Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Medicare) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

  (a) the Government has delayed release of the Productivity Commission's review of the GST distribution until after the South Australian state election on 17 March 2018;

  (b) the Productivity Commission's draft report recommended changes to the distribution of GST revenue that would see South Australia lose up to $557 million in the first year alone;

  (c) South Australia did not receive one new dollar of infrastructure funding in the 2017-18 budget;

  (d) education funding to South Australia has been cut by $210 million by the Government; and

  (e) the Government’s failure to support Holden has resulted in thousands of job losses in South Australia; and

(2) calls on the Government to provide South Australia with its fair share of Commonwealth funding and to release the Productivity Commission’s report prior to 17 March.

South Australia currently has 11 seats in federal parliament. Four of them are held by the Liberal Party. Those four are held by margins of five per cent or less. There's a very logical reason for that and a clear reason understood by South Australian voters, and that is that South Australia, under the Turnbull government and previously the Abbott government, has been dudded. It's as simple as that, and that's why voters in South Australia do not vote for very many members of the coalition in this place.

They have been dudded with respect to the River Murray. They've been dudded with respect to the GST share of funding. They've been dudded with respect to the infrastructure spending for South Australia. Earlier today, we had a debate about the $210 million cut from education funding in South Australia as well. Then, when you look at the submarine contract, you can see that it was a debacle from the outset, and it still is. The simple reality is that federal Liberal members from South Australia cannot be trusted to defend the interests of South Australians, and the voters know that and their vote is reflected in the number of members here in this place.

Let me turn to infrastructure funding for a moment. When the coalition government came to office some five years ago, they announced an infrastructure plan of about $50 billion. Of that, $2 billion was going to go to South Australia. That is four per cent of the total funds. South Australia has seven per cent plus of the population and over 11 per cent of the national roads, but it was going to get four per cent of the infrastructure funds. But, to make matters worse, the federal government then dropped the supplementary road funding that South Australia had been receiving for 20 years under both sides of politics. They dropped it altogether—$20 million or thereabouts each year.

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