Statutes Amendment (Industrial Relations Consultative Council) Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 9 September 2015.)

Mr KNOLL (Schubert) (11:27): I indicate that I will be the lead speaker on this piece of legislation as well. The bill was introduced by the Deputy Premier on 9 September 2015 and seeks to, essentially, take three committees—the Industrial Relations Advisory Council, the SafeWork SA Advisory Council, and the Asbestos Advisory Council—and bring them together as one body. Obviously, there are provisions under the Fair Work Act and the Work Health and Safety Act that need to be changed in order to achieve this.

I can understand from the government's point of view that there is duplication around these three committees, although again there are some questions I would like to tease out in the committee stage of this bill in order to make sure that all three of these areas, which have their own distinctions, are captured in the new committee, because industrial relations is not the same thing as work health and safety, is not the same thing as asbestos, which is quite a specific issue. However, I do appreciate the fact that the committee has not met for nearly a year due to the reform process.

In terms of stakeholder engagement, we received some feedback and certainly the AHA and the MBA (Master Builders Association) verbally stated that they supported the bill. We had one stakeholder in SAWIA (South Australian Wine Industry Association) that expressed some concerns, especially around what they see are two different skill sets required. Again, I talk about the difference between industrial relations and work health and safety which are two very distinct fields. Having been involved with them, I can understand what he means by that, and also about the government's ability to find people who have expertise across both areas.

I would assume that the Attorney-General, who will sit as the chair of this committee, will want to make sure that his mind is challenged by minds of a similar stature in order for there to be lively debate leading to the best outcomes; he is going to want the best people sitting around him. There will obviously be a need to ensure that people can fulfil the requirements and have knowledge in all of those areas as opposed to just having a smaller number of specialists in each.

The other thing we would like to say is that not often enough in this place are we debating ways to reduce the size of government, so double thumbs-up to the Attorney on this one. Whenever I talk to my constituents they ask, 'How often do you sit?' I say, 'We sit about 15 weeks a year.' I think it's about 47 days—interestingly, the same number of MPs, and it has been suggested that journalists have one free lunch from each MP per day.

What I go back and say to my constituents is, 'You do not want us sitting any more than we absolutely have to, because in this place the vast majority of the time we are finding new and ever-increasing ways to take away the freedoms and liberties of the people of South Australia.' Happily, this bill is a very small measure away to reverse in the other direction.

I implore the Attorney, and the Labor government more generally, to find more and more ways to reduce the size of government. If you were to bring back some idea about shrinking the size of cabinet I am sure we can get around that, and shrinking the size of government as a whole, I am sure we can come together on those things. I am happy to say that the Liberal Party will be supporting this bill. There are a few questions that I want to tease out just to make sure that we are doing the right thing.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Do you want to tease those questions out now so that by the time we get into committee we can have the answers for you?

Mr KNOLL: Maybe.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: That's what we really should do.

Mr KNOLL: Should we? If I sit down and we go into committee we can do the same thing.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: In fact the Clerk and I were discussing a bit earlier that we have allowed latitude on this. The questions have to be relevant to the clauses rather than the general sweep we have been having. It is probably best to raise the general sweep in your second reading speech.

Mr KNOLL: Happy to sweep. In fact I think it is something that happens a lot more often in the other place, not that we should otherwise do what they do but—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: We are just trying to make it fair for everybody and every bill.

Mr KNOLL: I take the Deputy Speaker's point on this. The questions I want to ask are:

How much money will be saved with the merging of these three committees?

Are there any transition costs that we will have to deal with?

We have an outline of what the current three bodies are being paid: does the minister have an understanding of what the new total cost will be—there is provision for payment of this committee in this bill—and whether the government has come to a conclusion on that?

I also have questions around the different skill sets and how the government is prepared to cover off on all of them, especially when the objectives of the new industrial relations consultative council do not make specific reference to asbestos, so how will that be covered as part of it?

I also want to understand the process. Obviously there are a number of members: there are 13 members on the Industrial Relations Advisory Council, 11 members on the SafeWork SA Advisory Council and then 13 on the Asbestos Advisory Committee and they are obviously going to be merged. I understand it is the minister plus 12, so potentially we have up to 37 people. How are they going to be shrunk into 12? Perhaps it is not 37, because I assume the minister is one of them. How is that process going to work?

The government obviously went through a huge piece of work reforming boards and committees and I seem to remember that it was large omnibus-looking bill that sought to get rid of quite a number of boards and committees. It seems that that could or would or should have been the opportune time to deal with this. I want to understand why there was the delay, given that we have gone through that piece of work. Indeed, these committees were obviously under consideration as part of the process because they have not met because of the process. I am keen to understand those things as well. With that, Deputy Speaker, I will conclude.

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform) (11:34): I will attempt between now and a little later to find some information about savings. I do not have exact numbers but I am looking at some people who appear to me to have numbers on the very edge of their fingertips, and in the twinkling of an eye, I will be able to come back to that particular topic. Goodness me—here we are!

The total savings from the consolidation of the three committees, I am advised, is estimated at $133,238. The members will be paid a sessional fee of $206 per four-hour session. There will be 12 members entitled to fees. Does that mean the chair does not get paid fees? That is an oversight. If there are four meetings held per year, the cost of the committee would be similar to the cost of IRAC; therefore the IRAC fees have not been calculated in the calculation of the abovementioned cost savings.

The breakdown of the fees are that SWSAAC members are entitled to an annual sitting fee of $12,383, the chair of that committee is entitled to an annual sitting fee of—I see. The SafeWork advisory and the asbestos advisory committees have been stuck together. The annual sitting fee, as I said, is $12,383. The chair is entitled to a sitting fee of $18,574 plus a retainer of $10,000. There are nine members who are entitled to fees. The total cost of fees for those members is $127,638.

The asbestos advisory chair was entitled to an annual sitting fee of $5,600. There were no other fees paid to the advisory committee. IRAC members are entitled to a sessional fee of $206 for a four-hour session, with 12 members entitled to that fee. The budget allocation for fees is $9,888. SafeWork will utilise current FTEs to provide support to the industrial relations consultative committee. That is the issue as to costs.

As to the use of these committees, in my period as industrial relations minister, I have taken the view that these committees were initially a little bit unwieldy—two in particular—and it was not always clear that an issue fell cleanly within the province of one or the other, so there was an element of duplication. I actually raised with the bodies themselves that I was thinking of doing this and trying to consolidate them, so that we would have more of a one-stop shop for policy advice.

My view is that, rather than my convening meetings for the sake of convening meetings, I should only convene the meetings where I think there is a piece of work to be done—otherwise, I am just wasting everybody's time in preparing for a meeting that is just going through the motions, so to speak—so I would expect that the meeting calendar of this group would be relatively irregular. That is not to say that they might not go through a period of quite a bit of activity for some particular reason, but I do not necessarily think it is going to be regularly chewing through a lot of work.

The other question was about skill sets. The predecessor committees have always had the flavour of the old industrial relations club about them. They are a group who are largely the nominees, if you like, of employer organisations and another group who are largely nominees of employee organisations. Whilst I will obviously be trying to fit out the group with the best possible people, I will be, in significant measure, relying on those respective groups to offer me candidates.

On a matter that is completely by the way, can I say that I personally do not consider myself a large fan of representative boards. In fact, I spent some time and effort to make sure that the board of ReturnToWorkSA was transformed from a representative board to a commercial board, but given that has a different function to this, which is actually a policy advisory group, I accept the fact that having some sort of broadly representative constituency is not inappropriate. So, it will be largely dependent on the primary representatives of employer and employee organisations to help me in finding suitably qualified people.

As to the question of asbestos, it is true asbestos is a very particular issue and there are other groups that have a total focus on asbestos to which I can speak, so that is fine. I think it is also important that asbestos is on the agenda for the broader representation of employers and employees because asbestos is a terribly broadly spread and long-term issue which should be in the mainstream of conversation about workplace safety and not just confined to some little cul-de-sac somewhere.

One of the questions that was asked of me by the member for Schubert was: why was this not a part of the bigger bill that occurred earlier? I have an answer here that I prepared earlier which I might share with you all. On 8 July 2014, the Premier wrote to the chair of all boards and committees to advise of his reform program. The reform of the government's 429 boards and committees intended to abolish those that were no longer necessary and reform existing boards to create efficiencies and so forth.

The Premier's final report, released in October 2015, outlining the government's proposed approach, listed the SafeWork SA Advisory Council, the IR Advisory Committee and the Asbestos Advisory Committee as needing further investigation at that stage. To deliver the outcomes identified in the report the Statutes Amendment (Boards and Committees—Abolition and Reform) Bill was introduced on 11 November of last year. It was not possible at that stage to include provisions to establish the industrial relations consultative council in the Premier's bill as development of a discussion paper and a draft model was still underway at that time. I did think it was important for me to speak to the players at some length about this, even though I was reasonably confident of where we would ultimately land.

On 23 December of last year, I provided the discussion paper to the presiding member of each of these bodies proposing that this new committee replace them. Another thought has just occurred to me: how will the government ensure there is no loss of functions?

Mr Knoll interjecting:

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Indeed. I am glad you asked that question. This committee will streamline consultation and advisory functions, providing one key body to provide high level advice to the Minister for Industrial Relations to facilitate the effective and efficient administration of laws covering safe and fair workplaces.

In addition, the committee will have the ability to establish a subcommittee to deal with a specific issue and invite members from other organisations with relevant knowledge and expertise to join the subcommittee. If an issue arises that requires specific attention and is requested by four or more members, I will be required to convene a meeting. So, it is a sort of two-way street. Either I can actually initiate one of these meetings or they can be initiated, in effect, by a quorum of the membership. I think that is all helpful information and I have a sense that I am about to tell the parliament something else.

Mr Knoll: Would you like to talk about: are you going to sack all the people and then start again, or is there going to be a merging?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: As far as I am concerned, what will happen is these boards will be dissolved and then I will make an approach to the employer and employee organisations inviting them to provide me with some suggestions as to how we go about this in the future.

I have some information that I would like to share with you all, which arguably is relevant. I will give you an example, and that is the Asbestos Advisory Committee. The membership of that committee—and I am not sure if it is necessary to go through all of the names—the organisations involved are: the Master Builders Association, the Property Council of Australia, the Environment Protection Authority, SafeWork SA, an appointee of the minister, McMahon Services, local government, the Department for Health and Ageing, the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure, SA Unions and the Metropolitan Fire Service. There is an array of employer and employee groups represented there, and I think that is the sort of thing that we could expect to see.

So as not to detain members too far on this, if the honourable member wants full details of all of the current members of all of these committees, I am happy to provide that. I do not know that it is necessary for me to read it into Hansard, but I am very happy to provide that afterwards.

This change represents, I think, a sensible resolution of what were probably a series of committees that had evolved over time without due regard to the juxtaposition of other committees which were playing in similar space. I think this is a rational and constructive change. It should be the case that any minister for industrial relations, whether it is me or anybody else, should be in a position where they can convene, if necessary, a representative forum of people who can provide advice or counsel or a sounding board for issues that might be going forward. Whilst I have not found it necessary to do that using any of the formal bodies so much so far, one can never say what issues might arise in the future, so I think this is a useful change.

I do appreciate the positive remarks from the member for Schubert. Like him, I share the notion that, where possible, we should be trying to remove red tape and replication in government. It is often a great source of confusion to business and to members of the public, and there are many areas where I have been attempting in various portfolio responsibilities to eliminate some of that duplication and complexity in order to make it easier for people to do business. Planning, for example, is another area where I think there is an enormous opportunity for that red tape and complexity to be stripped out of the system to make things easier for ordinary citizens to go about their business without having to endure some bureaucratic nightmare.

Bill read a second time.

Third Reading

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform) (11:49): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time and passed.