Appropriation Bill
26/07/2011
The Hon. K.L. VINCENT (16:28): I would like to begin by saying that it is interesting having a job which is both blessed with and burdened by convention and tradition. This becomes particularly evident when one is trying to explain how things work to people in the world outside of this job. I understand, of course, that it is presently the done thing to pass the Appropriation Bill. I know that we need to do so in order for the state to keep on keeping on, so that all of our public servants can be paid and services can be delivered.
But it is strange to me and, I think, to most people who are not already entirely absorbed by the routines and the slightly odd, if I may say so, practices of this building and others governed by the Westminster system.
The strange thing is that there is no real mechanism by which to disagree with the budget. The budget is the piece of governance each year which, I believe, has the greatest effect of any on South Australians.
Yet the only direct critique the government gets on it is the whingeing, whining and, of course, the carping of we non-government members when making speeches and appearances in the media on particular issues of interest. Otherwise, the government of the day is essentially free to enshrine whatever it likes in this legislation, which we duly pass, only, later in the year, to be forced to repeatedly speak up against some of the stupider budget measures in the hope that they might be repealed. I am not saying that I plan to break with tradition and vote against the Appropriation Bill—
An honourable member: Go on!
The Hon. K.L. VINCENT: We have already had tradition broken today with the Hon. Ann Bressington; I don’t think we need any more.
The Hon. J.M.A. Lensink interjecting:
The Hon. K.L. VINCENT: Because that would be terribly bad manners, Michelle Lensink, and a totally useless gesture. We need the budget to be enacted so that we can get on with life in SA, of course, but I wanted to point out that the lack of accountability that the government faces when preparing the budget is truly alarming to me. In that context I would like to take advantage of the fact that I am one of the privileged few who have the amazing opportunity to offer criticism of the budget and briefly offer my critique.
I will be brief, because I have already stated publicly through various avenues my thoughts on this budget. I have made no secret that I think it is a pretty insufficient budget not just because of a few measures here and there but because of the whole attitude of our government towards budgeting. I believe that the priorities of this government are truly upside-down, and so does much of my constituency.
The really clear thing about this budget is the government’s spin on it. From hour one of the budget’s release, Treasurer Jack Snelling hit out hard on the line that, while there was not much spending going on, all the spending that was occurring was directed towards the ‘most vulnerable’ in our society. In the days and weeks which followed budget day we saw Mr Snelling posed with his own family surrounded by babies, elderly people, people with disabilities and other cute so called vulnerable types.
The budget papers themselves were full of smiling nurses holding brand-new babies and other social justice symbolism. This imagery happily accompanied Mr Snelling’s spin that the disability sector was ‘the big winner’ of this year’s budget. You have probably heard this one before, because I have certainly said it before, but it bears repeating: we certainly do not feel like the big winners right now, Mr Snelling. Fortunately, we are not really feeling like idiots either, so all that happy, cuddly spin about what was supposedly a happy, cuddly budget for our ‘most vulnerable’ did not fool us.
In fact, when you look at the budget properly it seems like the government was playing a game of opposites. The government had decided to tell South Australians that it was doing the opposite of what it actually did. The government said that it was spending big on disability with an extra $56 million poured into this area of the budget. The reality is that that money is a forward spend and that this financial year we are only being awarded an extra $6 million for disability services and equipment. While everyone in this sector appreciates the extra money, we do not appreciate being told that it is going to solve all our problems, because it simply will not.
An extra $6 million this year will make a small dent in the waiting lists currently clogging the disability services sector, but it will hardly touch the people who are bound to present for the first time in the coming 11 months. So, while Mr Snelling can tell us that he is spending big on disability, we know that what is really happening is a proliferation of the unacceptable waiting list system which ruins the lives of many South Australians with disabilities and those who care for them—and all this while hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on a sports stadium—again, a point which bears repeating, I think.
This is just one example of the back-to-front way that this government has decided to budget for the coming year. There are plenty of others. There is money for a film hub built literally on top of a mental health hospital instead of money for mental health. There is money to keep the spin doctors at work in the Department of Premier and Cabinet instead of money to pay the 44 workers in the Anti-Poverty Unit who have lost their jobs—and on and on and on.
This may be a conservative budget, it may in some sense be a responsible budget, but it is as sure as hell not a budget to help the truly vulnerable people in South Australia, and no amount of government spin is going to change that plain fact. I have spoken with Mr Snelling (both before and after the budget) and during those conversations I was heartened I must say, if only very slightly, to see that he does seem to be somewhat more receptive to the need for a holistic and radical change in the disability sector than some of his parliamentary ancestors have been. However, what Mr Snelling says is one thing and what he does may well be another.
As I said before, this job is steeped in tradition and, unfortunately, cynicism forms a large part of that tradition. Part of me suspects that this budget’s supposed focus on the needy in our society was created for Mr Snelling to give a good first impression with his first budget as our state Treasurer. A part of me suspects that this will be nothing but a means to a professional end for Mr Snelling and that this theoretical interest in caring for those in our society who need help most will turn out to be nothing more than the same kind of rhetoric that people with disabilities have been force fed for years. I hope that these suspicions are in fact not true, and I pray that, come time for me to deliver my speech to next year’s Appropriation Bill, I may delight in having my cynicism quashed and being proven wrong.
