Government Contracts

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (15:04): My question is to the Minister for Industry and Skills. What will the government do to ensure local South Australian stationery suppliers have a fair opportunity to tender for government workplace and related products contracts? Many local suppliers, home-grown businesses supporting local people and jobs, are missing out on business because of procurement practices that treat them unfavourably, in particular by failing to meet their objective of recognition of local suppliers.

The Hon. D.G. PISONI (Unley—Minister for Industry and Skills) (15:05): I thank the member for Florey for her question and her interest in small business here in South Australia. Of course, this is not a new problem for South Australia. The previous Labor government was notorious for locking out small family businesses and smaller establishments here in South Australia from competing with larger businesses to use their products and their services, and particularly we saw that in the area of my colleague the Minister for Transport.

We saw it identified back in 2012. Remember the then government's response to the printer cartridge affair when public servants were favouring one particular supplier in order to get free watches or free gifts from the supplier? Of course, there is no such thing as a free gift. Someone always has to pay and in that case, of course, it was the taxpayers who were paying because the prices were inflated for those products.

Unfortunately, the then government's response was to bring in a very draconian contract that only provided for two very large contractors, neither of which had their head offices here in South Australia. We saw the group that acted as a buying group for all the newsagents here in South Australia locked out of schools here in South Australia and a significant impact on that business that saw a loss of jobs.

Fortunately, through the work of the member for Florey and others—and I think I played a role certainly in raising that issue publicly—that issue was fixed, but here we are back again with a new contract that was released not that long ago under the previous government and that again has seen small independent suppliers locked out of the system.

I am pleased to have met with KW Wholesale last week, who briefed me on the situation that they are in at the moment with government procurement of stationery. Of course, I thank the member for Florey for introducing them and setting up the appointment. I have asked the Industry Advocate for advice on this matter, not that I wasn't aware of the work that the Industry Advocate was doing. I meet with him on a regular basis. As a matter of fact, one of the first things we did within a few weeks of being elected was to meet and discuss how we could make more of the government procurement process—about $4 billion a year—available to small businesses here in South Australia.

We all know Ian Nightingale. He is passionate about South Australia. He has taken that challenge on and he is working diligently on this issue and a number of other issues that have been identified that have caused problems for small business here in South Australia. Member for Florey, I thank you for your question and I am very pleased to announce that we are on the case.