Occupational Licensing National Law (South Australia) Repeal Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 11 February 2016.)

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (12:32): I reiterate that I am not the lead speaker in regard to this bill but I rise to make a contribution to the Occupational Licensing National Law (South Australia) Repeal Bill 2016. I want to go over some history in regard to the Occupational Licensing National Law. It goes back to 2008 when the COAG agreed to develop a national trade licensing system for multiple occupational trades. Victoria was given the task of lead legislator and South Australia passed the appropriate legislation back in 2011. Our party supported that legislation.

The first wave of occupations that were involved in this were air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics, plumbers, gasfitters, electricians and property agents. If the second wave came about, that was to include land transport, maritime, building, conveyancers and valuers. In December 2013 the COAG by majority vote decided to abandon the National Occupational Licensing Scheme, and the communiqué from COAG noted that most jurisdictions had identified a number of concerns with the proposed model and potential costs. States, therefore, agreed to work together via the Council for the Australian Federation to develop alternative options for minimising licensing impediments to improve labour mobility between the states.

There had been strong opposition to the proposed national model from various real estate industry bodies and the National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA). NECA opposed the model as life threatening and potentially another pink batts debacle waiting to happen. The Real Estate Institute of New South Wales also criticised the model as leading to a reduction in existing standards, as the lowest standard applying in some states would be used for the national model. This gives effect to the COAG decision and this bill will repeal the Occupational Licensing National Law (South Australia) Act 2011 and dissolve the national entities that have been established.

I just want to make a point about some of the nationalised legislation that has come through this place (and some has been to do with the national heavy vehicle regulation). Certainly that is not working very well. Still there are so many different regulations, depending on which state you are travelling through. I am talking in particular with regard to wide loads. It is just not working, and I will certainly bring this up with the relevant ministers, but there needs to be some reality with what happens with wide loads and also the transport of those trailers back to their base and certainly the effect it is having, for instance in regard to agricultural equipment like field bins.

In South Australia you can only have one field bin on a trailer, when it can cart three, and it just triples the cost of the freight, and at $6 a kilometre it makes it exorbitant to transfer that equipment. There is a lot of work to do with a whole range of the nationalisation of legislation. It would do good for a few people who work on some of these regulations in the background to look at the reality of what goes on out in the real world to see the effect it is having on productivity and profitability on top of that.

With regard to this bill, and looking at some of the clauses in relation to it, the measure will come into operation on the day on which the Occupational Licensing National Law Act 2010 of Victoria is repealed. There is also a clause that works through the interpretation around certain words and expressions to be used in the act, the proposed act and the repeal of the national law act of this jurisdiction, and this clause provides for the repeal of the Occupational Licensing National (South Australia) Act 2011.

Clause 5 deals with the dissolution of the national licensing authority, the national licensing board and advisory committees, and this clause provides for the repeal of the following entities insofar as they are constituted under the South Australian act:

(a) the national occupational licensing authority;

(b) the national occupational licensing board; and

(c) each occupational licence advisory committee.

It is noted that each of those entities were separately established by the Victorian act, the South Australian act and the adoption acts of the other participating states and territories. However, the relevant parliaments adopting the occupational licensing national law declare their intention that the law has the effect of establishing a single national entity. Clause 5 also provides that:

(a) the members of the licensing board or a license advisory committee cease to be members and are not entitled to any remuneration or compensation as a result;

(b) any remaining assets, rights or liabilities, if any, of the dissolved entities become, on their dissolution, the assets, rights or liabilities of the crown in right of the participating states and territories; and

(c) any act, matter or thing that is authorised or required to be done in relation to those assets, rights or liabilities by the dissolved entities is authorised or required to be done by the secretary of the New South Wales Treasury.

Clause 6 deals with the abolition of the national occupational licensing fund, and that fund will be abolished by force of this provision, and any money or property standing in the credit of the fund immediately before its abolition are assets to be dealt with under the previous clause.

Clause 7 deals with an issue around final licensing authority financial statements, which makes provision for any fine or financial statements of the national occupation or licensing authority for the period before its dissolution that have not been prepared, audited and published to be prepared, audited and published after its dissolution by the secretary of the New South Wales Treasury.

Clause 8 transfers certain records for the New South Wales Treasury (so they will go into the custody of the New South Wales Treasury) of the entities dissolved by the proposed act, and provides that the State Records Act 1998 of New South Wales and other laws of New South Wales apply to those records as if they were the records of the New South Wales Treasury.

Clause 9 deals with the appropriate regulations with regard to the bill.

It is interesting to note that nationalisation in this form obviously did not work. There were some serious concerns brought up by the various entities and certainly some of the issues with different tradespeople wanting to operate in a neighbouring state have been brought to my attention over time, especially when you get places close to a border—whether it be places in our state like Bordertown or Mount Gambier—where people, obviously, I would think, do work across the border.

It does intrigue me a bit that this national licensing scheme has fallen apart. It just shows that, with the nationalisation of some of these programs, there needs to be more work done to make sure the right result is achieved. I note that we are supporting the bill, but there will certainly be some questions asked in committee.

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (12:40): I rise to speak on the Occupational Licensing National Law (South Australia) Repeal Bill 2016 which will be supported by the opposition, and indicate that I will be the lead speaker.

As has been adeptly pointed out by my colleague, the member for Hammond, this is about the dismantling of a national program that was to bring about efficiencies and benefits to various occupations which are required to be licensed and, in particular, to have some uniformity and cutting of the unnecessary obligations to replicate licensing or undertake various different types of training or thresholds to be approved for the purposes of operating in different states.

I can only say, 'How the wheel turns.' We are here today dismantling one of the national programs which had come with great expectation and which was underpinned by great promises. Also, as outlined by my colleague, the national regulation in respect of heavy vehicles would have to be one of the most blistering examples of incompetence, with promises of reform that would be of benefit to truck and transport operators which has ballooned into an expensive, delay-filled and frustrating process for the regulation of that industry now in Queensland.

Still today, we have issues of delay in respect of permits for the purposes of allowing operators to deal with seasonal transport and access to and from facilities (whether they are at a port and going through a town or what is called the first mile/last mile problems associated with accessing rural properties to pick up produce).

It is a disgrace and I lay the entire blame for that with the state governments who signed up to transfer responsibility of this area to a federal body, as I say, set up in Queensland before they had even set up the Queensland operation. We are left with this enormous hiatus and enormous cost of interruption to people's businesses as a result of the total mishandling of that transfer. They promised the world and delivered a nightmare and it is still unresolved.

I would have to say that, fortunately, the nationalising of regulation in respect of rail, which takes place in an Adelaide office, has certainly been better for those who are Adelaide operators, not that we have many of them as they are mostly operated by international companies who swing through South Australia en route to other destinations.

I would have to say that, to the best of my knowledge, the national regulation on marine vessels, which operates out of, curiously, Canberra—it does not have any ocean around it but, nevertheless, they are the headquarters for the national regulation for marine vessels—is also one that is apparently functioning quite well. But it is fair to say that the regulation in that area, again, is not of great capacity or number in South Australia. Our port, it is fair to say, is relatively small compared to, say, Melbourne; however, it is an important part of our transport operation and it ought not be impeded by having to deal with a national structure if it is inefficient. That, as I understand, though, is going along reasonably well.

We have had national regulation in respect of health professionals for all manner of health specialties, across to allied health-type services such as optometry in the time I have been here. I would have to say, that is more expensive in a number of those areas than it was when it was operated entirely under the state regime.

I will give credit to the former minister for health, the Hon. John Hill, who has just written his memoirs, and I see he has featured me on a few pages. He at least fought at the national level to make sure that, when we dealt with optometrists national regulation, we protected principally young women in this state from being able to get access to plano lenses, which were like a little lens you could put in your eye that were coloured or looked like cat's eyes or whatever, and ensured that, according to our South Australian standard, we would insist (notwithstanding the poor standard at the national level) on it being in our regulation, and it is still there today, as best as I understand. Good on him for ensuring that we do not move to what frequently becomes the lowest common denominator standard for the purposes of these national regulatory structures and the bodies that go with them.

So, we have had a few of them come through this house with promises by this government that the reform is going to provide cheaper, quicker and better regulatory regimes and they have certainly not lived up to their name. When they are hopeless, when they are inadequate, when they are just adding another layer of inefficiency to the occupation or industry that they purport to regulate, then at least some common sense in this bill has prevailed and we are getting rid of it. But there are consequences, and I am going to refer to those more in committee, but I think we do need to have some understanding about what the costs are to dismantle and what is going to happen with the money in the fund. I will be raising some of those issues later.

I will say, though, for the purposes of any minister who is getting excited about another proposed regulatory shift to the national level, that not everything that operates through a national scheme is good. We have given some examples, and those that operate bureaucracies in Canberra or under a federal label can have just as many inefficiencies and can be just as incompetent as any state one.

If I were to give the most significant example that I have witnessed during my time being in here, it would be the time that AQIS (the national body in respect of responsibility for quarantine) let horse flu into this country. The consequences to our equine industry, racing industry and the like were massive. So, they can be equally useless and they can be equally hopeless. The management of those in Canberra, for example through the pink batts disaster, of the implementation of policies that they want to progress as a federal government can be equally disastrous.

In that case, essentially, there was a federal government policy which was purported to support an initiative to get a whole lot of money out into the community in a hurry to offer to provide installation of pink batts in people's homes, and there was an effective bypass of the safety standards and training qualifications for persons who were going to install those initiatives to people's homes.

We saw as a result young men die, houses burned down and a scandalous amount of money then having to be spent on relooking at all the homes that had been fitted under this initiative, including thousands of them here in South Australia owned by the South Australian Housing Trust, which its tenants were not supposed to even get access to but they did. So, we had this massive cost then having to go back and retro-assess properties that had signed up, obviously to ensure that we minimise the risk to householders under that dreadfully incompetent scheme. And how do they get away with it? It was nothing to do with the standards that were imposed by each of the states at the time in respect of the insulation operators that were under state regimes. It was because the federal government of the day wanted to bypass and fast track its initiative and safety was compromised.

So, I am not at all confident that everything that goes to Canberra actually is good, and I think that it is a sobering lesson to understand that even something like this, which every one wanted to sign up to—that is, occupational licensing—was going to be good. So back in 2008 the then Rudd government decided at its COAG meeting, with a majority of other states, that it would have this national trade licensing scheme. They got started. The first wave of occupations was to include these air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics, plumbers, gas fitters, electricians and property agents, and we dealt with our legislation in South Australia to accommodate that back in 2011.

On our side of the house we raised our concerns about national regulatory systems, as we always do, but nevertheless supported the government under the promises which were being presented and the imposition put to us as a parliament, which I still consider an imposition when these leaders at COAG go off and sign up to things and then expect us to rubber stamp them. Anyway, we will not revisit that again, the fact is that we then had a whole lot of other professional parties that were to be licensed through this national scheme.

Fortunately, after the Abbott government was elected in December 2013 it had a COAG led by then prime minister Abbott and common sense prevailed after there had been a litany of identified problems with the national scheme. Then prime minister Abbott, with a majority of states at their COAG, indicated that they would resolve to dismantle the national scheme, that it would be abandoned and that there would be in its place at least (because clearly it had not reduced barriers to labour mobility and it had not dealt with the inefficiencies that it had promised) at that point an agreement between the states, through their Council for the Australian Federation, to develop alternative options for minimising licensing impediments.

It is fair to say that jurisdictions did try to deal with that, including in South Australia. In 2012 we had looked at legislation to enable the recognition of interstate licences. It is also fair to say that at that stage we had a big problem in South Australia. The Commissioner for Consumer and Business Services was responsible for processing the licensing applications of a number of professions; and at the time in the construction industry there was a massive backlog of over 1,200 applications so some effort needed to be made to ensure that there was a catch-up of that. It was certainly addressed here in the parliament as a problem. I think, by the time the minister (also Attorney-General) brought on some new initiatives by 2013, he claimed that there had been an improvement and we had a department that was processing some 300 at any one time.

Also in 2013, minister Rau, as the Minister for Consumer and Business Services, indicated on 19 June 2013 that he would cut red tape for interstate work under the National Occupational Licensing System. Remember that this was a few months before it was ultimately abandoned by the COAG of December 2013 and he was still singing the praises of the national scheme. I do not know whether he had his head in the sand through all this, because it was an absolute disaster.

The claim that he made was that this new nationally-led system will see a single authority for trade licensing that will develop a consistent set of responsibilities and licence eligibility criteria across state and territory borders. This phase of the National Occupational Licensing System will apply to plumbers, gasfitters, electricians, refrigeration and air-conditioning mechanics, real estate agents and sales representatives. Under the new system, licences for these trades will be recognised in all states and territories, etc.

Remember that, by this stage, there were major problems being identified by the stakeholders which culminated in COAG abandoning this, but three months before the abandonment of it, our minister, the Minister for Business Services and Consumers (also Attorney-General) was still singing its praises. In any event, how the wheel turns. We are here, we are getting rid of it, and the proposal is to dismantle whatever has been going on at the national level and everyone is going to be given their money back.

I was provided a letter from the Attorney yesterday via the Hon. Rob Lucas, who has the carriage of this bill on behalf of the opposition in another place, and it seeks to provide some information as to the dismantling of the scheme. It is wholly inadequate for my purposes so there will be a number of questions in committee on that. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Sitting suspended from 13:00 to 14:00.