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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-09-28 Daily Xml
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STATE STRATEGIC PLAN

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (15:46): This afternoon I would like to speak about science. Science is based on fact. Magic, on the other hand, is sleight of hand, smoke and mirrors. Smoke is generally an unwanted by-product of fire, but it can also be used for communication. Chinese soldiers on the Great Wall used smoke signals to communicate with each other, as did our Australian Aborigines. Smoke is also used to hide and to disguise. That is where the word 'smokescreen' comes from. The first mirrors were made some 8,000 years ago, in what is now Turkey, by polishing volcanic glass. Today's mirrors use glass backed with tin, silver or aluminium.

Science uses facts. Conjuring tricks are illusions. We have here in South Australia a government that uses smoke and mirrors, and the biggest deception of the soon-to-be-kicked-out Premier and his fudgy, bullyboy ex-treasurer is Labor's biggest sleight of hand, the State Strategic Plan. The original plan was presented by the failed Premier in 2004.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: I have you all listening, on the edge of your seats. It was full of facts, the sort of facts on which science is based; 60 pages of facts. On the version provided to me there were three photographs. The rest was statistics, goals, targets, a map of measurement tools and priority options. It said figuratively, 'You are here; this is where we want to be as a state in the future and this is a map of how we are going to get there.' Some of the targets were ambitious; some were practical. Some we disagreed with, others we strongly supported, but it was—and this is the important thing—based on evidence, and from evidence came conclusions. That was—

An honourable member: You have 10 minutes.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: It is not my normal duty to inform the President that we did not start the clock, so I have another five minutes. I do not normally bring people's attention to that.

That was in March 2004. Three years later came the revised State Strategic Plan. Many of the targets had been missed. Some were so wide of the mark the targets had disappeared altogether. Now fast forward to 2011. In the last miserable dying days of Mike Rann's rotten premiership and Kevin Foley's disastrous time at the economic helm, which led directly to the shipwreck of the state's credit rating, we now see the newest version of the State Strategic Plan. And what do we see? A smokescreen. The hall of mirrors. There are now over 100 pages, but the facts have been erased and the science has gone. More than half the document is pretty pictures and buzzwords. The substance has been removed and replaced by a conjuring trick.

So here is the science, the facts, of the State Strategic Plan from 2004 to today. South Australians will be astonished to learn that the government has now removed the original 2004 plan from the Premier's website. Why? Because Labor does not want you to know the extent of its failure. The 2004 target for jobs: a better than average Australian employment growth rate within 10 years. The result? Not maintained. Unemployment: equal or better to the average Australian within five years to maintain equal or lower than the Australian average through to 2014. Result—not maintained. Youth unemployment: equal or better to the Australian average—not achieved.

Competitive business climate: maintain Adelaide's rating as the least costly place to set up and do business in Australia—not achieved. Economic growth: to exceed the national economic growth rate within 10 years—not maintained. Investment: to exceed Australia's ratio of business investment as a percentage of the economy within 10 years—not maintained. To increase interstate migration and reduce the net loss to interstate by zero in 2008, positive in-flow from 2009—failed.

Productivity: exceed Australia's average productivity growth within 10 years—not maintained. Industrial relations: achieve the lowest number of working days lost per thousand employees in Australia within 10 years—not maintained. Exports: to treble the value of South Australia's exports to $25 billion by 2013—highly unlikely. The tourism industry: to increase visitor expenditure in South Australia's tourism to $5 billion by 2008 by increasing visitor numbers, length of stay and increasing tourist spending—failed.

The share of overseas students, strategic infrastructure, quality of life, mental health, physical health including obesity, crime rates and road safety—fail, fail, fail. That is why the government has removed its 2004 plan from easy public access. That is why the latest plan is full of posed photos and slogans—because the facts have gone. It is Mike Rann's hall of mirrors, and the smoke gets in your eyes.

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