Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (16:59): I, too, rise to speak to the Supply Bill 2022. As a bit of background around the Supply Bill, it is introduced into parliament each year and outlines the total sum of money to be appropriated from the Consolidated Account for the Public Service of the state for the coming financial year for a period of time until the Appropriation Bill, or the budget bill, has passed through parliament, noting that the budget will be lodged here tomorrow. It is essentially a means to an end. That is exactly what it is—to keep the wheels of the state grinding along until the Appropriation Bill is passed.

For the 2022-23 financial year, the new government is seeking $6,628 million for agencies to carry out their tasks until the Appropriation Bill is introduced and passed through both houses of parliament. The amount goes across all departments and agencies that receive appropriation to ensure that the government continues working during a set supply period, which generally and is now from 1 July 2022 to 31 October 2022 or until the Appropriation Bill is passed.

The amount is calculated based on four months of actual appropriation during the previous year. For some comparisons, in 2021-22 the amount was $6,161 million. In 2020-21, the amount was $15,336 million, which was quite an extended amount. That was all around COVID measures. In 2019-20, the amount was $5,515 million. It is interesting to note that the Supply Bill does not cover funding for new projects. As I said earlier, it keeps the functions of government and public sector offices running until the Appropriation Bill comes into effect.

I fully salute democracy, but it was disappointing to end up on the opposition benches after only having one term in government. I know there were some tough times. We dealt with COVID, and I know we managed COVID better than a lot of other states would have managed it anywhere in the world, notwithstanding it had its difficulties. It did cause major difficulties. It caused a lot of upset to people. It still does, with a lot of people still being hospitalised and still catching the new variants of COVID, Omicron, etc.

It was certainly highlighted in my border community, which I previously represented before the election, on the Pinnaroo-Murrayville border. I salute what we did as the previous Marshall Liberal government in keeping the people of South Australia safe, pumping money into the economy to keep people going. Obviously, some things did not suit some people and people suffered, but we did not see 280 days of lockdown as happened in Melbourne under the Labor government over there.

What I was really proud about in the last four years of administration by the Marshall Liberal government was the money we pumped into the regions. We did work on over 4,800 kilometres of roads. We literally poured billions into schools (I think it was $1.5 billion) for the upgrade of schools to bring year 7 into high school. I think that was a great boon for this state, led by former Minister Gardner, the member for Morialta, because it gets us onstream with the rest of the nation.

One reason, apart from the fact it was sensible to go through that process, with a lot more travelling society certainly pre COVID, and I suppose a lot of internal travelling during COVID in the time before the last two years when COVID was impacting so heavily, some families toured the country and educated their children in different states. It is quite a culture shock when you have the one state where children are in a primary school instead of a high school. Obviously, there are area schools that it does not really affect, like my old school at Coomandook, but it is great that we have streamlined that process.

With health funding, we poured hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into emergency departments across the state, and we did the build at Murray Bridge, a $7 million build complemented with a $3 million upgrade of operating theatres as well, to give a great, better service, with emergency access, for my community and for surrounding communities.

Throughout Adelaide, there were upgrades right across the board, from Flinders through to Modbury, including the works we have been doing at the Repat while in government—the Repatriation General Hospital that was closed by the former Labor administration. It was so good to go out there this morning with the veterans minister, the Hon. Geoff Brock, meeting veterans and different agencies that work for veterans for their betterment and seeing some of the projects that are happening there.

Looking at the multisports stadium that has been built—especially in light of returned veterans with injuries—and the games have been played there, such as wheelchair sports, the Invictus Games and that so on, I am so proud that we, at least, decided to look after our veteran community.

What I am also really proud of is what we delivered into local constituencies. In the seat of Hammond, which I have been proud to have the privilege to represent for four terms and now into my fifth term, over $2 million of state government spending came in. That has been complemented with at least $1 billion of private spending going into different projects and, obviously, one of the biggest ones is the Thomas Foods build on the Mannum Road from Murray Bridge.

Sometimes you have to find a silver lining out of a disaster, and the silver lining out of the disaster that was the fire that happened on 3 January 2018, when the plant burnt down at Murray Bridge, was the opportunity for Darren Thomas and his team to have a look at what they could do into the future in getting the greenfield site for the food processing industry.

It took a long time to line up all the ducks, and I am proud to be part of a government that stood by Thomas's and contributed $14 million to community infrastructure funding alongside $10 million of federal money from the Morrison government with the assistance of Tony Pasin, the re-elected member for Barker, putting $24 million towards that community infrastructure. That has provided the road train turnoff into Thomas Foods, the 2.2-kilometre roadway—it is a public roadway because we paid for it—and also the ability to assist in connecting water supplies, power supplies and gas supplies. This plant, when fully operational, will employ 2,000 people and there will be 4½ thousand jobs augmented behind that, so 6½ thousand jobs are coming off this one project.

Alongside that, in Tintinara, in the member for MacKillop's electorate, is the Thomas Foods Feedlot, which is being doubled in size. It will not be far off completion because they have to have cattle coming out of there after at least 100 days' feed for the meatworks that will come into a scaled operation probably in November/December this year. At the moment, just the beef line is being built, so there will be at least 350 jobs plus directly involved in that.

It was great to take members of my team out there to see a build that will be the most modern food processing facility in the world when it is finished. Some of the technology going in there is just amazing: a lot of robotic work, cold rooms and storage rooms 10 storeys high. There will be a lot of work for technicians, and obviously a lot of work for people on the floors, where they will have the latest technology to make processing of beef and lamb very efficient.

This goes alongside a whole lot of private sector spending, including on chicken sheds that are at least $1 million per build, Costa Mushrooms and their $90 million upgrade and the $50 million build of a packing plant out at Parilla for Zerella Fresh, which used to be in my electorate, and I know the member for MacKillop spoke about them. It goes on and on and on.

As has been said, there is certainly pressure on housing in Murray Bridge. No longer can you see a house price of, say, $280,000 and try to negotiate it down. You have to literally add probably somewhere around $30,000 or $40,000 to make sure you can acquire the property. That is across regional areas across the state, and it is great to see populations coming there. It is an issue, but we are dealing with it. People are investing and hundreds of houses are going in. There is also an issue with the supply of the hardware to build the houses, whether it is reo rod or whether it is just simple things like taps in bathrooms. Everything is in short supply, and I know, for instance, some things have doubled in price.

Going through some of the over $200 million worth of funding that has come into Hammond since March 2018, when we came into power, there was the restoration of the facade of the Milang butter factory that cost $20,000. We put $400,000 into a major upgrade at Bremerton Wines and $300,000 into Lake Breeze Wines. We put $3 million into the Eastern Fleurieu School Langhorne Creek upgrade, which was a much-needed upgrade to get new classrooms, and $197,500 to the Callington Recreation Community Centre.

The government invested $4.55 million into the Monarto Safari Park, which went alongside over $11 million of federal money, and I was very proud to stand alongside Tony Pasin, the member for Barker, to open that in recent weeks. We put $36 million into the Old Murray Bridge upgrade, and that has just started. There has been a little bit of angst in the community about the bridge being reduced to one lane. I made a very frank comment to the local media. I said, 'Well, you either have one lane or you don't have a bridge open. It's pretty simple stuff.' But it does work; I try to go over it every time I have the other option coming from Coomandook to go around the Swanport Bridge, and I think the longest I have waited for the lane to open is four minutes.

I have already indicated that we have put $14 million into Thomas Foods, and that will be several hundred million by the time they finish the project. We invested $7.5 million into the Gifford Hill racecourse. We have already talked about the Soldiers Memorial Hospital emergency department. There was another proud moment locally as $20 million went into the Murray Bridge High School and some magnificent classrooms for year 7s and 8s. We also put $5 million into the Murray Bridge North Primary School upgrade, and that is not far away.

The government also invested $360,000 into the Murray Bridge Regional Rowing Centre and $1 million into the Murray Bridge swimming pool upgrade. We put $5 million into the Greater Adelaide Freight Bypass Planning Study and $5 million into the Murray Bridge to South-East Links Business Case, which includes looking at the study of the duplication of the Swanport Bridge. That is a much-needed project. It is not just about the bridge: it is about works further south around Tailem Bend, over the railway bridge there. The Beston foods Jervois plant upgrade at $2½ million assisted with their lactoferrin plant, which is the high value-add product coming out of milk.

The Tailem Bend netball courts received just short of $100,000. We put a new CFS station at Tailem Bend, which was just over $1 million. The Karoonda swimming pool was a project that kept on going, sadly, but we got there and had it built for $1.6 million. If the government are going out there to open it, I would not mind being involved because that was one heck of a thing to get across the line. There were a lot of barriers put in place along the way. The Karoonda District Football Club upgrade was $258,000 and the Lameroo swimming pool regeneration cost $850,000.

We put $2 million into the Zerella Fresh/Parilla potatoes packing facility. Another one is the Browns Well Highway and Ngarkat Highway upgrade, linking Loxton through Pinnaroo down to Bordertown. It cost $42 million to get those back to 110 km/h, and I worked with the members for Chaffey and MacKillop on that project.

The redevelopment of the Kalimna Hostel at Strathalbyn at a cost of $3 million has been budgeted for, and I will certainly be following up on that with the new government. It very much needed to be used for the Strathalbyn community and their healthcare needs. There is also the Strathalbyn and District Aged Care Facility upgrade of $16 million. That was a fantastic upgrade at Strathalbyn, with 24 memory-unit beds that have gone in and 12 other aged-care beds. It is a magnificent facility. I have not had the chance to go in there yet.

The Mannum Community College new STEM building, CAD lab and senior school upgrade cost $3.9 million. There is the Strathalbyn campus of the Eastern Fleurieu School upgrade at $1.8 million and the new underground electricity line into the town of Bowhill at a cost of $350,000. There were other projects as well.

While we are talking about Bowhill, Bowhill Engineering is based there and they employ somewhere north of 40 people, I think. It is just by the river, a beautiful place, and that undergrounding assisted both the town and the company—their lives and their processes—to get better productivity. They built half of the overpasses that are at Darlington, on the north-south connector project.

While I am finishing up on the north-south connector project, I am stunned to hear the interesting commentary from the Minister for Transport, the member for West Torrens, in regard to the plan being tipped over so that $1.1 billion can be pushed back past the forward estimates. We were well on track with that hard piece, the piece we were left with to look after on the north-south connector, where the tunnels were involved, the close to $10 billion, which we instigated the initial work on, and now for some magical reason, even though the same department said, 'Yes, this can happen. This can all happen,' all of a sudden it is saying, 'Oh no, it can't.' I think there has been a bit of pressure applied by the new Minister for Transport.

It is interesting to note that the executive left—it looks like she was sacked—the other day. We will be watching that project with interest because we need to get that connector done. There is so much work we need to do across the state with regional roads. We need to look at $3 billion to do the duplication for the Dukes Highway, $3 billion for the Sturt Highway and we have to look at projects like the duplication of the Port Augusta Highway as well. Let's work towards making it safer and more efficient. That is the other thing with the north-south connector: it has to be built far more quickly than what has been progressed by the Labor government to get those efficiency gains.

I fully support the passing of the Supply Bill and we will look with interest when the budget is brought down tomorrow in this house.