Senate debates

Wednesday, 21 March 2018

Statements by Senators

South Australian State Election

12:45 pm

Photo of Anne RustonAnne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources) Share this | Hansard source

The fact is that we've seen a debt of massive proportions bequeathed to the people of South Australia because of the reckless spending that we saw under the previous government. I think that the Labor Weatherill government is a very strong reason that the people of South Australia saw off this very incompetent and tired government.

We don't have to go very far to have a look at some of the things that caused the problems and caused the people of South Australia to decide to move away from that government. There were horrific scandals like the Oakden aged-care facilities and Families SA. This was a government that made an art form out of avoiding accountability and responsibility, and, as Senator Farrell just raised, this was a government which held a gun to the head of the Murray-Darling plan in its desperation to get re-elected.

I could go on, but I just want to reinforce that the neglected regions and rural sector in South Australia are the main reasons that I believe this government was thrown out, and resoundingly. A great example was South Australia's moratorium on the commercial production of genetically modified crops. This was politically and ideologically motivated. This moratorium has been constantly justified by the previous Premier, Jay Weatherill, and his previous minister for agriculture, Leon Bignal, who is yet to win his seat, on the basis that it provides farmers some sort of commercial advantage in being able to access markets sensitive about GM. However, they are yet to provide any real unequivocal evidence that supports this claim. Growers in New South Wales and Victoria have been able to grow GM canola for 10 straight seasons now. So far, they have experienced no adverse commercial impacts in growing this stuff. I think that the jury remains totally out on any evidence whatsoever that has been provided by South Australia about the advantage of doing that. When Premier Weatherill was confronted with the evidence, following calls from South Australian farmers for the moratorium on GM to be lifted, this was his response to ABC's Landline in July last year:

The truth is there are not a lot of votes out there in country South Australia for us, so in some ways we are free of the electoral imperatives about this.

That is a pretty sad indictment but I suppose it is a very truthful reflection on what Jay Weatherill thought about rural and regional South Australia. Make no mistake, this cynical neglect was only one of the factors that has motivated the South Australian public—but it was the main motivating factor for me to put my hand up to come into parliament in the first place. If you want to talk about cynicism, let's talk about the extraordinary circus of Nick Xenophon's hastily assembled team of party-hopping opportunists.

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