WA Beating the gas crisis

WA Budget shares prosperity

TAS Paul Lennon resigns

VIC The sporting capital

ACT Record job figures

NT New Cabinet team

TAS Courage brings change

SA Intervention on the lands

NT New ministry sworn in

...more

Four years ago, Labor promised to get South Australia moving again.

• We vowed to listen and talk with South Australians.
• We promised a partnership to create jobs and opportunity, and to rekindle confidence and optimism in our state.
• We pledged to rebuild the economy and state finances, and to invest in the Labor priorities of health, education, and law and order.
• And we set about regaining South Australia’s reputation as the country’s most innovative state – a 'destination', rather than a beloved place our young people had to leave to find opportunities elsewhere.

On all these things and more, Labor is getting results…and we’re doing so without the Liberals’ privatisation.

Our guiding principle is to govern for all South Australians – no matter who they are, where they live or which party they voted for in 2002. Although we are a minority government, we decided on the very first day to be bold and decisive – whether it has been cutting the number of poker machines, or backing Sunday trading, or new initiatives in child protection.

We decided to always put state before party – to work with the best people available, with the best ideas – for the benefit of all South Australians. As a result of this partnership, our economy is booming – we’re punching well above our weight.

• More South Australians are working than ever before.
• Unemployment is lower than it’s been for 30 years.
• The state budget is back in the black.
• We’ve regained our ‘triple-A’ international credit rating.

Labor is delivering $1.5 billion worth of tax relief to consumers and business – the biggest tax cuts in our history.

• Our rate of economic growth is outstripping that of Australia’s overall.
• Our level of industrial disputation is the lowest of all the states.

With our big push on trade skills, we now have a record 34,600 apprentices and trainees. The latest ABS figures show that the local job scene is in excellent shape. A record 742,700 South Australians were working in January – with more than 514,000 in full-time positions.

Since Labor came to office in March 2002, 50,500 jobs have been created – with four out of every five being full-time. We’re creating full-time jobs at 13 times the rate the Liberals did when they were last in office.

New projects
The large number of major new projects on the horizon means that our prospects for further growth are very good. We’ve been hard at work securing a series of major defence contracts, including the $6 billion Air Warfare Destroyers project – a contract we won, against the odds, in a ‘grand final’ against Victoria.

Following a state government initiative, mining exploration is at an all-time high. And the Olympic Dam mine is poised to more than double in size, creating a total of 23,000 jobs.

We are also drawing a clear ‘social dividend’ from the prosperity South Australia is now enjoying. We have recruited an extra 1349 nurses and 349 doctors, and we have spent an additional $912 million on health over the past four years. We are rebuilding our major public hospitals and improving emergency departments – the result of a 35% increase in state government funding of public hospitals over the past two financial years alone.

We are investing tens of millions more in mental health, and in a scheme that is leading the nation, more than 30,000 families with newborn babies have been visited at home by child-health nurses since 2004.

In education, we have smaller class sizes and extra teachers in the vital, early years, and we have improved buildings and facilities through the School Pride program. School retention rates are at a ten-year high, and literacy standards are among the best in the world.

The Premier’s Reading Challenge has been a stunning success, with more than 70,000 children completing it in 2005.

Law and order
In law and order, we have toughened sentences. We didn’t hesitate to intervene in the Nemer and McGee cases to defend the rights of the victims of crime. And for the first time in the state’s history, we stood up to the Parole Board and refused the release of notorious murderers like Stephen McBride.

South Australia’s crime rate is continuing to fall – thanks, in part, to our now having the biggest and best-resourced police force in history. We’ve also introduced a range of new laws to crack down on paedophiles, bikies, hoons and ‘bouncers’.

On the environment, the Government brokered a national plan to rescue the Murray, we saved the Coongie Lakes, and we stopped the Howard government from building a national radioactive waste dump in South Australia’s outback. We have led Australia in the development of renewable energy – with South Australia now having more wind-power capacity than all the other states combined, and nearly half the nation’s grid-connected solar power.

Nevertheless, we’re not complacent – we have a lot more work to do in getting results for our state. That’s why South Australians must now turn their attention to the future – to the question of which team has the unity, ideas and vision required to maintain the momentum.

Strategic plan
In South Australia’s Strategic Plan, the state government has mapped out a comprehensive, practical blueprint for the next ten years and beyond. It’s a plan that shows we have ideas and purpose and a vision for the future.

Our plan builds on South Australia’s strengths and leads us in exciting new directions. For example, it aims to build on our position as the defence-industry capital of Australia, to make our state a hub for research and bioscience, to maintain our leadership in the arts, and to make South Australia an international centre for education with new, world-class universities like Carnegie Mellon.

Labor wants South Australia to be a state where people come to visit, to learn and do business. And we want it to be a place where young South Australians can achieve their potential – a base from which they can take on the world.

That’s Labor’s vision for South Australia, and that’s what we mean when we talk about leadership.

Of course, Labor is under no illusions about just how tight this election will be – essentially, we are just 606 votes from defeat. The choice on March 18 is clear – between the future or the past, between energy or laziness, between courage or timidity, between a united team and a divided opposition, between new ideas or no ideas at all.

Labor knows what needs to be done. And, with the support of all South Australians, we can do it.