Stephen Mullighan and Christopher Pyne air their views on the war over SA infrastructure

THE State and Federal Governments are at war over SA infrastructure funding in the Federal Budget. Today, both sides put their cases forward.

Traffic along North Terrace and Payneham Road. Picture: MARCUS AT SWOOPCAM

• Federal Budget 2017: What it means for SA
• Pyne blames State Government for lack of infrastructure cash
• Anger as industry groups and politicians say SA ‘dudded’

THE State and Federal Governments are at war over SA infrastructure funding in the Federal Budget. Today, both sides put their cases forward.

Last week’s Budget completely duds South Australia

Stephen Mullighan’s view

SOUTH Australia has a reputation for investing in infrastructure projects which support local jobs during construction and provide benefits to the community and the economy in the future.

State government investments in Adelaide Oval, the Convention Centre expansions, the new hospital, the O-Bahn tunnel, the extension of the tram network, the duplication of the Southern Expressway, new city high school and new science labs across other schools – we are continuing to build South Australia.

And we’ve had great success working with both sides of politics to secure funding from federal governments for projects. Under federal Labor we co-funded more than $2.85 billion of projects including the Northern Expressway, South Road Superway, Goodwood and Torrens junctions, and the Seaford rail electrification.

With federal Liberals like former prime minister Tony Abbott and former federal minister Jamie Briggs, we secured $2.5 billion for South Road upgrades: the Torrens to Torrens, Darlington and Northern Connector projects.

And we’ve continued to make the case for more projects to keep building South Australia.

Work on the O-Bahn extension in Adelaide's East End. Picture: NAOMI JELLICOE

We have submitted a business case for the electrification of the Gawler line, and when Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull requested a detailed proposal for the Oaklands Crossing upgrade so it could be considered for funding, it was provided. We have done the same for the next stage of the South Road upgrade, and both proposals were sent well in advance of last week’s Budget.

However, the Federal Budget completely duds South Australia. SA has not received one new dollar in project funding.

Christopher Pyne claims there is $3.1 billion in new funding for SA in last week’s budget – this simply isn’t true. These funds are almost completely for the major projects that have been in the federal budget for as long as three years. He also claims we haven’t done enough work to get federal funds for the projects – again, this simply isn’t true. We have submitted proposals, bids, business cases and submissions for projects, yet received nothing. In contrast, the Federal Budget co-funded a $1.2 billion passenger rail project in Western Australia without a business case or detailed project proposal being completed or submitted.

The double standard in how the Federal Government is treating SA compared to other states is galling. Yet when we’ve raised our concerns, many federal and state Liberal MPs also claim SA shouldn’t expect new project funding because the future submarines will be built in SA.

Road works at the corner of South Road. Picture: TOM HUNTLEY

This forgets that it was SA’s campaign against the Federal Government’s plans to build them overseas that ensured it was based here in Adelaide. And that the submarine project is critical for our economy after the federal support for building cars in Australia has stopped.

We are not asking or expecting anything that is unreasonable for our state, just that we are treated as well as the other states. So we will continue to point out when we are unfairly dudded. The Federal Liberals call it “whingeing” – we call it standing up for South Australia.

Stephen Mullighan is South Australian Minister for Transport and Infrastructure

 

Turnbull Government has delivered more for SA than any other

 

Christopher Pyne’s view

THE timeless excuse “The dog ate my homework” might be cute coming from a seven-year-old student but when it comes from a State Government and concerns important infrastructure this excuse becomes very old, very quickly.

What an embarrassing week for the Labor State Government. They were completely exposed for their incompetence and obsession with playing political games in order to rescue their government which lurches from one crisis to another.

There’s been a lot of talk about business cases and what was/was not in this week’s Federal Budget. So first up, let’s get the facts out there about the Budget.

This week the Turnbull Government outlined $10.6 billion in total payments to South Australia in 2017-18 alone across health, education, industry and infrastructure.

Don’t believe the lies of the South Australian Government – this Budget outlines $3.1 billion in infrastructure spending for South Australia. This includes extensions to the North-South Corridor, delivering on our election promises.

It’s important to note, and something which Jay Weatherill, Tom Koutsantonis and Stephen Mullighan seem to have forgotten, this is all in addition to the largest single investment in any one state or territory in the history of the Commonwealth – the $89 billion naval shipbuilding program.

Make no mistake the Turnbull Government has delivered more for South Australia than any other in history through record investments in our defence industry.

Upgrading the Adelaide Convention Centre.

The State Labor Government continues to try to distract from their own failings on energy – however the Federal Government is acting. We’ve committed $36.6 million for energy infrastructure plus $110 million equity funding to building solar thermal with storage in Port Augusta.

Now to get to the State Labor Government’s incompetence. Mr Mullighan attacked the Federal Government for not funding a series of projects including AdeLINK and the Gawler electrification. However, shockingly there were no businesses cases for either of these projects.

The next day when this revelation was revealed on the front page of The Advertiser, Mr Mullighan strode out with a series of papers claiming “This is the business cases for these projects!” Except they weren’t. There were a series of scoping studies, and other half-finished documents.

Infrastructure Australia themselves said this week no business case for Gawler had been received, making a fool out of Mr Mullighan and his band of merry followers.

As a proud South Australian I’m embarrassed our State Government has reached such a level of incompetence. If Mr Mullighan had been doing his job and working with Infrastructure Australia then surely he would have known what needed to be done to gain funding. If he didn’t, he shows a spectacular lack of ability.

Despite all of this the Federal Government stands ready to work together to improve our state as shown in this year’s Budget. However, the State Government will need to lift their game and do their job.

Christopher Pyne is Minister for Defence Industry.