Nick McBride responds to the Budget 2024

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (20:53): It gives me great pleasure to speak to this Appropriation Bill. May I say that it was a budget of interest, and it was a budget in which those of us in the Limestone Coast and MacKillop were mentioned, and we were considered, and we are forever grateful.

I will have two parts to this conversation. My first part is obviously going to be about the fact that, for the sake of budgets and the history of MacKillop and me being the member since 2018, sometimes it has been very hard to find good news amongst budgets. This one is pleasant. It is not huge in proportion. I think it is a budget that resembled a little the federal budget, which really does not tell us a lot and does not make any sort of landmark claims to any clear direction. As we all know, we find ourselves in the middle of an election cycle, and it is probably going to be a lot more about the next budget rather than this one now.

Capturing a little bit of the intent of the budget, I know that the people of MacKillop and the Limestone Coast will benefit from the $243 cost-of-living payment, and they tell me that this budget is trying to address the cost of living. We know that families going to government schools will also get a $200 reduction in fees for schooling processes and service subsidies. I know that will be welcomed.

I know that the children of MacKillop and the Limestone Coast are very active in their sporting pursuits and I know the doubling of the $100 sports voucher, where there are now two of them, will be well received; it will be appreciated. For those who may not be interested in sport, it has been extended to those who may wish to participate in music lessons.

There is another one that is really interesting, and I am pleased to see it, although I do not think it really captures the Limestone Coast but there might be potential for it certainly down in Mount Gambier, and that is that stamp duty will be abolished for first-time homebuyers. The biggest problem with MacKillop is that we really do lack developers, we really do lack home builds in any sort of great quantity. I do not think that saving first-home buyers the stamp duty is going to help much in MacKillop, but I can see the intent.

I know that first-home buyers obviously would be struggling with the cost of purchase of new homes, we know that interest rates are going up and we know that everything has become more expensive, so this is a help. Certainly, if there are those big extensive builds around Mount Gambier, I think those buyers are going to appreciate this initiative.

The biggest spend in MacKillop, which I have to say I am really excited about—it came out of the blue, and I will be speaking more about it later—is an $18 million new police station for Naracoorte. I have to say a really big thankyou to the previous Minister for Police and Correctional Services and I now also thank the new Minister for Police and Correctional Services, member for Kavel, Dan Cregan, for this announcement, and for pursuing this new police station and advocating for Naracoorte.

The police station is an $18 million build. It is a very tired and old police station. Ironically, we have had a number of fires. Most recently and sadly, we saw the loss of a local policeman at Lucindale. I know it is not Naracoorte, but I am sure Naracoorte would have been a police station he worked in as he was a policeman who used to travel around many stations, hence why he ended up in Bordertown on the last part of his duty. No doubt, he would have spent a lot of time in the Naracoorte Police Station.

It is really welcome that we are seeing this government initiative of $18 million rolled out into Naracoorte, knowing that the police in a sense (SAPOL) are valuing Naracoorte as a facility. We are not going to be dependent upon Mount Gambier. We are not asking the police to come up from Mount Gambier to monitor Naracoorte. We are actually going to have substantial home office and facilities, and I know that the Naracoorte and surrounding communities are going to be very well served and feel a lot safer with this investment and commitment.

It is a little bit interesting when we see the CFS. They are going to receive $800,000 for an audit and facilities. This is also another great initiative and it is just a matter of what does it mean, what will they find and where will they land? We do know again in Naracoorte they have a CFS headquarters. Recently, it has been frequently used, but has found itself to be quite small with the number of fires.

There has been activity around the CFS headquarters, such as it is. I know they are looking for new facilities. There has not been any announcement yet but, fingers crossed, maybe in the budgets in the future we might see a nice surprise in this area, too, when they do this audit and go around looking at all the sheds knowing that some of our fire trucks in our regions still do not fit in the old sheds, knowing that some of our fire sheds still do not have bathrooms and amenities, flowing water, and it will be nice to address those as well.

It is also interesting that $13.7 million is being rolled out at Lake Hawdon. I made a presentation to the Public Works Committee this week. I am very supportive of the fact that the intent here is for environment, birdlife and native fauna, but the devil is in the detail. Lake Hawdon represents part of our south-eastern water conservation and drainage network. It is an old network, over 100 years old now. It has a lack of maintenance, a lack of development. It has bridges that do not fit and meet the needs of the community. When they start weiring up, using regulators to hold water back in a system that has not been maintained, all I can say is let us watch this space and be careful, because there can be dire consequences upstream from there.

Even though they are only talking about 10 centimetres of extra water being held back, those are the sort of significant holdbacks on this flat landscape in wet seasons that can make a lot of difference. The devil will be in the detail about whether we are going to see any further drainage network cleaned or maintained beyond this regulator so that water can make its way with speed beyond the regulator towards Robe, because I can tell you it is full of reeds, it is full of trees and it probably has not been cleaned in 50 years.

There is $250 million for school infrastructure, obviously noting $155 million at Mount Barker. We can say that, yes, Mount Barker is not quite regional, but I guess it is a growing centre. We are seeing another $62 million towards the northern suburbs and the like. I know that in MacKillop our education facilities do need upgrades. We see that there was $6 million rolled out towards Mount Gambier High. I am looking forward to the day when we see some millions rolled out towards Naracoorte, Lucindale, Penola, Naracoorte South, Millicent and any other school that is obviously being left behind with old infrastructure that is no longer meeting its needs.

What was most interesting in the budget was to see this $715 million over five years to implement universal three-year-old preschool, obviously picking up early childhood. I am not sure where the connections lie here. I do not know where the conductivity lies in regard to child care and early learning. Where is the money going to be rolled out in the way of infrastructure? I can tell you that most of my towns have a shortage of child care. They are full, they are flat out or they do not have any at all.

We are trying to address a seven-year issue in Kingston where there is barely any child care to speak of, with a kindergarten that is very old and away from the school, trying to pick up that child care and early learning alongside the area school. We are still running short and we are still battling there, so it will be interesting to see where that $715 million rolls out. Can it pick up the needs of Bordertown, Naracoorte and other towns where we know there is a shortage of child care?

When you think about it, there are two really good positive aspects about child care and early learning. Firstly, child care allows both partners to be able to enter the workforce, and we know there is a real shortage of employees in regional South Australia. Secondly, we know that the benefits of early learning have the end-of-education outcomes that we are all looking for for greater education at year 12 levels. Greater academic achievements can be made through this early learning before four or five years old.

In roads, there is a massive road issue on the Limestone Coast, with roads beyond 20 years of age needing maintenance and upgrades. We saw $80 million in road safety funding. It is lovely to have the safety funding, but I wonder whether we would need the $80 million of safety funding if we had safer roads. Obviously, the billion dollars and more probably required to resurface some of the roads that are 20 years past their use-by date on the Limestone Coast is not there.

We are all waiting in our region to see what the iPAVe assessment came up with when the iPAVe truck was down there. It is going to take 12 months to divulge and work through that data before we get any sort of insight into what that really does mean with our road surface longevity and whether the roads are really safe.

In road safety, we saw $3.8 million being rolled out for a heavy vehicle—but it would also be any sort of vehicle—parking bay and facilities for travellers just north of Salt Creek. Between Meningie and Kingston, there used to be a service station catering for the needs of travellers. It has all been packed up, closed up and left since COVID and has never reopened. It has certainly left motorists short of a stopping spot between Meningie and Kingston when they travel down through the Coorong, particularly tourists when they are not sure about distances, times and the tyranny of distance and they get caught short. Hopefully, this new parking bay facility for both heavy vehicles and also tourists will be welcome.

Summing up, there was not much to mention but we saw a little bit in health. There was a notice around mental health and some moneys going towards mental health; we are just not sure where it is going to roll out and who is going to receive it. I guess the devil will be in the detail.

As I said, it is a budget in small proportions. There are no big licks of big moneys and big changes. All I can say is that around the health area there is obviously a real need for investment, there is a real need for services, but sometimes you can even throw millions of dollars at the health budget—like the Marshall government did, taking I think around a $6 billion spend to a $7 billion spend—and nothing changes. It is not a really good way of spending the money if that is all you are going to get.

Coming back to some of the things that have rolled out recently in my electorate, and I am really appreciative of the ministers coming down and visiting. It is not maybe right in the budget, but it is certainly a state government rolling out spending in the Limestone Coast and backing up services and industries and shortfalls. It was really welcome to see the Hon. Clare Scriven come down and advocate $800,000 to the Tatiara council for a 10-block development in the industrial area. Most of that will adjoin the Dukes Highway. It is looking like it is going to be oversubscribed and welcome and the developers will be raring to go once this development is completed.

On that same trip when the Hon. Clare Scriven came down she went down to Naracoorte and rolled out another $500,000 to a private developer who bought the old TAFE site in Naracoorte, which was originally a school site, and that old TAFE site is going to be turned into an early learning centre. It is still a bit unknown as to what the whole centre is going to be. There is talk of picking up health rooms and activities by services or specialists alongside that childcare facility, or the childcare facility could be on one side of the building and the other side of the building could be a training centre in childcare facilities and trainers and the like.

It is one thing to have a childcare centre and say you can take 50 or 80 children, but then you need people to run it. In our area where we have a really low unemployment rate, and perhaps it is even lower in those skill levels we are looking for in the way of nurses and teachers and professionals, we do need to start looking towards that training and bringing our next set of school leavers and preparing them for the workforce and making sure that the local training is there for the local issues that we know that we can solve.

Recently, the Minister for Human Services, Ms Nat Cook, came down and she backed up the community centre at Tailem Bend. A lady by the name of Tammy Shepherd has been working with me really closely and she is trying to work with Minister Nat Cook as well in regard to—

An honourable member interjecting:

Mr McBRIDE: We actually had a ball. We had a great time. The Tailem Bend community knows that the state government really does support their community hub. It provides everything from cooking to any sort of mental wellness or unwellness, cars and appointments, just a real service centre go-to place for anyone who would like to volunteer their time because they have got it, or they actually need help. We would really welcome seeing more of these community hubs in towns like Naracoorte and Millicent.

I had the really great fortune of running into the Millicent south primary school, Newbery Primary. I was talking to the principal there about supporting her students and her families. One of the things that is tough to see but is also good to see is the community around a school of a low socio-economic type area. There is a lot of social housing around Millicent south and a lot of issues to try to deal with. Talking to the principal, Leanne, she said, 'If I could work with a community hub in Millicent we could break down some real barriers and get the education to the children and get them into the workforce and get them educated, but not only help the children, help the parents help the children.' That is what seems to be lost a lot of the time with these low socio-economic type issues that are out there in society.

On the bigger issues, these are the ones where you can say, 'I am really appreciative for the budget. I am thankful to the Malinauskas government for considering MacKillop,' as they have with the budget and spends that we have received, but there are some really big issues here for the government that probably need to be highlighted. This is not punching anyone in the nose; this is not saying they are getting it wrong. What it should raise is alarm bells.

If you want to look at alarm bells, go and look at what Victoria is doing right now and where they have got themselves. They tell me that if you add the debt between Queensland, New South Wales and Tasmania, you will end up with the Victorian debt. If you want, talk about a Premier who advocated for either the Commonwealth Games or the Olympic Games, then turned his back on it because he ran out of money. He was building tunnels, bridges, crossings and so forth and he ran out of money and had to stop.

The real question for the state governments of Australia is there is no doubt that no-one wants to get to this position. I do not know what the position is for South Australia—and these are real figures—because when Marshall came to government in 2018, the beyond forward estimates debts were $24 billion. When Marshall left in 2022, it was out to $34 billion. Now, two years and going three years into the Malinauskas Labor government, there are figures now of $44 billion. Ironically, $10 billion increments.

One of the things you do not want in politics or in finance is to say, 'It just rolls off the tongue like it's easy. It just doesn't matter because we will just keep on borrowing.' Let me tell you, we all know those who have lived through these cycles and it all comes back to bite you one day, particularly when interest rates go up like they have and we are not sure where they are heading. I have experience and I have seen the pain when you go to interest rates beyond 20 per cent and that is real and that happened in the late eighties and early nineties. I entered the workforce in 1986.

It is interesting when you look at these big builds that the government is proposing: the north-south corridor, $14 billion, and the Women's and Children's Hospital, $2 billion. They say, 'The longer we wait and the longer we talk about it, those figures will get left behind and soon it will be $15 billion for the north-south corridor and maybe go to $16 billion. The Women's and Children's, we need this and we need that,' and it will be one of the most expensive buildings in the Southern Hemisphere, if not the world, like the RAH was when it was finished.

I am hoping those who are out there thinking about these builds know this is real money, it has to come from somewhere and someone actually has to make the money. In this high-inflationary economy, this is Australia in general but the South Australian economy sits inside of that, we see interest rates rising and the perspective is: interest rates are rising, so who does it affect?

Apparently it only affects 25 per cent of the population. If it only affects 25 per cent of the population that we really do hurt and screw down, the other 75 per cent are enjoying it and the higher interest rates do not really have the effect they are meant to. Then with inflation, we are seeing it is around 3½ per cent or 3¾ per cent—it has been up around 5 per cent and beyond—we all want our pay rises, so you have to pay us more, so then everything costs more.

If efficiencies do not come into it, and there is not an efficiency because now we have a workforce that employs someone and you do not just employ people to work, you have to look after them, you have to look after their mental health and you have to allow them to work from home, and you have to allow them to have WorkCover and so forth. If the health system will not work for them, maybe they will use WorkCover instead. All these sorts of things fall back to employment and ultimately it affects the cost of production, the cost of the system to make anything in this state or the country and it is all way out of control.

What I really wanted to say is we are getting ourselves into a two-tier economy. We have a government economy over here and we have a private economy and they are worlds apart, I can tell you. The private world is absolutely struggling. It cannot find the workers, it cannot find the workers it wants to produce what they need to efficiently on a world market, if they are an exporter. Then we have the government world, the government bureaucracy, and the government contracts. It is almost like it is fairyland Christmas time over here, without any problems. No, we just keep on borrowing money. We just spend a few more billion. It just gets more expensive so we add a couple more billion to it.

What does it matter? It will not be us paying it back, it will be my children paying it back or it will be my grandchildren paying it back. In the end it really does matter. With those reflections, thank you for the opportunity and I wrap it up

Bill read a second time.

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