Addressing the elephant in the room, or not
If the Treasurer and Premier are forced to wear the boring badge for this budget, writes Mike Smithson, it means they’ll have more to splash when campaigning for the March election hits top gear.
Treasurers can get a bit tetchy on state budget day, having just poured their hearts and souls into keeping the books balanced, when few people really care.
With that in mind, Stephen Mullighan’s response was predictable when I asked him about the complete absence of ambulance ramping in his lengthy media presentation in front of dozens of journalists, advisors and treasury officials.
“I don’t think that’s fair,” he quipped.
“We do mention ramping. It just shows me you haven’t read the budget speech,” he added.
He was 100 per cent correct, and it was a response he’d clearly prepared in advance for the anticipated obvious question.
In his nine-page, hour-long Appropriation Bill speech to parliament, ramping was mentioned once early on page one.
It was amongst one of eight volumes each containing about 200 pages handed to journalists in the annual budget lock up.
May figures, released after budget day, show ramping hours at emergency departments were 4791 hours, which is the third-worst month on record.
The point I was trying to make was his apparent smoke and mirrors avoidance of the word in the lock up, preferring to talk about the smiling faces of police officers evident in just about every PowerPoint slide during his presentation.
The visuals on budget day usually carry a theme that the government wants to be a lasting impression.
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In the past, it’s been the River Murray, ESL rebates, education and happy school kids, solar, hydrogen – the list goes on.
This year was the return of law and order, as it should be.
My strategy during the media conference was directed at the bigger picture.
Emergency
The Premier and his troops know the perils of blatantly over-promising with ramping and the pledge to fix it, as opposed to going to the next election with it potentially worse than ever.
Don’t expect any more Labor campaign poster promises with a beaming Premier saying vote for him as if your life depends on it.
The Treasurer now only promises to “tackle ramping at our emergency departments”.
Even the mention of ramping in front of a barrage of cameras could have run the risk of sending his budget media conference spinning in the wrong direction.
“We are throwing everything at health, building more beds, recruiting nurses, more ambos and allied health professions,” he declared.
It’s also telling that a new design team was announced for the Women’s and Children’s Hospital build after the last architect team was quietly dumped last year.
That too was conveniently after budget day, with a promise they will oversee the new build through to the end, whenever that may be next decade.
Another $8 million budget line, which took some effort to find, was recladding for the existing WCH.
Fire dangers from the use of a cheap Chinese product have been swirling since 2017 after the devastating Grenfell Tower fire in London that killed 72 people and destroyed the entire housing estate.
The Treasurer was unlikely to make a virtue of this government spend on budget day as it might look like too little, too late or that it’s throwing millions at a building earmarked for obsolescence.
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Its long-term future, in such a prime location, will also continue to be a topic of debate.
In other words, it’s long overdue, but a growing risk if left unattended for another year.
No one can argue that health is, and always will be, the elephant in the room.
“There’s $1.9 billion extra for health,” Mullighan said.
“I mean that is, in anyone’s view, extraordinary additional funding for our health system.”
But he has multiple juggling acts elsewhere.
Whyalla’s steel woes will continue to be a drain on the public purse, with the shipping port also now in voluntary administration.
The housing sector claims there wasn’t enough in it for them.
Cost of living is crippling families across the state, but at least school kids will be able to travel for $10 a month on their metroCARDS and even be able to use the discounted fares on weekends.
But those small outlays still feed into a future debt forecast to climb to $48 billion by 2029.
Crisis, what crisis?
Mullighan says there’s no need to panic because SA’s financial situation is totally manageable, even with an eventual daily interest bill of $6.72 million.
The Treasurer pumped up AFL Gather Round and LIV Golf, which have promoted SA tourism interstate and internationally.
March election
Election cycles are a four-year marathon rather than a race for votes on budget day.
If the Treasurer and Premier are forced to wear the boring badge for this budget, it means they’ll have more to splash when campaigning for the March election hits top gear.
Labor is widely tipped to win in a landslide, which means its reign could flow well into the next decade.
Whatever emerged on budget day is unlikely to affect their chances, with even the Libs openly saying they just want to retain the lower house seats they already hold which only amounts to 13 in the 47-seat chamber.
Labor can play hardball with future budgets, knowing its grip on the purse strings is long-term.
Today’s decision makers will be happily retired on their parliamentary pensions when future generations are still paying down the massive debt.
Mike Smithson is weekend presenter and political analyst for 7News.
