Matter of Privilege

Matter of Privilege

The SPEAKER (17:36): I advise members that I rise in respect of the matter of privilege that was raised today regarding the member for West Torrens. I make the following statement with regard to the matter of privilege that was raised by the Attorney-General in the house earlier today. However, before addressing the matter, I wish to outline the significance of privilege as it relates to the house and its members.

Privilege, as we know, is not a device by which members or any other person can seek to pursue matters that can be addressed by debate or settled by the vote of the house on a substantive motion. We have heard the test by McGee in Parliamentary Practice in New Zealand, which in my view makes the test for whether or not a matter is a matter of privilege by defining it as a matter that can 'genuinely be regarded as tending to impede or obstruct the house in the discharge of its duties'.

Generally speaking, any act or omission which obstructs or impedes the house in the performance of its functions, or which obstructs or impedes any member or officer of such house in the discharge of his duty, or which has a tendency, directly or indirectly, to produce such a result, may be treated as a contempt and therefore be considered a matter of privilege, even though there is no precedent of the offence.

I refer to the matter of privilege raised by the Attorney-General, made in relation to an allegation of misleading the house by the member for West Torrens in his former capacity as the minister for mineral resources and energy, in respect of his answers to questions on 14 November 2017. I quote the relevant parts of the member for West Torrens' answers, which are the subject of this matter of privilege. I refer to page 12,004 of the Hansard of 14 November 2017, where he says:

It's important to note that every single part of Our Energy Plan—every single part—whether it's our procurement of the world's largest lithium ion battery, whether it's our renewable technology fund, whether it's our procurement, every single part has been on time and on budget. There are no additional costs to those previously announced.

Further, on the same day, at page 12,005, I quote the former minister:

We have always said we were going to procure a brand-new, state-owned generator and temporary generator. What we have done is skip the temporary part and go on to the final solution. Within the $550 million package, what we have done is that we have been able to procure not only our temporary generation but our final solution to our backup within our budget.

The Attorney-General refers to the Auditor-General's Report, Report 9 of 2018: Battery storage procurement, and more specifically to the finding on page 38 of the report, where:

The $550 million budget provided in the 2017-18 State Budget captures Energy Plan implementation costs up to 2020-21. It does not include the full life-cycle costs of delivering the Energy Plan initiatives.

On further reading of the report, on page 38 it notes:

The contract for 100 MW battery storage services is for 10 years. The remaining six years of contract payments, which are about $27 million, are not included in the $550 million budget because they fall outside the estimate years in the 2017-18 State Budget.

The Attorney-General asserts that the answer provided to the house by the former minister on the full cost of the Energy Plan 'with no additional costs' at $550 million is misleading, as it does not accord with the full life-cycle costs of the project as documented in the Auditor-General's Report. It is noted on page 39 of the Auditor-General's Report:

The Energy Plan included significant initiatives that envisaged longer term arrangements and financial commitments extending beyond the four estimate years in the 2017-18 State Budget. Reporting on Energy Plan implementation by DPC was based on the budget amount of $550 million included in the State Budget and disclosed in the Energy Plan, not on the full estimated project cost required to deliver all of the Energy Plan initiatives.

It is clear that the former minister's answer at the time, in acknowledging the full cost of the energy plan, is referring to costs within the estimate years in the 2017-18 state budget and not the cost for the entire plan which includes costs outside of the four estimate years.

In the context of how government project costs are reported, referring to project costs based on four estimate years is often the practice and consistent with the way in which the former minister provided information to the house. So there is nothing in the Auditor-General's Report to bring into question the project costs provided by the minister at the time and the costs included in the report for the estimate years 2017-18. On this basis, I cannot see any ample inconsistency between the project costs referred to by the minister and the cost referred in the Auditor-General's Report for the four estimate years.

Therefore, in the Chair's opinion, this is not a matter of privilege for the reason I have stated above. In the Chair's view, the conduct complained of cannot, to use the test, 'genuinely be regarded as tending to impede or obstruct the house in the discharge of its duties'. Therefore, I also decline to give the matter the precedence that would allow the Attorney-General to immediately pursue the matter. However, as always, my opinion does not prevent any member from pursuing the matter by way of substantive motion.