Premier Peter Malinauskas’s government challenge to focus on the economy and working families

Labor risks becoming trapped by social issues, particularly the failure to fix ambulance ramping, and sidelining working families and the economy, Paul Starick writes.

Premier Peter Malinauskas is facing a challenge to avoid becoming trapped by social issues – particularly his hitherto failed vow to fix the ramping crisis – and haul his government’s focus back to the economy and working families.

As the midpoint of a four-year term approaches, the government’s agenda is being consumed by desperately defending the blowout to record high levels of ambulance ramping outside hospitals, plus eventually caving in to calls for a royal commission into domestic violence.

It is worth comparing and contrasting the current political climate and the Labor government’s agenda with the recent past.

Premier Peter Malinauskas and SA Paramedics hold a press conference in mid-2022 at the proposed location of a new ambulance station on the intersection of Magill Road and Portrush Road. Picture Emma Brasier

Once upon a time, Mr Malinauskas’s laser-like focus was on “the economy and people being able to provide for themselves and their families”.

Back in May, 2021, the-then opposition leader emphatically declared “the culture warriors can do their thing but I’m gonna do mine”, which was making sure Labor developed policies that speak “directly to a growing middle class that is becoming increasingly prosperous”.

Times have changed, swiftly and dramatically. In early 2021, BankSA reported consumer and business confidence levels were at their highest for more than a decade and 16 years respectively.

Since then, households and businesses have been pounded by a historically rapid rise in interest rates and an associated cost-of-living crisis. This has escalated gradually, worsening with each interest rate hit.

By late 2022, Mr Malinauskas was Premier. In a keynote address to a state dinner celebrating the Adelaide 500 Supercar race’s comeback, Mr Malinauskas expressed his determination to remake the state after Covid just like the state’s longest-serving leader, Sir Thomas Playford, did by spurring industrialisation spearheaded by the car industry – Holden, in particular.

Issuing a rallying cry to “dramatically grow the state’s economic complexity”, he argued this would be done in Adelaide “not through building cars, but rather through building satellites and submarines, the most complex machines that have ever been built in the history of the world”.

Premier Peter Malinauskas and UK Defence Procurement Minister Alex Chalk in March, 2023, at the Barrow-in-Furness nuclear submarine shipyard operated by BAE Systems. Picture: supplied

Rather than advancing these economic endeavours, though, the government has been overwhelmed by the issue that propelled it to office – ambulance ramping. In the 2022-23 budget alone, the Malinauskas government increased health funding by an extra $1.2bn. An extra $2.3bn has been allocated over five years, according to the June state budget papers, to “improve the capacity and effectiveness of the health system”.

It's worth questioning whether this is throwing good money after bad, given the dismal results so far.

The challenges facing SA are vast. Real household disposable income per capita fell 6.8 per cent in the 2022-23 financial year, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data.

Unemployment figures released on Thursday show SA has settled as a mid-ranking state, at a low 3.9 per cent. But the participation rate of 64.4 per cent is the nation’s second-lowest, after Tasmania, and seven per cent underemployment rate is the nation’s equal-highest, with Queensland.

More than 12,000 people in SA have been unemployed for a year or longer. There are 5000 more long-term unemployed people than if SA was at the national average. About 72,000 people get full or part JobSeeker benefits, or 8.9 per cent of national recipients – well above SA’s 6.9 per cent share of the working-age population.

Premier Peter Malinauskas (right) handpasses in 2013 when playing for the in the premiership-winning Adelaide University Blacks Division 8R AFL team. Mr Malinauskas captained the team. Picture: Supplied

Boosting education standards, jobs, wages and prosperity should be Labor’s central mission. This case was eloquently put a decade ago, by a union leader in his early 30s, Peter Malinauskas, who declared only Labor had “prosperity for all in its DNA” and “well-paying jobs as its core business”. Those who did not believe this agenda “ideologically pure enough” and wanted more “social engineering” were advised to “join the Greens”. “For everyone else, it’s time to bring out the A-game,” he said.

With little more than two years before the next election, Labor needs to remember this agenda and start bringing its A-game.