SHARED SERVICES

Mr HAMILTON-SMITH (Waite—Leader of the Opposition) (14:18): I am just pulling myself back together after that oratory; putting the pieces back together. My questions to the Treasurer—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr HAMILTON-SMITH: Sorry?

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The Leader of the Opposition.

Mr HAMILTON-SMITH: Is he finished? Can I—

The Hon. P.F. Conlon interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The Minister for Infrastructure will come to order.

Ms Fox interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Bright will come to order. The Leader of the Opposition.

Mr HAMILTON-SMITH: My question is to the Treasurer: is he the minister responsible for a series of decisions regarding accommodation for his failed shared services program which has resulted in the payment of $6.7 million—

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: I take a point of order, Mr Speaker.

The SPEAKER: There is a point of order.

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: To put the statement 'failed shared services' in there is making a statement. If he wants to make a statement he can seek leave of the house. When it suits them they are sticklers for the standing orders but they ignore them completely on other occasions.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr HAMILTON-SMITH: I will leave it to others to decide whether it has failed. Is the Treasurer the minister responsible for a series of decisions regarding accommodation for his shared services program which have resulted in the payment of $6.7 million in rent for empty office space to which the Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Energy referred a moment ago?

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr HAMILTON-SMITH: The Auditor-General has raised concerns about $4.1 million paid for dead rent up to 30 June 2008. Subsequent evidence given by the Under Treasurer to the Budget and Finance Committee has revealed that this amount has now blown out to $6.7 million. The empty office space is at 77 Grenfell St (Westpac House) and 91 King William St (Wakefield House) and involves well over 500 empty desks and multiple floors of empty space.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The Treasurer.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Treasurer, Minister for Industry and Trade, Minister for Federal/State Relations) (14:20): The government, as I said, has already locked in $30 million of savings and we are working on further savings of the order of $30-plus million. We are centralising the back-office operations of most, if not all, government agencies. We are centralising those services into one accommodation.

Mr Williams interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for MacKillop is warned. The Treasurer.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: We are consolidating the back-office operations of all or, if not all, most government agencies into a central location to gain substantial efficiencies primarily initially in the areas of payroll, human resources and purchasing, and there will be further consolidation of core functions that are shared by all agencies. The agencies will then purchase those services from the central shared services entity.

To do that, we will be shifting public servants from where they may be currently housed into the central facility. We are doing that in tranches. We are doing it in a manner where there is not severe dislocation of government operations. To do that, we have to secure premises, and in this case we have secured premises earlier than we would necessarily have wanted for these reasons: that there is a severe shortage of good quality office accommodation in South Australia, in Adelaide.

Ms Chapman: The market has collapsed.

The SPEAKER: Order!

Ms Chapman interjecting:

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: Mr Speaker, any chance we could ask Vickie to hold it lower?

The SPEAKER: The Treasurer has the call.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: The shortage of good quality accommodation stock and an even greater shortage of good large floor plates for this type of operation meant that we had to secure premises a little earlier than we may otherwise have liked, but it is imperative that we actually fit out these offices. We have the desks in place. We have the configuration so that you can move people in.

The Hon. P.F. Conlon: But shouldn't we get the people before we get the offices?

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: Well, that's the alternative. We either lease a building and say 'Look, can you bring a desk with you; can you bring chairs with you, and we are going to—'

Mr Pisoni interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Unley will come to order.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: That's coming from a bloke who went bankrupt in his business.

Mr Pisoni: Make those claims outside this house.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: What, you didn't go bankrupt or put it in receivership?

Mr Pisoni: Make the claim outside the house! Gutless, aren't you?

The SPEAKER: Order! I have called the member for Unley to order.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: A bit sensitive there, mate!

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: The suggestion that we would have people move into an office before having the office fitted out, given the nature of the business that we will be undertaking, is a silly suggestion. We are fitting out those offices, and we will lock in a stream of ongoing savings that will deliver hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars of efficiency savings over the years to come. The teething problems and the issues with which you are confronted upfront in these exercises will be but a dim memory when the Treasurer (hopefully me) and future treasurers see significant budget benefits from this process in the decades to come.