House of Assembly Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2) 52 2 Parliament of South Australia House of Assembly published Question Time Health Department Staff HEALTH DEPARTMENT STAFF Mr WILLIAMS House of Assembly MacKillop Deputy Leader of the Opposition HEALTH DEPARTMENT STAFF Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:09): Supplementary, Madam Speaker. The Speaker House of Assembly The SPEAKER: Supplementary. Mr WILLIAMS House of Assembly Mr WILLIAMS: The minister in answer to the question said that none of the people currently employed doing this work would lose their jobs. Does that mean that the government is going to employ one or other of these contractors to do this work and continue to employ the same people who have been doing the work so far and then claim this as a saving? The Hon. J.D. HILL House of Assembly Kaurna Minister for Health and Ageing Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse Minister for the Arts The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Ageing, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for the Arts) (15:10): If I can explain, and I thank the member for the question. There are two ways of doing it: there is Spotless and the government agency. Both could provide the service. The workers could choose to work with Spotless if they wanted to. I understand that there is some incentive payment that is available to them if they want to transfer their employment across to Spotless, or they could stay working for the— Mr Hamilton-Smith interjecting: The Speaker House of Assembly The SPEAKER: Order, member for Waite! The Hon. J.D. HILL House of Assembly The Hon. J.D. HILL: They could stay working for the government entity and keep their government employment industrial benefits and all the rest of it, and provide the services from the government entity. Alternatively, they could say that they do not want to be part of either of those and they can seek work elsewhere in government. They are the options that it would go through. The benefit, as I understand it, comes from having an agency which is focused on the maintenance and management of those services, so that Health, as well as running health services, does not have to do these. The benefits from having a centralised agency which looks after particular kinds of services then flow; so that is where we get the savings, not by reducing, necessarily, the number of workers. Members interjecting: The Speaker House of Assembly The SPEAKER: Order! I'm sorry, question time has finished.