Appropriation Bill I
Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (18:38): A lot has been said, obviously, about the budget and I will not trawl through too many figures, because my colleagues have already spoken very ably about many aspects of this budget. I have a view with regard to budgets that the principles are pretty simple. I know that running a state budget would be a very large, very difficult task and we have all gone through hundreds of pages of documents. I am not underestimating the effort and work that goes into it that, but some of the principles are simple.
A budget is a plan. A budget is a plan for where you are now, where you want to go, what you are going to spend, what you are not going to spend, what you hope to achieve, what debt you think you can incur and what savings you think you can make. It is no different. The principle is exactly the same for a home household budget (whether it is a single couple or a large family with lots of kids), a small business, a medium business or indeed the state.
The fact that this budget has come so late is absolutely ridiculous. There is no need to beat around the bush with that. A budget for a financial year that comes out on 16 September is a sign of bad management, and there is no avoiding that. Budgets have to be balanced. They absolutely have to be balanced and the way you balance your budget, if you start with a good one, is by following the budget. You balance your budget by following it. You will get wrinkles and creases and little deviations in the road along the way, but if all things are considered, and you keep yourself on track to what you said you would do, your budget will be balanced.
This government swore black and blue after the election that it was going to enter into a new era of transparency, care, love, devotion, consultation and all of that sort of thing with the people of South Australia. I do not really know whether the leak of the Sustainable Budget Commission's report was part of that new era of transparency.
The Treasurer tells us that it was not part of that era of transparency, that it was a genuine mistake. We will never know, and I will never know; only a few people will ever know whether that was a government leak or a malicious inside leak. One way or another, it got out. Essentially, it is another sign of bad management. Information like that does not get out in a well-managed environment. It is just a fact, regardless of how it got out there, that it should not have. I think that really does discredit this government.
In regard to where we are now, and the picture heading into this budget, I will give a bit of a snapshot, and of course the things I say will be largely regionally focused. As we all know, and I have said many times, the electorate of Stuart is my overriding passion, but I do care enormously for regional South Australia more broadly.
Last year, exports fell by 14 per cent. Mining jobs, people employed in mining, were at a six-year low, so there are fewer now than there were six years ago. There is no regional infrastructure to speak of, and this is all after eight years of Labor government. If this state's employment rate had increased in line with national growth, if this state had kept its share of jobs, then we would have 34,000 more people employed in South Australia than we do currently. So, that is the environment that we start with when this government comes to put together this budget.
Let me talk about the AAA credit rating—the highly prized, highly touted AAA credit rating. I agree, it is extremely important. There is no doubt about that we should strive to hold onto that credit rating, but let me tell you that it should not be so hard. It should not be so hard to hold onto that AAA credit rating. The Treasurer would have us believe that he is an extraordinary financial manager to hold onto this AAA credit rating.
The reality is that, every year for eight years since the government came into office, the government has had unexpected surplus income and, simultaneously, has overspent. If they just looked after either one of those things it would not be so hard to keep the AAA credit rating, if they had just had the surplus income and kept spending where it was meant to be, or if they had not had the excess money coming in and kept spending where it was meant to be, everything would have been okay.
This is not, as the Treasurer would have you believe, any crisis to do with the global financial crisis. The global financial crisis is real and has had an impact, but the other things have had a far greater impact on this state's budget than the global financial crisis has ever had. I see the Treasurer telling us day in, day out, what a marvellous manager he is because he has managed somehow to hold onto this AAA credit rating.
The reality is that he is like somebody with a driver's licence living on 11 points, getting speeding tickets and parking tickets, running red lights, doing all sorts of traffic infringements all the time and, at the end of the year, trying to say to people, 'But I have still got my licence. I must be a wonderful, wonderful driver.' It is ridiculous. This is the sort of analogy he is trying to give us with regard to his financial management. He leaves us in this condition where somehow you just have to cut and cut and just grapple to keep the budget together, just like the driver who is perpetually running red lights and getting speeding tickets but then trying to say they are a wonderful driver, because they still have their driver's licence. It is just ridiculous.
I want to identify some spending and service cuts in this budget that are going to seriously hurt regional South Australia. Top of the list for me, not because it involves the greatest amount of money but because it cuts right to the heart of regional communities, is the removal of the small schools grant. For people who do not know, that is a grant that goes to small schools in regional areas. It is $30,000 per school.
I have 42 schools in the electorate of Stuart and a lot more than half of them are small schools that need this money. There are a lot of schools around with 20 and 30 students. If you take a school with 20 or 30 students and take $30,000 out of their operating budget, more than $1,000 per student, that is an enormous amount for a small school in regional South Australia. The issue is that, if you lose the school, the community shrinks.
Our communities are already under enormous pressure, but if you lose the school the community really suffers. As soon as you start taking your kids to school in another town you start shopping in that other town and getting involved in the other town. You might play netball or football, buy your fuel and all sorts of other things in another town. The government refuses to say that it is going to close these schools, but is just pulling the rug out from under them, so that is a dreadful thing.
The cuts to PIRSA: $80 million in savings, 180 jobs. This has been talked about a lot so I will not go into it in too much detail, but that is disgraceful. That will impact Jamestown, a wonderful town that I represent, probably more than anywhere else, let alone the impact on regional South Australia across the board. That goes directly to the heart of our exports. PIRSA cuts in agriculture will hurt our exports. Just as an aside, grain growing in South Australia, one of the most important exports we have, supports over 100 small towns in regional South Australia—very important. One hundred small towns; please do not forget that—very important.
Thirty two Country Health scholarships were given out last year, and I credit the government for that. I think that is a fantastic thing. I would certainly advocate for more, but there were 32 Country Health scholarships last year. The day after the budget, the Country Health website says, 'This year we have 15.' Thirty-two to 15 scholarships for regional young people to get medical training and then hopefully come back and work in the regions.
I have talked about shared services here many times. The snapshot on shared services is that the government planned to spend $60 million originally to save $124 million. What they have actually done is adjusted their savings target. They expect to save more, but the bottom line at the moment is that over the last few years this government has spent about $73 million to save $78 million, so right now they are $5 million ahead. Okay, $5 million is good, but that $5 million creates regional devastation. Moving these jobs from regional areas to the city is dreadful. Exactly the same technology that allows the centralisation of services such as IT, human resources and payroll would allow those services to be done in regional centres. We could have payroll in Mount Gambier, human resources in Port Augusta and Port Lincoln looking after IT, etc. They planned to save $190 million, so right now there is a savings shortfall of $70 million. This program is just not working.
Other cuts include $12½ million to tourism. It rolls off the tongue pretty easily, but $12½ million to tourism is a lot of people working very hard in tourism in Adelaide and all around the 12 regions that Tourism SA is divided up into. That regional income is vital. There are regional towns and businesses and families struggling all over South Australia, and we all know that many of them have turned to tourism to supplement their income. It might be supplementing a farm income or saving a town through tourism jobs, so to cut in that area is another direct attack on regional South Australia.
I also highlight the First Home Owners Grant. Something people may not quite understand is that that is now limited to new homes, and that is going to be devastating for regional South Australia. It is much harder to get a new home built in regional South Australia than it is in Adelaide; it is much harder because it is much harder to get the tradesmen and the builders to do it. It is much easier for a young person, a young couple or a young family to buy an existing home. So that is going to hurt regional South Australia far more than it is going to hurt other areas, and it certainly will hurt other areas as well.
I will touch now on the Parks recreation centre. I saw the member for Croydon today laughing and giggling about this, and he said clearly on the record that he supports that cut. I think that is disgraceful. He said that at exactly the same time hundreds of people from that area were out the front protesting about it. He also laughed and giggled, and the first thing he could say any time anybody would raise it was, 'Well, have you been there?' Guess what? I have been there. I lived in that electorate for a few years and I spent quite a few years going to the Parks recreation centre. It is a fantastic centre. Not only is this budget and the government hurting regional South Australia, it is also hurting people in its heartland. That is in the electorate of Enfield; it is in the suburb of Mansfield Park—good, strong Labor voting territory, no doubt—yet they are prepared to hurt that community as well. Looking after local, small communities clearly is not an objective of this government
Let me say what is good about this. There are some good things in this budget, and I am happy to acknowledge those things. Let me highlight a few. One is $5 million for the Central Oval precinct upgrade in Port Augusta. That is a fantastic project led by the Port Augusta city council, and $5 million from this government towards that project is fantastic. Let me also point out $3 million per year to the Regional Development Infrastructure Fund. That is very important. It is a small increase but a very important thing. There will be extra money for chemotherapy services in regional areas, and Port Augusta Hospital is my highest priority with regard to putting in chemotherapy services. It is a fantastic thing, and I congratulate the government on that.
Let me also highlight that those were Liberal opposition election commitments going into the last election. The government begrudgingly copied those promises. We offered $5 million for Central Oval. We actually offered in year one a $40 million increase to the Regional Development Infrastructure Fund, taking it from about $2.5 million to about a $42.5 million increase in year one through our royalties for regions; 25 per cent of mining royalties go directly to that fund. We were going to do $40 million; they have done $3 million. Thank you for the $3 million increase; that is very positive but not good enough. Chemotherapy: we promised a chemotherapy service for the Port Augusta Hospital.
Those three things are all fantastic but, guess what, they are all copies of Liberal opposition policy going into the last election. I thank them for the money and am very grateful; I give them full credit for that but, if we had not made those promises heading into the last election, the government would not have copied our promises and they would not be in this budget.
What would we have done differently? It is pretty simple. The budget would always have been difficult, there is no doubt about that. It would always have been difficult to balance the budget, but we would have found it much easier. We would not have been the car running all over the road at high speed, running red lights, and then bragging about somehow holding on to our driver's licence. We would have saved $1 billion by rebuilding the Royal Adelaide Hospital on-site where there are state-of-the-art facilities in place already. We would have left them and we would have built around them very productively and, compared to the new rail yards hospital, over the life of the projects we would have saved $1 billion. That is significant.
We would not be spending the hundreds of millions of dollars that the government is going to put towards upgrading the Adelaide Oval. We would have actually done a public-private partnership funded by land sales for a brand-new world-class sporting and entertainment facility on the rail yards site in addition to leaving the Adelaide Oval as it is, the special Adelaide Oval.
We would have saved $500 million by axing the trams going to West Lakes and Semaphore. So, with those things alone, that is over $2 billion we would have had that is not in this budget at the moment. We would have saved money on consultants. We would have spent far less on consultants than the current government has. We would have axed the Thinkers in Residence program and we would have reduced the number of ministries, just to name a few things. It does not have to be so hard. It does not have to be so hard to hold on to your AAA credit rating. It is never easy. I am not for a minute underestimating the amount of effort it takes to be a treasurer or to run a treasury department, but it does not have to be as hard as this Treasurer would have us believe—that somehow he just keeps it all together because he is so wonderful.
Where are we heading? In summary, in this budget, we are heading towards $2.5 billion of new fees and taxes and service cuts. Where are those things? Where are those service cuts? They are going to hit the farming industry, the wine industry and the tourism industry. They are going to hit a lot of industries very important to regional South Australia. They are going to come in the removal of the 3.3¢ a litre fuel rebate for all fuel sold more than 100 kilometres from Adelaide. That is enormous. There is not one thing that we do in the country that does not include transport or freight. They are the sorts of things that are going to be included in that $2 billion of new fees and taxes. We are heading towards a $7.5 billion debt. It is an easy number to say, but it is actually quite hard to contemplate. A debt of $7.5 billion for this state is going to cost $2 million a day in interest. That is not hard to understand—$2 million every day of the year in interest. Imagine that. Our leader has said so many times—and I will repeat it, because it is a very valid, clearly understandable point—$2 million every day just spent away.
Imagine if you could have had half the debt. Imagine if you had done the things that we had suggested and had half the debt in place and it was only going to cost you $1 million a day. You would have $365 million left that you would not have to spend or that you could spend somewhere else. As our leader says so often, imagine if you cut your debt and your interest payments in half and you had $1 million to give away to communities all over South Australia every day, including city communities. Imagine if every country town could have $1 million, as well as city suburbs. There is nothing wrong with that. I am fighting for regional South Australia, but money needs to be spent and saved in the city as well.
Imagine if you could go to different suburbs of Adelaide and say, 'We've got $1 million to spend on your suburb today.' How would that be? I reckon that would be pretty fantastic, and I think it is an absolute crime that we are frittering that money away. In closing, I will take you back to my analogy: the Treasurer would have us believe that he is an extraordinary manager; he is just not.
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