Personal Explanation

Appropriation Bill 2018

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (17:02): I seek leave to make a personal explanation.

Leave granted.

Dr CLOSE: This morning, there was a bit of a disagreement raised as a point of order about the numbers I was using about loss of staff or FTEs in the environment and water department. I seek to clarify the position in the budget papers, subject to finding more information, of course, through the estimates process. The particular line to which I was referring was organisational reform.

There are 115 FTEs that are lost in the three-year period of the budget. My reference to over 200 was in reference to effort that is lost to the work in the environment over the three-year period because the 115 positions are not all taken in the final year. They are taken over a three-year period, which means that, having lost 22 people in the 2019-20 year, the effort by those 22 FTEs is also absent the following year and the year after that. By calculating it in that sense, there is something like 246 FTEs in effort missing, but I absolutely accept that it is 115 FTEs.