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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2016-07-06 Daily Xml
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State Budget

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (15:54): As we are 24 hours away from the state budget I want to refer to the massive and significant number of examples of government waste, financial mismanagement and over-expenditure that occurs under the administration of Premier Weatherill and Treasurer Koutsantonis. There is a crying need in this budget for relief for struggling South Australian families from massive cost-of-living increases and also to reduce the costs of doing business for small and medium-size South Australian businesses so that they can employ and provide more jobs, in particular for young South Australians. South Australia leads the unemployment statistics, sadly, for every state and territory in the nation.

In looking at the ongoing examples of waste and mismanagement, it has been brought to my attention that again everyone's favourite CEO Kym Winter-Dewhirst, Mr Weatherill's CEO, the man who spent many hundreds of thousands of dollars renovating his 16th floor offices in the State Administration Centre and the man, with the approval obviously of the Premier, who spent $12,000 to employ a full production film company, 57 Films, so that he could produce an email to send to all of his staff within his department.

Gone are the days of the old CEO who was quite happy to press a button and send an email to the staff. Mr Winter-Dewhirst, with the full support of Mr Weatherill, was prepared to spend $12,000 of taxpayers' money to embark on that. Mr Winter-Dewhirst is well known as the man who, soon after he arrived, sacked a leading female executive in his department only to find that within weeks, having paid out between $200,000 and $300,000 in termination payments out of taxpayer funds, that that female executive was re-employed in another government department and agency in a senior managerial position. That makes no sense to anyone other than obviously Mr Weatherill and Mr Winter-Dewhirst.

We now find that two other senior executives within the Department of the Premier and Cabinet in the last two weeks have been sacked. Mr Paul Flanagan and Ms Adele Young have both been sacked, and we are advised that very significant termination payments have been made, in particular to Mr Flanagan. Mr Flanagan was only employed some 18 months ago without going to open advertisement and tender. It was a mate's appointment. Obviously, the mates have fallen out in some way and he has been terminated but, sadly, it is the taxpayers who end up having to pay the significant sums of money to replace Mr Flanagan. Nevertheless, the government will be happy because another Labor Party staffer, Mr Rik Morris, has had his position redesignated to assume some of the responsibilities of Mr Flanagan.

Yesterday, we saw two further reports from the Auditor-General, one on the sad tale of EPAS, a project which has blown out from $200 million now to $450 million. My colleague the Hon. Mr Wade and others have highlighted the financial mismanagement and incompetence associated with that. Sadly, we also saw the stunning Auditor-General report on the Department for Communities and Social Inclusion on concessions. The Advertiser leads today with the story that taxpayer money has been sent to 4,350 dead people, some who have been dead for as long as eight years.

Mr President, this is the sort of administration, this is the sort of financial mismanagement and incompetence that, sadly, your former colleagues who still sit in the ministry and minister Bettison, are presiding over. They are actually paying concessions to over 4,000 people, some who have been dead for as long as eight years. How anybody can justify that sort of financial mismanagement and incompetence defies comprehension.

Time does not permit going through all of the detail of the Auditor-General's Report and I am sure my colleagues at later stages will do so, but there is again reference in that in terms of those concessions that Mr Weatherill or Mr Koutsantonis approved a new software program called CASIS, which was going to cost $600,000. It blew out to $7.4 million and then they had to scrap it because it would not work. So taxpayers actually spent $7.4 million on a new IT program to try to manage these concessions and found out that it would not work and that we have now lost. They are now, you will be pleased to know, embarking on another one. Instead of CASIS they are going to develop a new program called COLIN—a cost-of-living information system—but when we asked how much that will cost they said that they were still working on what the total cost of that will be.

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