Facilities Maintenance Services Management

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (15:24): Today, I would like to bring to the attention of the house a decision by the Marshall Liberal government to privatise another important public service and the impact that privatisation will have on small businesses in the regions and also those small contractors who work in the regional and rural areas of South Australia.

The Gawler hospital is one amongst many local public facilities that will be negatively impacted by the Marshall Liberal government's decision to privatise the management of DPTI's building maintenance service. Tradies working in the Gawler and Barossa regions are reeling from the decision and fear that the plan will strip local workers of their jobs and livelihoods and also have a negative impact on other small businesses in country towns.

Under the proposal announced recently by the then Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, the Hon. Stephan Knoll (member for Schubert), Across Government Facilities Management Services, which manages the maintenance of over 5,000 government facilities across country South Australia, will be privatised. Facilities that are covered under the maintenance program include schools, hospitals and police stations, amongst many other public assets. Trade businesses, such as plumbing, electrical and building, are all contracted by the service to complete the required maintenance work at these facilities.

The government now plans to privatise the management of this work to an external company to handle subcontracting, which local tradies believe will affect small country-based contracting businesses in a negative way. A number of these tradies and small businesses brought their grievances to Parliament House this morning. A number of businesses in the Barossa and Gawler area, or that service the Gawler and Barossa area, came this morning to Parliament House to deliver their message and their concerns about the impact this privatisation program will have on their livelihoods.

Local tradies in both the Gawler and Barossa regions have not only approached me but other members of parliament to ask their MPs to get this policy reversed. These various plumbers, electricians, builders and other building maintenance contractors and stakeholders have stressed that the privatisation will cause business to decline and job losses in those communities.

One such local tradie is electrician Alan Bland from Damacon Services at Munno Para Downs, which provides maintenance services to the Gawler hospital and a number of Barossa schools. Mr Bland said that he is concerned that public clients will be unable to choose the contractors of their choice and contractors they have built up a relationship with, which is likely to result in a huge reduction of work for his small business. Mr Bland says:

As a small business, this would threaten our viability and therefore ultimately result in a loss of jobs in this area.

He goes on to say:

I fear that the criteria for inclusion under the new system will preclude smaller businesses such as ours due to increased bureaucracy, as well as a reduction of the rates which are currently agreed and likely undercutting by larger organisations. Many of our customers—

that is, public sector customers—

have expressed their concerns about the reduction in the level of service they will receive.

Mr Bland goes on to say that these small businesses, the current contractors, often exceed expectations in the work they do, which is verified by the government's own published reports, which state that there is 92 per cent satisfaction with the work performed by these contractors across the state, which is indeed a very high satisfaction level. These local contractors also use:

…local suppliers, such as electrical wholesalers, hardware stores and equipment hire specialists, something that providers from the metro area are less likely to do.

Mr Bland's concerns have been echoed by Mr Dan Costigan from Efficient Airflow Solutions, who said he fears the privatisation will affect his client portfolio by squeezing them out, bringing larger city-based companies to the region to carry out work on government assets. He goes on to say:

This concerns me as a couple of years ago DPTI altered the region boundaries. With that, Spotless took over management of some Barossa/Hills sites and refused to use us local tradies.

Companies from the city were brought in to carry out preventative maintenance and breakdown works. The schools didn't get a say at all…

What the government should be doing now is listening to the voices of these small businesses and tradies in these country regions and reverse their policy. It is clear this privatisation will create major damage to our local economies, small businesses and contracted workers.

Time expired.