Daniel Wills: SA’s Federal Budget infrastructure ‘snub’ helps Jay Weatherill’s re-election fight

ANALYSIS: Getting a huge wad of cash for infrastructure is the best thing a state can hope for in a Federal Budget. For Premier Jay Weatherill, getting nothing new must run a very close second.

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GETTING a huge wad of cash for infrastructure is the best thing a state can hope for in a Federal Budget. For Premier Jay Weatherill, getting nothing must run a very close second.

SA has been one of the biggest recipients of Federal Government largesse in recent years.

When former Liberal MP Jamie Briggs was the national roads minister, he helped secure $1.6 billion for three separate upgrades on South Rd.

Only last year, Defence Industries Minister Christopher Pyne confirmed Adelaide would be at the centre of a $90 billion program that will run for decades as Osborne delivers the country’s new patrol vessels, frigates and submarines.

And none of that cash includes the now $1.8 billion annual bonus SA gets from a GST carve up that hands the struggling states extra so they can pay the bills and try to keep the lights on.

More than half of SA’s annual State Budget is now money that’s trickled down from Canberra.

In the corridors of Parliament House in Canberra, and across much of the nation, it’s become a running joke that SA is now the single biggest welfare bludger in Australia.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Treasurer Scott Morrison in Question Time on Wednesday. Picture: Kym Smith

Premier Jay Weatherill at Parliament House. Picture: Mike Burton

The recent SA splurge has been so immense that it’s now become the envy and ire of the country.

But the dynamics are very different at home. SA has a long history, dating back to the Playford era, of expecting that the Government will step forward to fix all of its problems.

The car industry, so foundational for SA, was built on and survived through huge subsidy.

In a fast-paced political world of short-memories, the Federal Budget delivered on Tuesday had a stark absence of new infrastructure funding for SA.

NSW was promised a new airport and expanded hydro scheme, WA got its own sweetheart package of significant new roads.

SA’s biggest wins were hints of future help on energy security, and maybe a tram. Without the history lesson, anyone who glances quickly would conclude the state’s truly been “dudded”.

And that’s a perfect political opportunity for Mr Weatherill at the start of an election year.

The Coalition is trying to move on from the horror that was the 2014 Federal Budget.

It’s made moves in health and education that are designed to induce amnesia over a past $80 billion cut, and dropped the “lifters and leaners” language to embrace Labor’s mantra of “fairness”.

But the damage done to the Coalition in SA three years was much worse than anywhere else.

The way it sneered at Holden, and slagged ASC workers as unable to build a canoe, left SA feeling it was a footnote in the national life and being abandoned at a time of need.

With his peerless skills of persuasion and a barrage of taxpayer-funded ads, Mr Weatherill exploited the Coalition’s self-injury and sent its political standing in SA to the cellar.

To this day, SA is the most hostile state in the nation for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

The advantage for SA Labor has been twofold. It is now beyond contest that the state has major economic problems and an unemployment crisis.

Anyone who claims otherwise is laughed out of the room. But who’s to blame remains a live debate, and Mr Weatherill wants it to be Canberra.

With the Coalition’s reputation in SA already collapsed, they’ve become an easy mark.

And by setting SA’s main political fight as being between himself and Mr Turnbull, Mr Weatherill also seeks to strangle the column space extended to SA Opposition Leader Steven Marshall and reduce him from an alternative premier to a complete irrelevance in affairs of state.

The election slogans are being written now. Mr Weatherill is the only man who “stands up for SA” against a Federal Government that’s out to get us.

On energy, and now infrastructure, he’s the leader that can help us “go it alone”. In the past, it’s a tactic that’s worked beautifully.

But, one day, there may be a point when people just get fed up of all the whinging.