Matt Williams (Hindmarsh, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to pay tribute to Allen Bolaffi, a respected business leader in South Australia who passed away suddenly on the weekend. Allen, as the Minister for Education mentioned earlier today in the House, was a man widely regarded in the business community. He was professional, he had a lot of integrity about what he did and he had the best interests of South Australia at heart.

He was a champion of the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce for 20 years. He successfully grew that body to become one of the pre-eminent industry associations in South Australia. I attended many of the AICC events over the years and was always impressed with their professionalism and with their wide consultation across both spectrums as politics as well as the broader business community. I want to acknowledge the work that Allen did in his capacity as head of that body over the years. I also want to pass on my condolences to his family, in particular his son Reuben, who I have come across in my time as a member of parliament. I know these are difficult times and he has lots of support from people around him.

Allen was an accountant and also a specialist in financial management. We have heard a lot about financial management over these last couple of weeks of the budget. We just heard the previous speaker talk about some other changes in the budget. We all appreciate that when we do have some financial challenges, we have to do something about them. Sometimes those decisions are challenging and sometimes they need a bit of courage. We have to take action and that is what we are doing this side of the House.

If we look at the situation we are in at the moment, we have to make some serious changes to what we are doing. This is not our responsibility alone, as we all know. It is our responsibility now, but we have not caused this mess that we are in. If we go back a step, we know that the former Labor government spent so much money and wasted a lot of money with a lot of interest payments going out of Australia each year—around $700 million, which could do a lot for the services that the members opposite speak about such as the services to health and to the community.

Let's reduce this deficit, let's get our finances under control so we can fund the health and education services. Members opposite will remember that six years after promising to end the blame game between state and federal governments, they made it worse with a $1.6 billion cut to the projected funding for state public hospitals. On state hospitals, I am pleased that the government has committed more over the next four years to health. In my state of South Australia there is an increase of $293 million over those four years.

In education, there will be $275 million over four years. If we look at where our education is now, we have got declining standards according to the World Economics Forum and other reports such as the PISA report. We have got money going in but we also need changes in other areas of our system. I have spoken about that before in the House.

I want to make a couple of other points about where Labor left us. Their border protection budget blew out by more than $11 billion. We all know about the tragic consequences of the deaths at sea. They need to be reminded of that so that they can get that policy right or so they can help us as we are getting the policy right.

Finally, the Commonwealth debt of $12 billion is three-quarters the size of the entire South Australian budget. I think it is a telling factor that the size of a state budget is the size of the Commonwealth debt. It is probably the size of the Tasmanian budget. That is now. In the future, it is only get worse and become $16 billion if we do not do something now. It is more than the whole cost of the NDIS, more than the entire cost of tertiary education and more than the entire cost of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. That is why it is imperative that we start making some hard decisions now for the benefit of our future services in this country.

House adjourned at 20:00