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Pledges mount as polling day looms in SA

With just four days left before polling day, the Marshall Government has announced a $3 million pledge to protect Aboriginal culture while Labor has spent the weekend focussing on ambulance ramping and cost of living pressures.

Mar 15, 2022, updated Mar 15, 2022
Premier Steven Marshall makes a point during the March 10 SA Press Club debate, watched by moderator Stacey Lee and Labor leader Peter Malinauskas. Photo: Tony Lewis/InDaily

Premier Steven Marshall makes a point during the March 10 SA Press Club debate, watched by moderator Stacey Lee and Labor leader Peter Malinauskas. Photo: Tony Lewis/InDaily

Under the Liberals’ plan to protect Aboriginal culture, announced this morning, $350,000 would be spent each year to establish a website to revive and promote South Australia’s Aboriginal languages.

The website is part of the SA Museum’s “Reawakening Aboriginal Languages” project and would allow members of the public to access language materials at any time, regardless of their location.

Another $2 million would be spent over five years to complete the Kaurna ancestral remains repatriation program and to extend the program to other First Nations.

“I’m very proud that we were recently able to lay to rest respectfully and with dignity the remains of Kaurna ancestors that were previously held away from the country that means so much to their people and culture,” Premier Steven Marshall said.

“This world-leading pilot is the first phase of an outstanding project that will have a profound effect on the lives of many, many people – and I’m looking forward to extending the project to other First Nations.”

It comes after the Marshall Government over the weekend pledged to make permanent its real-time fuel pricing scheme, which is currently on a two-year trial and requires all fuel outlets in South Australia to report any price changes to a database 30 minutes before they come into effect.

Meanwhile, Labor has reiterated warnings of an ambulance ramping “crisis”, after the SA Ambulance Service on Monday declared a “code white” for the entire Adelaide metropolitan area, meaning delayed responses to emergency cases.

“This is literally life and death,” Labor’s shadow treasurer Stephen Mullighan said this morning.

“While Steven Marshall and (Treasurer) Rob Lucas obsess about the cost of fixing the health system, they ignore the cost of not investing in the health system.”

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The Opposition also spent the weekend announcing a $181.65 million package to build and renovate public housing, $37.7 million to double the state government cost of living concession and a pledge to develop a new autism strategy for public schools.

The Liberals’ say their election promises would cost $288 million – $118 million of which is operating expenditure and $170 million is investing expenditure.

Nearly $700 million of Liberal election commitments were budgeted before caretaker mode or through previously allocated funding.

Throughout the campaign, the Liberals have attacked Labor’s policy costs, reiterating warnings of a “reckless spending spree” in the billions of dollars.

Costings are traditionally released by political parties a couple of days before polling day.

Labor says its policies are fully costed, but has deferred releasing details until later in the election campaign.

“We’ll be doing it this Thursday,” Labor leader Peter Malinauskas said.

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