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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-02-19 Daily Xml
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South Australian Jobs

The Hon. J.E. HANSON (15:34): The celebration of the opening of the Northern Connector occurred on the weekend. It is something that we in the Labor Party are proud of. We are incredibly proud of it, and so we should be. Delivering on an $850 million project of over 15 kilometres of road, which removes over six intersections for those of our citizens who live in the north is something to be proud of. This will deliver time and cost saving to the tens of thousands of people who use the road to get to work or use it to get to our wine regions or just use it to get home to their families. But this project is about more than just a road. We in the Labor Party understand that this kind of economic action is critical to the South Australian economy. Between the Northern Connector and the Darlington project there are almost 1,000 construction jobs on the ground, building these projects.

The project was commenced at around the time that we saw the Elizabeth plant close down. It was critical at that time to those who were losing their jobs to give them a chance at using their skills and having real ongoing employment. The fact is this was not a one-off. Labor understands industry and the importance of saving careers for South Australian families. While in government, Labor helped secure the future role of Nyrstar in Port Pirie and Arrium in Whyalla, securing for thousands of workers and their families ongoing employment and preventing a collapse in regional South Australia that would have been catastrophic for our state.

Closer to where we stand today, in North Plympton Labor saved over 100 manufacturing jobs at New Castalloy, a business that specialised in making motorcycle rims for Harley-Davidsons. These are just a few examples of Labor's attitude to providing and securing good jobs, good careers, ongoing employment and, in turn, good economic results for our state. This, of course, stands in stark contrast to an employment disaster being presided over by the current Marshall government—

The Hon. J.S.L. Dawkins: Who wrote this rubbish?

The Hon. J.E. HANSON: I will take that interjection, Mr Dawkins—with your highest unemployment rate in the nation.

Let's start with the bizarre attitude taken by the hapless and hopeless minister 'Bingo' Pisoni, who not only did not care when New Castalloy closed, he also axed the training packages which Labor had made available to them to upskill and train them and transition them into other jobs. He axed them, but it actually got worse. Housing starts have fallen by 21 per cent under the Liberals. That is down by about 3,000 homes. Twelve SA builders have gone into insolvency since the Liberals were elected.

Let's look further into civil construction. In 2018-19, $495 million was provided in federal infrastructure for our state. By next year, we will see this collapse down to just $75 million. It is an 80 per cent reduction of over $400 million that is no longer being placed into our construction industry. Now that the projects that the Labor Party secured are ending and their official lives of construction are over, where are the Liberals putting any runs on the board when it comes to jobs?

We have seen the bungling of the GlobeLink project—a project that the Liberals plugged and plugged and plugged. They allocated $20 million to scope their project, only to unceremoniously dump it out the back door earlier this year. The mishandling of the GlobeLink project really puts the Liberal promises of completing the Women's and Children's project by 2024 in some pretty serious doubt.

But further than all of this, we now see the inaction and indecision of our Premier around jobs on full display, with their catastrophic bungling of the $80 billion worth of defence projects which are so vital to our state. From the dizzy heights promised by the then Liberal minister, Mr Pyne, of 90 per cent local content in 2016, we have seen the Liberals retreat to 60, then to 50 and now estimates place it as low as 30 per cent that they are now promising. This is not some sort of partisan spin. The French submarine builder Naval clearly warned it will slash local content on the future subs project. What do we hear from the Premier? 'There's been a miscommunication.'

It is worth asking: where is our Premier on defence jobs? Why will he not even speak to the existing workforce of hundreds of workers at ASC? Why will the Premier not even speak up against his federal Liberal masters to fight against their jobs being sent interstate? What does all this mean? It means less jobs at the time we have the highest unemployment rate in the nation. What it means is the Liberal Party, after two years, still does not have the runs on the board when it comes to jobs. More than this, they did not have a plan when they got into government to create jobs, and they do not have any idea how to solve the jobs crisis that is rapidly unfolding before them.

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