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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-11-06 Daily Xml
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Appropriation Bill 2018

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 18 October 2018.)

The Hon. I. PNEVMATIKOS (17:53): I rise to talk further about the 2018-19 state budget and the impact that will have on the most vulnerable in our community. After 16 years in opposition, in the first budget of this government we hoped to see the government initiate and act on their election policies for more jobs, lower costs and better services. Instead, in their first economic statement in 16 years, we begin the winter of our discontent with cuts, closures, privatisations and an increase in debt in each and every year across the forward estimates.

Members of the community were promised more jobs, lower costs and better services. Instead, what we received was no initiative, no creativity in solving problems or addressing the issues affecting our communities and an orchestrated wholesale attack on those who are the most vulnerable and in need. Both the Treasurer and the Premier advised that their approach towards this budget was necessary to meet their commitments and policy goals. What we are seeing, however, is a bandaid approach to policymaking and a conscious decision to no longer rely on the approaches of the previous government to produce a budget committed to lower levels of spending by 2020-21.

A closer examination reveals a trend. The Liberals are obsessed with reducing their level of spending and, as a corollary, reducing government responsibility and intervention. We saw it when they were last in government, we see it on a federal level and we are seeing it in this budget. This trend is paradoxical to the actual purpose of a government, which is to have programs for society and the community as a whole, which necessarily requires public expenditure to establish and maintain those programs.

The scale of cuts is evident in the forecasts relating to general government employment. Over four years, 4,023 Public Service positions will be cut and about 1,700 of those reductions will stem from privatisation of disability services. Government disability services typically support some of the highest needs people living with disabilities and their families. The Marshall government is reducing its own funding and support for disability services, reliant upon the transitions to the NDIS, regardless of whether there are any shortfalls in the federal scheme. It completely disregards recommendation 6.2 of the Productivity Commission study report into the National Disability Insurance Scheme costs, which were:

The Australian, State and Territory Governments should make public—through the COAG Disability Reform Council (DRC) — their approach to providing continuity of support and the services they intend to provide to all people with disability (including the value of supports and number of people covered), beyond supports provided through the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Arrangements for continuity of support should be made clear before full scheme implementation.

The National Disability Insurance Agency should report annually to the DRC on boundary issues as they are playing out on the ground, including identifying service gaps and actions to address barriers to accessing disability and mainstream services for people with disability. The reporting should be used for ongoing monitoring, evaluation and improvements.

This recommendation is in place because many non-government organisations are simply unable to provide the same comprehensive services in the disability sector, and it is expected and required that the state government will fill in the gaps to programs and services. By ignoring the recommendation a void is created, short-changing many due to the reduction of facilities and resources. By opting out, the state government is opting out of being a provider of supported community accommodation services under the national disability scheme, further penalising South Australians with disabilities, their families and their carers.

During her time as the federal assistant minister for social services and disability services, Jane Prentice called on state governments to maintain an ongoing investment to support advocacy for people with disability. The New South Wales government heeded this advice, as should we, as there is no benefit or sense in further disadvantaging such a vulnerable group in our community.

The remaining 2,300 Public Service job losses are spread across a range of areas, including the privatisation of our correctional services. South Australia has a proud record of stable reoffending rates which sits below the national average, because the previous government worked hard to keep our communities safe. This government plans to, firstly, remove $38 million from police operational budgets. Where are these savings coming from? Will it result in a reduction of front-line work?

We have heard about the interest in the Adelaide Remand Centre by G4S custodial services in the media. G4S is a privately owned corporation that currently manages two other prisons in Australia: Port Phillip Prison, in Victoria, and Mount Gambier Prison. We need only to look at HMP Birmingham in England, run by G4S, to see the disarray that comes from a lack of public sector standards. This prison, and many others established by G4S, have seen major dark days that include riots and uprisings by prisoners, negligent care and appalling living conditions. With inadequate staff-to-patron ratios, HMP Birmingham was overthrown by over 600 prisoners in 2016. This riot came in the same two-month period where similar incidents occurred in three more prisons in the United Kingdom under G4S management.

In the case of HMP Birmingham, it resulted in the prison being returned to the ownership and control of the British state. In the past 12 months, Victoria's Port Phillip Prison has seen events of a fire, which caused a lockdown and destroyed several security cameras and other surveillance equipment, as well as a tragic inmate death earlier this year. Our very own Mount Gambier Prison has plans for expansion, despite an independent investigation being initiated last year after the rape of a security guard. However, the Marshall Liberal government is more than happy to wash its hands of any such responsibility if it means cutting costs.

There has been extensive research undertaken to assess whether the privatisation of prisons provides any benefit to the state. The government should not forget the lessons learned from the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, a women's correctional centre in metropolitan Victoria, which was competitively tendered and opened in 1996. The facility was designed, built and operated by the Corrections Corporation of Australia, an affiliate of the Corrections Corporation of America. By 2000, control was taken over by the state of Victoria on the basis that the corporation was unable to meet a number of standards. The prison privatisation experiment failed.

Following the closure of this correctional facility and two others, an independent investigation into the management and operation of Victoria's private prisons was conducted. The report made 54 recommendations, which covered contractual arrangements, performance monitoring, staffing, prisoner management, health services and integration programs. For more than two decades, Australian state governments have toyed over public or private control and management of prisons. As of October 2017, the two states with the highest number of prisoners in private prisons maintained significantly higher costs per prisoner than any other state with publicly controlled prisons.

It is apparent that private prisons are poor performers in the areas of rehabilitation and programs of integration. They are unable to ensure maintenance of health and safety standards in relation to systems of work and personnel. The net effect is higher reconviction rates and higher costs to the state when prisons are managed and controlled privately. The corrections system within Victoria faced many conflicts before this report subsequently determined that even the most extensive contracts could not provide safeguards against poor operational performance of prisoners outside the public sector.

These facilities should be designed, by their nature, to appropriately and proportionally rehabilitate offenders so that they may return as reformed members of our society to make a contribution in our community. Facilities should not be built reliant upon a revolving door style system where, once released, and in the absence of programs for rehabilitation, patrons reoffend and are subsequently placed back into incarceration.

Privatising a maximum security prison will only hurt our pockets in the long run, negatively impact the safety of our communities and shift the policy focus away from alternative strategies that may ultimately prove more effective than simply a model solely reliant on incarceration. Privatising prisons does not result in good policy and programs for law and order, nor do they provide any cost benefits to the community. The narrative of this budget is to cut costs, to not provide services and to remove government responsibility.

Take Service SA, which is one of our most valuable state services for people in our communities. In fact, it generates 11 million transactions every year. This multifaceted service facility enables communities to have one neighbourhood location where they can renew or cancel vehicle registration, apply for a number of different transfer licences, source government information and forms, and pay fines and appropriate bills.

Some of the tasks that I just mentioned, and a number of others, can only be done in person and yet the government has decided to scale back on the centres which will lead to longer travel times, longer waiting times and poorer, less accessible services. Having an accessible location for these functions helps an array of people who would normally not be able to seek assistance. The closure of these centres will take away any sense of community, which is invaluable to many people.

The elderly, many of whom do not have computers, are expected to navigate the online realm just to complete their forms. Those without private transport will have to travel further distances just to be able to apply for their independence. Irrespective of any disability, patrons will have to wait in a line for substantial periods of time just to receive the level of assistance that is not available to them online or over the phone. I have been out to visit one of these centres scheduled for closure and have spoken to many patrons. The response has been overwhelming: we had 4,679 signatures from patrons who reside in the electorate of Adelaide, amongst a total of 7,839 signatures statewide who are opposed to this decision.

Furthermore, as revealed in estimates, as part of a broader reform piece the future of Service SA will be examined. No commitments have been made as to whether there will be further closures. Modbury patrons are already facing a future where an additional 10 kilometres of travel will be required. Prospect patrons are split between travelling to the city and paying for parking or going the extra distance to Port Adelaide. Mitcham patrons will need to turn back to the Marion centre, which many came from in the first place due to the huge waiting lines. It is duplicitous to tag a budget that promotes better services but which instead is closing centres that provide community access and assistance to a range of government agencies.

Turning to issues of inequality and poverty affecting our state, it is astonishing that South Australia is currently in a situation where the wealth of the lowest 20 per cent of income earners has dropped by 9 per cent whilst the wealth of the highest 20 per cent has risen by 53 per cent. We have approximately 131,945 South Australians living in poverty, including 22,350 children. The budget is silent on this and is not instituting any programs to address the growing issue of the working poor and underemployed who are living in poverty. In fact, it appears to be compounding the problems of poverty.

From November, Housing Trust rents for low-income tenants in bedsits of one-bedroom cottage flats will face up to five increases in rent over the next three years, according to the new budget measures. That means that by 2021 approximately 3,000 tenants will be paying up to $50 per week more, equating to about $2,500 per year. More importantly, these increases in rent are not resulting as a consequence of a corresponding increase in income from Housing Trust tenants. What happened to the Liberal commitment to lower costs?

Statistics from Foodbank's most recent report 'Rumbling Tummies: Child Hunger in Australia' identify that more and more families are finding themselves in a position where they are having to decide between paying their rent or feeding themselves. More than half of parents in Australia have admitted to not paying bills in order to be able to afford to buy food for their household. More than half of those parents expect it to become more challenging to provide food for their families in the future as the cost of living continues to rise.

Almost nine out of 10 parents have skipped a meal so that their children can eat, with one in five parents having to let their children go a whole day without eating any food, fresh food, at least once a week. Yet the government deems it acceptable to cut proactive pilot programs such as Right Bite in the interests of saving a few dollars.

Right Bite was a program designed to supply fresh fruit and vegetables to schools to encourage healthy attitudes towards food. The pilot was scheduled to end in 2019, when a decision would be made about the feasibility and cost effectiveness of rolling it out to all public schools. Eating enough food is important for a child's healthy growth and development, and it is pivotal for our state's future growth to invest in the health of our children. It is the government's responsibility to alleviate the burden of poverty and ensure that families are able to afford the necessities of life.

Welfare and front-line groups, through very public media campaigns, are creating awareness about the extent of poverty and growing inequalities in our society. The government needs to heed this advice and stand up for the most vulnerable in our community with programs and services and, just as importantly, strategies to combat this growing problem, which is reaching epidemic proportions.

This is not just an epidemic in metropolitan areas. Rural areas across our state are feeling the cuts and inequities as well. Distance, isolation and an often harsh climate create further issues for those living in rural and remote areas. Housing security is one of the fundamental pillars for a family to be able to maintain good health, education and employment outcomes, yet the government allowed funding to stop on 30 June for the National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing. Problematic overcrowding still exists, and the population is growing. The government should not turn a blind eye and remove itself from responsibility simply because the matter is out of sight.

Whilst on the issue of government responsibility, let's take a look at redress. The national scheme that came through our parliament fell short of where it should have been in terms of monetary compensation, indexation of entitlements, access to counselling and eligibility, as identified and established in the royal commission's recommendations of December 2017.

Regardless of the limitations of the national scheme, there was no action taken and no effort to acknowledge the shortfalls of the scheme and those gaps in services and programs by our state government. Where they could not meet schematic demands for counselling, why did the government not set up further provisions for free counselling services for the survivors? The survivors deserve the redress as proposed by the royal commission, yet the budget neglects to introduce any measures to introduce the range of shortfalls in the National Redress Scheme. If the government is true to its word for better services for South Australians, I truly hope that it includes progress on this commitment as on others.

I raised earlier the growing issue of the working poor and underemployed, who are living in poverty. The closing down of services, insufficient availability of jobs and an increasingly insecure workforce are all factors contributing to the exposure to poverty that many are confronted with. Many workers barely make enough to keep up with the cost of living, and not nearly enough is being done to rectify this matter.

Studies reflect that 2.4 million workers nationwide are being underpaid and that 43 per cent have at some time been paid less than the minimum wage. Disproportionately, it is the most vulnerable members of our community who are hit hardest by underemployment, regardless of whether they are remote workers, have a disability, are new to the workforce, are returning to the workforce after time away, have migrant backgrounds, or have complex family situations.

I have been following the budget quite closely and all I can say is that it falls short, based on their own criteria. We were promised more jobs, yet the program of privatisations and closures is culling jobs instead. There are no job creation initiatives or infrastructure projects in this budget. We were promised better services, yet front-line services are being cut, with those left soon to be acquiring additional demands with little to no financial support.

Our state budget should not be used for political pointscoring. It is about doing what is needed to ensure we grow while supporting all members of our society proportionately. It is about doing the right thing. It is clear that this budget is not a fair budget. Any growth in GDP estimates is outweighed by the negative effects on our society and the economy when your starting-off point is cuts, closures and privatisations. This budget creates an additional burden on South Australians who are already doing it tough and struggling to get food on the table for their families.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. J.S.L. Dawkins.

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