Service SA

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (14:52): My question is also to the Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government. Further to the figures cited in your press release yesterday, reporting a decline of 100,000 face-to-face transactions per annum at Service SA over five years, or just on 4 per cent of the total transactions, how is this data collected and what has happened to the extra one million transactions your figures don't mention? Doesn't this really represent stable demand for face-to-face transactions at Service SA? With your leave and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Ms BEDFORD: If online transactions now represent 57.6 per cent—which you said is nearly 58 per cent—of total transactions and there are 4.54 million online transactions, and face-to-face transactions now represent 29.7 per cent of total transactions, or about 2.34 million, there are 12.7 per cent or roughly one million transactions unaccounted for. Are these transaction statistics relying on EFT records, ticketed interactions on site or other staff records? If drawn from only one set of data, face-to-face transaction records may not include all interactions at service centres because some are not fully completed at the time, so what has happened to those one million transactions?

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL (Schubert—Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government, Minister for Planning) (14:53): There is the third way to transact, and that is for people to call the Service SA centre call centres. That's where the remaining transactions are—

Mr Malinauskas: You cut that, too.

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: —57.6—the member is very correct—online. We are now down to 29.7 per cent in face to face, but the balance of those are people choosing to use a call centre to be able transact another way, again, that people are able to avoid having to go in store to undertake face to face. Especially for those potentially more remote locations, or, again, those for whom getting to a Service SA centre is difficult, we have this ability for people to be able to undertake call centre operations.

These call centre staff are the very same staff that people see at a face-to-face centre. There is essentially a triage system within the various physical locations that provide the opportunity for people call in to. That service is there, and that is where the balance is. However, we are seeing an undeniable trend to online. And, in fact, a lot of people want to see more and more transactions being able to be undertaken online, and that is something we are working on at the moment, especially in relation to the surrendering of licence plate numbers, which I know for a lot of dealers is a genuine issue in that they have to go in and surrender them physically every single time.

The other is for those people, especially older people, who have to continue to provide medical certificates to Service SA in relation to conditions that have been put on their licence, and the ability to be able to—as is done federally—provide those medical certificates without having to go in to a centre is something again that we are working on.

Mr Speaker, and member for Florey, there are a whole series of ways that we are helping to reform and innovate the way that we deliver better services in Service SA, and we will continue to do that because it is precisely what our customers are asking us to do, and that is precisely what we as a government should be doing.