QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

The Hon. J.S.L. DAWKINS (14:55): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Leader of the Government a question about questions without notice.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.S.L. DAWKINS: On 21 November 2007, I sought leave to make an explanation prior to asking a question about regional development board funding, and I quote from that explanation, as follows:

Seven of the 13 regional development boards in this state will have their current five-year resource agreements expire on 30 June 2008. In addition, the other RDBs, the resource agreements of which were to expire on 30 June 2007 but which were given a 12-month extension, will have their agreements expire at the end of this financial year.

I understand that the minister took this decision so that all boards would be in funding alignment and to allow for the implementation of new key performance indicators in closer integration with the economic targets under South Australia's Strategic Plan.

The level of state government funding under the RDB resource agreements has not increased during the term of the current government. The opposition understands that RDBs have been provided with draft resource agreements to commence in July 2008. These draft resource agreements apparently make no reference to state government funding allocations and largely focus on changes to the membership of the boards, particularly relating to the ministerial representatives becoming full voting members. When will the regional development boards be provided with the details of their funding allocation from 1 July 2008?

On 13 November 2008, almost 12 months later, I received the following answer from the Minister for State/Local Government Relations:

The Minister for Regional Development has provided the following information:

'The regional development boards are currently funded by a state/local government partnership under a five-year resource agreement. The regional development boards will be provided with their funding allocation for the next resource agreement following the handing down of the state budget for 2008-09.'

The answer, which took eight days less than a year to reach me, included a small portion of the information that was in my explanation. It also referred, in future tense, to the 2008-09 budget, an event that occurred six months ago. Further, it implied a lack of respect for the regional development board network and the local government funding partnerships, which are linked to state government funding levels. My question is: what action will the Leader of the Government take to ensure that answers to questions in this place are, first, much more timely; secondly, do not provide information that is already in the explanation; and, thirdly, do not incorporate information that is months out of date?

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY (Minister for Mineral Resources Development, Minister for Urban Development and Planning, Minister for Small Business) (14:58): This government seeks to endeavour to answer the questions that are asked of it. Obviously, how timely the answers to some questions will be depends on the complexity of the detail required. In some cases, there may be a need to check with other departments, and so on. As I have said, this government's intention is to answer questions as quickly as it can. Some questions can be and are answered relatively quickly. Obviously, some questions may, for all sorts of reasons, take longer to answer.