Rod Sawford (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No matter where you look in South Australia—whether it be politics, business, unions, education, health, public transport or infrastructure—governance and leadership are all too often seriously compromised. It is a dynamic that has dogged South Australia for at least the last 20 years and probably longer. The tripartite relationship between the top end of town and the corporate world, the media, particularly the commercial media, and executive government is too often clouded in questionable goings-on.

State governments have had a far too comfortable and accommodating relationship with the top end of town. Who could forget the State Bank fiasco in the late 1980s, which shamed major political parties and the media? During the Liberals’ term from 1993 to 2002, we endured the folly of the waste of taxpayers’ money on the National Wine Centre, overspending on the Hindmarsh Stadium and the almost criminally botched sale at a loss of the TAB. During the current government’s term, it is going to happen again: $55 million of taxpayers’ money has been allocated to build a grandstand in the Adelaide parklands used for car racing and horseracing. This grandstand, or ‘stand for the grand’, is to be three or four storeys high, 248 metres long and 10.8 metres wide. Despite taxpayers paying for this monstrosity, it will not have one public seat. It will be a facility for government and the corporate world. The audacity, the arrogance and the contempt implicit in the funding of this grandstand beggers belief and suggests that a section of the government is totally out of touch with the constituency of Adelaide.

A second matter is the all-too-comfortable and cosy relationship state governments in South Australia have had with the media. Although it is understandable that the media would protect its income stream and the people who provide the advertising revenue, it nevertheless too often compromises the fourth estate in South Australia, and it shows. The governments, too, protect themselves. High-profile business and media personnel are strategically appointed to government boards and paid handsomely for their time, participation and support of government. Whether they realise it or not, they are compromised and diminished.

I have always believed that the sale of the TAB in South Australia demanded a royal commission inquiry. It still does. I am starting to believe that the proposed sale of the Cheltenham racecourse and the redevelopment of Victoria Park also demand a royal commission inquiry. There exists a bad smell about these matters. It is stronger than the Bolivar sewage treatment works. But the likelihood of either inquiry happening is pretty small. Too many people in both major political parties, at the top end of town and possibly in the media would be exposed. The irony is that the same people come up time and time again, and bubbling away at another level is the increasing nondisclosure of in-kind and political donations closely aligned to the major political parties at the top end of town. The lobbyist of the SAJC promoting the sale of Cheltenham racecourse—the best stormwater site in the western suburbs—and the Victoria Park redevelopment being appointed to the committee to give advice to government on stormwater management is a very bad look. (Time expired)