Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-09-09 Daily Xml

Contents

Building What Matters Campaign

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (15:10): Supplementary: why has this campaign been approved and what behavioural change does it create?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (15:11): Again, the details, in terms of the evaluation of the purposes of the campaign, are revealed publicly, but in broad terms the government's position was that, particularly as we were seeking economic recovery, particularly in the last 18 months with both an economic stimulus package and the need to save as many jobs and businesses as we could in terms of the impacts of COVID-19, which was obviously an overlay for part of the campaign, was important for the people of South Australia to understand where their hard-earned taxpayer dollars were being spent: on very important social infrastructure, such as massive amounts of investment in hospitals and health facilities right across the board that the Minister for Health has been talking about in this chamber, very significant expenditure on schools and education facilities that the Minister for Education has talked about, and again massive expenditure on transport and road projects in particular that the Minister for Transport has been talking about.

Public sector investment in public infrastructure is critical in terms of jobs and businesses and economic recovery in South Australia, and advising people, first, of where their hard-earned taxpayer dollars are going, and the value of that is one very important policy goal, and, secondly, also advising business that may want to tender for important public sector infrastructure projects and being aware of the pipeline of projects that are flowing is obviously another very important policy goal in which taxpayers will be very much interested.

The precise terms of the evaluation and what is meant to be achieved will be made available, if they have not already been made available. This government has been transparent in terms of government advertising. The cost of the campaigns and the evaluations are made public on one of the government websites.