SA Liberals leader Vincent Tarzia slams $2.4m Premier’s Delivery Unit in Budget Estimates

The Premier has defended the unit as key to delivering on promises as it came under fire from the leader of the opposition.

Premier Peter Malinauskas. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Premier Peter Malinauskas is being accused of running a taxpayer-funded “personal spy agency’ after he declared his high-powered delivery unit was responsible for “monitoring” information supplied by public servants.

Grilled about the operations of his $2.4m Premier’s Delivery Unit, Mr Malinauskas told a parliamentary committee it was responsible for “a consolidated monitoring of election commitments” by independently testing information that “can be massaged”.

Mr Malinauskas explained that his delivery unit did this by “monitoring, getting into the department, independently verifying information to make sure things that are said to be happening are actually happening”.

Opposition Leader Vincent Tarzia, at a housing policy launch on June 13. Picture: Dean Martin

But Opposition Leader Vincent Tarzia, who was questioning the Premier in budget estimates, later argued his rival’s delivery unit “seems more like a personal spy agency than a government department”.

Mr Malinauskas said the delivery unit, whose chief Rik Morris has a remuneration package of $386,173, had helped ensure the government had honoured “the overwhelming majority” of more than 500 commitments from the 2022 state election.

Asked what the delivery unit did that he and his ministers could not, Mr Malinauskas said: “I want to refrain from using terms like: ‘cop on the beat’ and so forth, but it is about having a direct line of sight that is only reportable to me and directly to the Premier to make sure that everything is happening.

“ … A political leader needs to be able to test the information that is being put before them — and that is not necessarily because people seek to deliberately mislead the minister, but information can be massaged, so to speak.

“I think the way you address that in these offices is you try to have multiple sources of truth or multiple lines of inquiry to test information and validate information.”

But Mr Tarzia said there was “absolutely no benefit” for the delivery unit’s $2.416m annual budget, particularly when it was expanding staff by two.

“What the Premier has described today seems more like a personal spy agency than a government department,” Mr Tarzia said.

“To spend almost $2.5 million in taxpayer money to make sure public servants aren’t massaging information goes to show the lengths this Premier will go to achieve complete control.”

The delivery unit was budgeted to spend $2.012m in 2024-25 but its estimated expenditure was $2.395m.

Originally published as SA Liberals leader Vincent Tarzia slams $2.4m Premier’s Delivery Unit in Budget Estimates