there, is the area of child protection. We already know that child protection is an onerous, difficult job. The people who work in that area have a lot to deal with in their working lives that many of us here would not even dream about and would not even think about. We know that there are problems with retention in that area. We know that there are also problems with inexperience in that area. These cuts will cut child protection commitments made by the Rann government.

We also know that these cuts and these changes in what has been negotiated in good faith, by an overriding legislation, a bully boy tactic, if you like, set precedents that we are quite concerned about. We would like to put on record that we have some concerns about what implications these changes to public sector entitlements have. I would ask: has the government considered any other leave entitlements? Has it looked at maternity leave cuts? Are they the next on the table in the next budget round?

Have they sought legal advice? We would like to know if there is any legal advice that the government actually has the ability to take these measures. We would really like to know whether or not the precedent set by this bill, and this budget, will be replicated by Labor or Liberal state and territory governments across the country. We would also like to know whether or not other entitlements are for the chopping block. That legal advice from the government, I think, will be mirrored by union legal advice that we will be seeing in the coming weeks.

One particular issue of concern is: at what point did the government decide that this was going to be part of its budget? Was it before or after it made a commitment to the public sector in the wages enterprise bargaining salary group offer of 7 December 2009, when it promised the continuation of the current provisions in relation to security of employment? The government also promised existing conditions to continue. We would like some answers to that.

I will quickly move onto cuts to education. We have some concerns that the green schools program has been lost. We would like to know whether those green schools initiatives that have been successful in previous years will continue and how schools will be able to be green schools. Are there any other funding streams coming to those schools, or is that simply all show?

We have had the media releases, we have had a few glitzy solar panels on a few schools and a few rainwater tanks, and now we are moving on because the media is not as interested any more in the new green schools project. We also have some concerns about small schools losing funding and access to Student Services Officers (SSOs). We would like to know how many small schools will be looking at losing a Student Services Officer? How many Student Services Officers in full-time equivalents will be cut by this budget?

We point to the amalgamation process of co-located schools. It is my understanding that, the day after the budget was announced, schools were approached by departments and told that, if they were a co-located school, they had to amalgamate—and I give the example of Parafield Gardens Primary School, which has already gone through an amalgamation process with the junior primary and the primary school and the Parafield Gardens High School, but I know that there are dozens of schools involved in this process. They were told, 'There's no choice. It's a budget saving measure. You can kick up a fuss but, if you do so, we'll just change the legislation to make sure that our budget goes through.'

I have asked for an assurance that section 14 of the Education Act will be followed, whereby any school that does not wish to amalgamate or close has access to a review process, and that review process is actually quite comprehensive. I understand that it was the previous member for Taylor who was responsible for this fantastic review process which—

The Hon. S.G. Wade: A Labor member.

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS: A Labor member, a former minister for education, a former member, in fact, for my local area, and I think I may have even preferenced her once on a voting card.

The Hon. S.G. Wade: Pretty low, I'm sure.

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS: Not too low, but certainly not first. I would like to see that this review process is guaranteed to these schools. Have these schools been assured in writing that they have access to this review process, or have they been led to believe that they have no choice? Of course, the review process includes their local council, and it includes a consultation with the parents, teachers, students and the community of that school.

It is actually quite a wide-ranging review process and, of course, those reviews come before both houses of this parliament. We would like some assurances that schools that have been told they have to amalgamate have not been told under false pretences and that they realise they have a way to oppose that measure.

Similarly with adult re-entry, particular schools have been targeted by the government in terms of restricting access to adult re-entry. Those schools are waiting for answers to their questions. In the debates when I have been listening to the estimates committee this week I have heard that everyone they are looking to get out of these schools is wasting education or department moneys by doing leisure courses and filling in their spare time—making it sound like they are the ladies of leisure of Burnside, perhaps. The reality is far from that.

We are assured already that TAFE is not going to be able to take them, and people who want to do year 11 or 12 are not necessarily able to afford TAFE. The people who need adult re-entry to do year 11 or 12 are clearly not financially well off, and they obviously have been disadvantaged. These are people, it has been said time and again this week, who are looking for a second chance. Often they have been failed by the education system the first time around. Often society has failed them. Some of them are young parents, some are refugees, some are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders—they are people who really do need that second chance.

One of the questions I ask is: where will adults go if they do not just want to go to university and they are not going to do the STAT test (to which we have been assured they can have access), and they are not going to do a foundation course to get into university but they want to become a police officer? How will the requirements for entry to SAPOL for people who will undertake this adult re-entry be fulfilled? Similarly with defence: how will the requirements for those who are simply taking the SACE in terms of getting into the defence forces (and the RAAF in particular has been noted to be one particular stream) afford those people access to the profession of their choice?

What was the reason the government chose the age of 21 years as the cut-off age for opportunity for adult re-entry? Why was 25 years not the age at which we in this state determine youth to have ended? Why was that age not chosen? Has any advice been sought about whether this is an age discrimination issue, and are there implications in this for contravening age discrimination legislation?

We would like to know what is going to happen to the 4,500 (or thereabouts) students who will now not be afforded a second chance at education. I would like to know the numbers that the government estimates this will affect. I would also like to see any work that the government has done on how many people are doing these courses as WEA or leisure-style courses and how many are genuinely there trying to get a second chance at life through a high school education.

I will move on now to the Parks. The Parks has been in the media, of course, and many of us know and love the Parks and are very happy to have seen somewhat of a backflip on this issue. But the announcement that the Parks would be closed was an absolute aberration. Quite rightly, the media and community have stood up and said: no. To its credit, the Rann government has listened. I hope that we will get some assurances that the local council (the Port Adelaide Enfield Council) will be consulted more appropriately on the future of the Parks. I see that Monsignor Cappo is to head a review into the use of the Parks and that he will do that through a phone and online survey.

I would hope that more work will go into consultation on the future of the Parks than was done by the Sustainable Budget Commission, because it clearly had no idea what it was recommending when it recommended to cut that facility. The least sustainable thing you can do is cut something as valuable and precious as the Parks.

My colleague the Hon. Mark Parnell will also speak to this bill in the next sitting week, but I will wrap up with a few words of warning to this Labor government. While I stood on the steps of Parliament House today, there were union leaders to protest this move. Many of the Labor members have come through the union movement. That union movement, as they know, is nationwide, and I will read some words of concern coming from the country. Firstly, from Sydney, the CPSU federal secretary, David Carey, said:

The government has just left fly with a slap in the face for hardworking and loyal public servants. How can any employer be allowed to unilaterally change and remove conditions and then ask employees to bargain in good faith?

Karen Batt, a branch secretary from Victoria, says:

Comments attributed to treasurer Foley that South Australia should have moved in a similar manner as premier Kennett did in the 1990s are ignorant of the impact of that those draconian measures had on working families in Victoria.

Finally, from WA, a state not known for its radical history in its union Labor government-led progressiveness, the Civil Service Association Secretary, Toni Walkington, said:

It is with deep concern that we learnt of the South Australian government's plans to cut 3,750 jobs, a threat to review the no-forced redundancy commitment given prior to the March 2010 election, the removal of leave loading and the reduction of long service leave undermines good faith negotiations. What this Labor government has done is an attack at the heart of the union movement and it is an attack at the heart of good faith negotiations.

We will enter into future debate on this bill in the spirit of good faith negotiations. We welcome the Hon. Robert Brokenshire's amendments to the bill before us, and we look forward to a robust and fruitful discussion.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. J.M. Gazzola.

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