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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-06-14 Daily Xml
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State Government

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (15:30): I rise to speak about the priorities of this government in the lead-up to the budget. We know that South Australians are hurting due to the cost of living. Since this government came to office, the typical family is nearly $400 a week worse off. Our party has called for broad cost-of-living support of $250 per household for South Australian working families who have not been eligible for the federal government's energy rebate.

Labor, who like to claim they look after our most disadvantaged, have splashed a whole lot of cash on events, exclusively paying for people from interstate to be flown here, wined and dined here and partied here. For a pensioner living in Davoren Park, I doubt they attended the LIV Golf event. They would be too busy trying to save their funds for food and electricity to be searching out Poolside Pete's latest party.

It has also just been revealed that the Adelaide Aquatic Centre, an ageing asset belonging to the City of Adelaide, which has struggled for years to know what to do with it, will cost a total of $135 million—an extra $55 million of that for a waterslide. The Liberal Party was happy before the election to fund the rebuild with council and the federal government at a total cost of $75 million, which would have had us funding $25 million—$25 million versus $135 million. It will not even be an asset that could potentially be used for international competitions, such as the Commonwealth Games should they be held here, as it is only at recreational pool standard.

The council, meanwhile, is laughing at how easily they got off the hook and cost-shifted it all to the state. In yet another broken promise, the old pool will not remain open until the new pool is built. As anyone who saw the Monday news bulletin on Channel 9 would know, those users are not happy. This blowout is on top of the $5 billion extra on the north-south corridor and an extra $1.2 billion on the Women's and Children's Hospital.

Let's consider the issue on which Labor was elected: ramping. Labor introduced ramping into South Australia. Transforming Health, which downgraded our public hospitals, including closing the beloved Repat hospital, was an unmitigated disaster. In February 2022, the last full month of the Marshall Liberal government, 1,522 hours were lost outside our emergency departments on the ramp. This is after going through a one-in-100-year pandemic. In May 2023, the number of hours lost to ramping has nearly doubled to a huge 2,973—and this is the government which promised to fix ramping.

South Australians have just endured the worst 12 months of ramping in our state's history. In the 13-month period from May 2022 to now, more than 44,000 hours of paramedics' and patients' time has been lost on ramps outside our emergency departments, which is the equivalent of five years. Presumably, the new government has actually had cooperation from the Ambulance Employees Association sub-branch of the Labor Party, whose members were telling voters at polling booths at last year's election that their lives would be at risk if they voted Liberal.

What does Labor and the association have to say to the couple I doorknocked in Hope Valley who, after they called for an ambulance for a suspected heart attack, were phoned back later and told to get to the hospital themselves. To rectify this, we have called for the budget to include an effective retention and attraction scheme so that South Australia is competitive with other states when it comes to recruiting our highly valued and exhausted health staff.

On another issue, it is now almost 12 months since the Liberal Party released a 10-point plan for renting and homelessness, and Labor has ignored half of those suggestions. Should I run out of time, I did outline them in my speech yesterday on the residential tenancies bill, but I will reiterate them:

call for a rental application process which is simplified so that tenants do not have to keep putting the same information in endlessly;

continue our extension of the domestic and family crisis accommodation program from the very successful pilot of 31 beds to 100 beds, which would then enable families not to be accommodated through the hotel and motel program but to be accommodated in dwellings, which would save a significant amount of money on that program;

implement an immediate accommodation program for other family household units, which would set aside specific places for families and, in the same vein, would save money through the emergency hotel-motel accommodation program;

recommit to the Affordable Community Housing Land Tax Exemption program; and

allow those who stay in motels and hotels long term access to the Private Rental Assistance Program.

Time expired.

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