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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-10-17 Daily Xml
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State Budget

The Hon. R.P. WORTLEY (15:37): Cuts, closures and privatisations: these are three words that perfectly sum up the Marshall Liberal government's first budget. Treasurer Rob Lucas, in delivering his first budget in 17 years, has let loose on our state's most vulnerable. This budget simply does not take responsibility for all South Australians and in particular punishes public transport users, Housing Trust tenants and patients in our health system. Furthermore, for every cut, closure or cancelled service, our state's social and economic stability is further diminished. With the economy on the up, now is actually the time to be investing in a future full of potential and optimism.

South Australians deserve credit for their resilience, particularly through the global and national challenges that have faced us in recent times. At this point, I will not dwell on the fact that the federal Liberal Party not only drove the car industry out of the country and engineered the naval shipbuilding valley of death; instead, I acknowledge the resilient spirit of South Australians as collectively these challenges were stared down.

South Australia always punches above its weight. Since December 2014, there have been 43 consecutive months of job growth. At the end of the past financial year, we had the third lowest unemployment rate of any state. In these current conditions, while it is important to be cautious, it is also important that we be optimistic. The Liberal government's budget is about as far away from the idea of optimism as you can get, and we could all be forgiven for thinking that we were back in 2001 when the Treasurer handed down his recent budget.

This budget has struck me as a document that has been cooked up by the Treasurer over years and years of resentment and bitterness. It is a document that is driven from the bitterness of four successive electoral defeats and resentment aimed at the people of South Australia, and, more remarkably, it is aimed even more so at South Australians who are experiencing tough times.

What the Treasurer has failed to understand while handing down a budget predicated by years of bitterness and resentment is that the world has changed since 2001. Indeed, our state has undergone huge transformations in the 16 years since the Treasurer wandered through the political wilderness. What I find most staggering is that, in all this time, the Treasurer has not come up with any new ideas. He has gone straight back to the Liberal playbook of the 1990s: privatisations, cancellations, closures and cuts.

How can the Treasurer have spent 16 years in opposition and not sought to establish a vision or plan for the future? The Treasurer has shown no interest in the state's future—in particular, in investing in our young people. Now is not the time to be closing TAFE campuses, when we need more skilled jobs than ever before. Now is not the time to cut a program that supplied free government-funded laptops for senior high school students across South Australia. We need to invest in education and help prepare our children for the jobs of the future.

Instead of imposing savage cuts on our health system, the Premier and the health minister should be talking with doctors and nurses and developing ways to improve efficiency without affecting patient care outcomes. The privatisation of SA Pathology is one of the ways in which the health system will be impacted by this budget. Privatisation could mean fewer labs, fewer clinicians and longer waiting times. The privatisation of SA Pathology might also mean higher out-of-pocket expenses for patients. Let us remember that the Premier told South Australians ahead of the last state election that the Liberals did not have a privatisation agenda. Yet, at the first opportunity, the Treasurer has handed down a budget doing exactly that, selling off our vital services.

I was also surprised that not one dollar in the budget was set aside for farmers suffering through the drought. I note that the New South Wales government has developed a $1 billion package for drought-affected communities. This is only the tip of the iceberg. Public transport services and routes are set to be cut, Housing Trust rents are set to be increased, Crime Stoppers has been cut, park-and-ride services have been cancelled, and the Adelaide Remand Centre is set to be privatised.

Over the past few weeks, I have joined my colleagues in campaigning against the planned closure of three busy Service SA centres. We have now gathered over 6,000 signatures from people who do not want to see their services closed. There are more than 11 million transactions at Service SA every year. We know that the waiting times at Service SA centres are long enough; closing these centres will just make life harder for everyday South Australians. It just does not make sense.

The comment that has been made several times while I have been collecting signatures for the 'Save Service SA' petition is that the Premier and Treasurer did not say anything about closing Service SA centres before the election. People are justifiably very angry that the Liberals did not come clean with their agenda ahead of the state election. The negative feedback on this issue has been overwhelming. People feel very angry and very hurt—

Members interjecting:

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Hon. D.G.E. Hood): Order! Time having expired, I call the Hon. Ms Lee.

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