Parliamentary Committees

Economic and Finance Committee: Annual Report 2018-19

Mr DULUK (Waite) (11:01): I move:

That the fifth report of the committee, entitled Annual Report 2018-19, be noted.

Sir, I know that you will be very excited to hear about some of the activities that our committee has been undertaking since 1 July 2018. The current membership of the committee includes me as the Presiding Member, as well as the members for Colton, Finniss, Lee, Morphett, Ramsay and Wright. I would also like to acknowledge the member for Narungga, who was a member of the committee until 31 July 2018, when he was replaced by the member for Finniss. I thank all members past and present for their contributions to the committee throughout the 2018-19 period.

The committee tabled two reports in the reporting period. On 28 November 2018, the committee tabled its Annual Report 2017-18, and on 6 June 2019 the committee tabled its report on the emergency services levy for 2019-20. It is probably important at this point, because I have not been able to make a contribution more broadly to the debate this week, to thank all those emergency services personnel who fought in the bushfires not only in our home state of South Australia on Yorke Peninsula in the member for Narungga's electorate but over in New South Wales as well.

Our community volunteer organisations are the backbone of their communities, and right across country South Australia and indeed in parts of peri-urban Adelaide, including my own electorate, we know that the CFS plays a huge role. In fact, on Saturday morning just gone I hosted my annual CFS fundraising barbecue, together with the member for Boothby and the member for Davenport in this house.

I was talking to James from the Belair brigade. He had just come back from fighting the fires in New South Wales, and there were quite a few members of the Belair and Eden Hills brigades who were in New South Wales, as well as those from the Coromandel Valley brigade who went down to fight the fires in Edithburgh. Thank you to all the members of the Sturt group for the work they do in protecting our community.

The Economic and Finance Committee is, I believe, the hardest working committee in the parliament. In 2018-19, we heard from over 120 people at public hearings, 70 people at public hearings in our parliament here and 50 people at hearings throughout regional South Australia. I think it is really important that committees get out into the regions not only for members of the committee to get a stronger understanding of what is happening in our regional communities and outside the bubble that is North Terrace but also for members of regional communities to be able to speak to politicians from all sides of the divide. We have also had 41 hearings here in our parliament. So it is a very hardworking committee, and we are very grateful to the committee secretariat, Dr Josh Forkert and Mr Adam Marafioti, for their good sense of humour and diligence as they go about their work.

Over the reporting period, the committee conducted an inquiry into South Australian investment attraction policies. The committee received 27 submissions and heard from 47 witnesses across nine public hearings, including public hearings in Salisbury and Murray Bridge and a site visit to the Beston Pure Foods cheesemaking facility following the hearing in Murray Bridge.

The committee heard that there were many barriers and drawbacks in the previous investment attraction programs of the former Labor government, including a perceived focus on picking winners and providing grants to individual businesses instead of improving the overall business environment, as well as a number of broader barriers and challenges, including a lack of access to appropriately skilled labour and poor coordination across levels of government.

The committee tabled the final report of this inquiry on 31 July 2019. The report made eight recommendations to inform the government's new approach to investment attraction to reinforce the strengths and address the barriers of past programs. The committee also made a number of recommendations to help increase investment in regional areas through supporting infrastructure projects and cutting red tape in planning processes.

I am really glad that this is happening. There was some news in recent weeks about the way the government is investing in infrastructure programs across the region in the member for Stuart's electorate with the Joy Baluch Bridge, and of course in the member for Narungga's electorate at Port Wakefield and the Horrocks Highway as well. So the government is investing in our regions, which is so important. That is something that we need to fast-track for productivity and for safety and to ensure that our economy continues to grow for the betterment of all.

In August 2018, the committee resolved to inquire into and report on the economic contribution of migration to South Australia. This is certainly a very important committee, and I note that the federal parliament has just begun an inquiry into the economic contribution of migration as well. We are a migrant nation. In South Australia, if you look at our growth statistics over the last 16 to 20 years, if it were not for migration in this state and people coming and choosing to live in South Australia our population would indeed have gone backwards.

So migrants, especially skilled migrants, and international students make an incredibly important contribution to the economic prosperity of this state. The inquiry is almost about to wrap up and we hope to table that report soon. I think the inquiry was very fulsome in its business. As I said, we received 40 submissions and heard from 84 witnesses across 14 public hearings. In March this year, as part of the inquiry the committee travelled to the Limestone Coast and held public hearings in Penola and Mount Gambier.

We visited Balnaves of Coonawarra (who make some beautiful chardonnay) and Holla-Fresh in Tantanoola to discuss the role of migrants in addressing local workforce shortages. In June 2019, the committee held public hearings in Murray Bridge and visited Costa Adelaide Mushrooms at Monarto South. In October this year, the committee visited the Osborne Naval Shipyard to hear about the impact of migrants on the defence industry and the skills that are needed in that sector.

It would not matter where we held public hearings in terms of migration, there are so many businesses—whether it is Holla-Fresh, Big River Pork in the member for Hammond's electorate, Thomas Foods or Costa Adelaide Mushrooms—who pretty much predominantly rely on what we describe as a migrant workforce to ensure that those businesses survive. These are businesses that feed South Australians and feed Australians. Attracting skilled, and indeed unskilled, labour into those businesses in regional centres is so important.

Everything government can do to break down red tape and bureaucracy and encourage people to come to South Australia and to Adelaide—but, really importantly, to come to regional South Australia—is so important. The committee heard that many businesses and industries across South Australia rely on migration to fill skills shortages that cannot be met locally across a wide range of industries, from agriculture and food processing in regional areas to emerging technology and defence industries in Adelaide.

During our trip to the Limestone Coast, we heard that many of the major employers in the regions, like meat producers JBS at Bordertown and Teys at Naracoorte, rely on migrant workers. Mr Ian Lines, owner and Managing Director of Holla-Fresh at Tantanoola, which is one of the leading hydroponic growers of fresh herbs in Australia, told us many times that without migrant workers his business would struggle to exist—and they are the biggest supplier of herbs to the Woolworths Group in South Australia and the Northern Territory.

The committee also heard about many accounts of the positive impact that both skilled and humanitarian migrants have made to local communities in the South-East. We heard that humanitarian migrants bring new life to towns like Naracoorte, Bordertown and Mount Gambier and support local businesses, schools and communities. However, we were concerned to hear that businesses in our regional areas still struggle to attract local workers and migrants.

At Murray Bridge, we heard that lack of workers is limiting the ability of businesses like Swanport Harvest to grow and expand and that attracting and retaining workers is one of the most important issues in our regions—as we have discussed many times—especially in Murray Bridge, with the expansion of Thomas Foods International and, of course, Costa Adelaide Mushrooms. We are currently considering our report into this inquiry, and I hope to report back to the house by the end of the year, so I encourage the members of my committee to read the report so we can table it.

I thank the City of Salisbury, the Rural City of Murray Bridge, the City of Mount Gambier and Wattle Range Council for hosting the committee's public hearings in their respective districts; Mr Troy Bell MP for his help in organising the Mount Gambier public hearing; and Mr Nick McBride MP (member for MacKillop) and Mr Adrian Pederick (member for Hammond) for highlighting the issues that their respective electorates face when we were having our public hearings. I would also like to thank the many businesses, local governments and others who met with us.

The committee has also performed its various statutory functions during the reporting period, including reporting on the annual emergency services levy, reviewing changes to public body charters and tender processes for public transport services, considering the sport and recreation fund allocations and, of course, hearing evidence from the Auditor-General in relation to his annual report.

Along with the member for Colton and our secretary, Dr Josh Forkert, I was very lucky to go to Canberra recently for ACPAC—two days of very exciting deliberations about public accounts and audit committees. I had never been so excited to hear about audit and audit functions of government bureaucracies.

The Hon. D.C. van Holst Pellekaan interjecting:

Mr DULUK: It was a very exciting two days, member for Stuart, you will be pleased to know. We met with similar committees from across Australia, as well as the public finance and accounts committee of the federal parliament. We also met with members of the New Zealand parliament and the parliaments of South Africa and parts of the Pacific. It was two days of stimulating ACPAC and learning more about how our public accounts committees can perform their functions as jurisdictions, as prudential management and by holding the executive to account in the parliament.

The committee plans to continue our busy work schedule throughout 2019-20. As noted in this report, the committee commenced an inquiry into the motor vehicle insurance and repair industry in South Australia in September 2019, and to date we have received 50 submissions. The committee has already held several public hearings and aims to report back to the house in early 2020. On behalf of the committee, I thank all those who have made a contribution to our inquiries and assisted the committee in this important work over the past year. I commend the Economic and Finance Committee's Annual Report 2018-19 to the house.