Labor staffer Rik Morris to lead Peter Malinauskas’s new Premier’s Delivery Unit to spearhead $3.1bn agenda

A veteran Labor staffer will lead a supercharged Premier’s Delivery Unit to spearhead Peter Malinauskas’s $3.1bn agenda.

Veteran Labor staffer Rik Morris will lead a supercharged Premier’s Delivery Unit newly designed to spearhead the government’s $3.1bn agenda, including hydrogen, education and health spending.

Modelled on agencies operated by former United Kingdom and NSW leaders Tony Blair and Mike Baird, the unit will report directly to Premier Peter Malinauskas and be charged with ensuring his election promises are delivered on time and on budget.

Former Bank SA chairman and Westpac group executive Peter Hanlon will be strategic adviser to the unit, which will be capped at 10 staff and a $2m annual budget.

Mr Morris’s previous roles include Mr Malinauskas’s director of strategy in opposition, the 2018 ALP candidate for the northeastern Adelaide seat of Florey, SA Tourism Commission general manager and communications adviser in the Weatherill and Rann governments.

The-then Labor Treasurer Kevin Foley makes the finishing touches to the 2009/10 State Budget. (L-r) Rik Morris, Stephen Mullighan and Kevin Foley.

Mr Malinauskas told The Advertiser the new unit would “have the capacity to intervene and make recommendations to me directly … if projects are lagging or if results aren’t forthcoming”.

“It’s about having the power to ensure that we deliver on our election commitments. You can’t just let the day-to-day activity of government, which is substantial, occur at the expense of actually delivering outcomes on our ambition,” he said.

“I want to know that there is an agency that reports directly to me as Premier with a view only on the delivery of that policy, as distinct from having to worry about various things going wrong from time to time in government, which will occur.”

Former Westpac executive and BankSA chairman Peter Hanlon.

The Premier’s Delivery Unit will require agencies to provide targets, trajectories and milestones for delivering election promises, such as a proposed $593m hydrogen power plant, and any other major project assigned by cabinet.

Mr Malinauskas said the unit would be based upon Mr Blair’s Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit, created after he was re-elected for a second term in 2001, with an emphasis on reforming public services, such as health, education and transport. He also referenced a similar unit established by Mr Baird – NSW Liberal premier from 2014-17 – which focused on issues including hospital emergency department waiting times.

The Blair model has also been adopted by jurisdictions in Canada, the United States, India, Malaysia and several countries in Africa and central and South America.

Former Liberal premier John Olsen in the late 1990s installed property executive Roger Cook as his major projects tsar with power to cut through bureaucracy to deliver results.