Economic and Finance Committee: Annual Report 2013-14

Adjourned debate on motion of Mr Odenwalder:

That the 86^th report of the committee, entitled Annual Report 2013-14, be noted.

(Continued from 29 October 2014.)

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (11:04): I rise to make a brief contribution on the Annual Report 2013-14 of the Economic and Finance Committee. I have not looked at the dates exactly, but I was a member of that committee for about a month, so I do not deserve a great deal of responsibility with regard to the formulation of this report. I look forward to serving the committee and I am sure that it will be a very productive and useful committee on behalf of the parliament.

I would like to touch briefly on section 3.5 of the annual report, entitled Eighty-Fifth Report: Emergency Services Levy 2014-2015. I will read a brief section as follows:

In accordance with its statutory function in reporting on the proposed Emergency Services Levy each financial year, the Committee noted the total expenditure on emergency services for 2014-15 is projected to be $255.1 million, and that total expenditure for 2013-14 is expected to be broadly in line with the original budget estimate.

The Committee also noted that cash balances in the Community Emergency Services Fund were expected to reach $0.5 million by 30 June 2014. The Committee was not provided with information on the level of remissions to be granted by the Government this year, and was therefore unable to comment on the effective levy rates for the 2014-15 period.

The reason that that is very important—particularly that last sentence, 'The Committee was not provided with information on the level of remissions to be granted by the Government this year, and was therefore unable to comment on the effective levy rates for the 2014-15 period'—is that, in removing the remissions, which the government previously provided (and historically previous governments have provided) to the people who pay the emergency services levy, the government has tried to say, and the Treasurer specifically has tried to say in this place, that everybody was fully informed, that everybody knew about it, that everybody knew it was going to happen and it should not be such a surprise. In fact, in question time, he made some very pointed and unfair comments about the member for Unley.

This report makes it clear that nobody was in a position to know what the level of remission would be, whether the remissions would be retained in full, partially retained or fully removed. It is clear that no information was provided even to the Economic and Finance Committee in advance of the government making public announcements. It might well be that the Treasurer might have known, it might well be that some members or all of cabinet might have known, it might be that the Labor caucus knew, but certainly it was not public information; there is no doubt about that.

I think that the public outrage and the opposition's outrage with regard to the removal of the remissions is justified and warranted. Mr Speaker, it would be no surprise to you or any other member of this place that the public is outraged not only—

The SPEAKER: Member for Stuart, your remarks appear to be addressed to Orders of the Day No. 3, the Economic and Finance Committee's 85^th report on the emergency services levy. We are on Order of the Day No. 1, the annual report.

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: Mr Speaker, I know you have a lot on your mind but I did quote a section right out of this annual report and that is what I am talking about.

The SPEAKER: Do go ahead.

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: Section 3.5. The public understandably is outraged that not only have they had to pay the extra money but also outraged that not one dollar of the extra money that they have to pay is going to additional funding for emergency services. The emergency services sector will receive the same amount of money, regardless of the extra billing to the public, because the extra was previously topped up out of Treasury and now it is being topped up out of the public purse. Not one dollar of the additional charges the public is paying leads to any additional money for the emergency services sector.

Of course the emergency services sector itself is very angry about that because they know that. They know that people, including themselves, are being charged more, but they are not getting any more funding towards their sector. They know that not everybody in the community sector fully understands all the financial transactions in the background, so they know that the public is quite within its rights perhaps to assume that an extra emergency services levy charge must mean more money going to the emergency services sector, which of course is definitely not the case.

This is a very important section of this report. The government did not provide the information to the Economic and Finance Committee, as the Treasurer said in question time was the case. It is clearly not the case that that information was provided, and that is proven in section 3.5 of the report.

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (11:11): I rise to contribute to the debate on noting of the annual report of the Economic and Finance Committee, and I want to canvass a similar matter to that just canvassed by the member for Stuart. I refer members to section 3.5 of the annual report, July 2013-June 2014 of the Economic and Finance Committee of this parliament. It refers to the 85^th report, emergency services levy 2014-15. It goes on to say that, 'In accordance with its statutory function in reporting of the proposed emergency services levy each financial year, the committee noted the total expenditure…', etc., and reported to the parliament.

The statutory obligation of the committee, under the Emergency Services Funding Act, is to receive information from the Treasurer, and within 21 days of receipt of that information report to the house. In the meantime, the committee holds a hearing, takes evidence and reports on those matters to the house. My understanding is that the Treasurer provided the information to the committee on 6 June this year. The committee held a hearing on 12 June and reported to the house on Thursday 19 June. The report would have been tabled in the house in the morning session, I believe. The interesting other piece of information about this is that 19 June was also the day the budget was brought down, later in the day.

The committee, as the member for Stuart pointed out, has noted that the relevant information about the remissions was withheld from the committee. As the member for Stuart has pointed out, the Treasurer has been arguing that the committee could have, and should have, asked questions about that, but we all know that the response to every question asked about those sort of matters is, 'I won't be revealing what's going to be in the budget, you'll have to wait till budget day'.

The reality is that the Treasurer withheld the information that was vital for the committee to undertake its statutory work, knowing full well that the committee would again be, under its statutory obligation, forced to report on the emergency services levy 2014-15 prior to the budget being handed down. The reality is that this committee in my opinion has been prevented by the executive government from doing what is its statutory obligation in reporting to the house fully and fairly on the implications of determinations which are made by the Governor but on the advice of the Treasurer.

When the principal act, the Emergency Services Funding Act, was passed, the house determined that one of the functions of the Economic and Finance Committee would be to have a look at the determinations of the Treasurer every year and report those matters back to the house. That has happened very well in ensuing years, until this year.

There was, in my opinion, a deliberate—a deliberate—device employed by the Treasurer in withholding that information, knowing full well that the house would not be informed of the true measures that were being undertaken with regard to the emergency services levy and the public would be in the dark at least until the budget was brought down. Indeed, when the budget was brought down I suspect that the Treasurer believed that there would be so many other matters in the budget that there was a fair chance that this would be lost in the white noise surrounding other matters in the budget.

I commend the committee for bringing this particular matter to the attention of the house, because I think it is very important. I think it is very important that every member of this house, particularly those who are not part of the executive government—that is, those who are not cabinet ministers within the executive government—understands that the relevant information from the work that should be done on their behalf, so that they can keep their constituents fully informed on these relevant matters, has been withheld from the committee. As a consequence, the committee, through no fault of its own, on the one hand has statutory obligations to report to the house within 21 days and on the other hand had no ability to force this information from the Treasurer or indeed seek further explanation from the officers of the relevant agency.

Since the accounts have gone out for the emergency services, we have been told again by the government that the removal of the remissions would have an impact of some $80 million or $90 million a year, and we have been told that that would be something getting towards 100 per cent increase in the revenue raised. I look at examples from my own constituency—and I know the same has occurred in many of my colleagues' constituencies—and we have all read in the media about a whole host of organisations, particularly schools and non-government organisations providing important services to our communities, whose emergency services levies have gone up by much more than that advertised amount. We have seen more recently that, in the cases of some local councils, the amount of the emergency services levy they have been charged has gone up by a lot more than 100 per cent.

I think it is absolutely imperative that the house does something about this and insists that the Economic and Finance Committee is furnished with the relevant information. I think it is absolutely imperative that that committee has the opportunity to seek answers from Revenue SA about the modelling that they have done about the implications of the various rates that have been set, because I find it very hard to believe that the numbers that have been put forward in the other report (I think it is also on the Notice Paper) add up, particularly when I look at some of the accounts that have been sent out to my constituents.

I commend the Economic and Finance Committee for bringing this particular matter to the attention of the house in this way through its annual report, and I plead with my colleagues in this place to take this matter very seriously. They will have an opportunity, very shortly I hope, when another matter will be discussed where the house may well be able to redress the problem that has been highlighted by the committee in its annual report.

Mr ODENWALDER (Little Para) (11:19): I want to thank everyone for their contributions, particularly the member for MacKillop, and also the now-departed member for Davenport. These debates have been well canvassed and I will not go over them again.

Motion carried.