Consumer and Business Services

The Hon. A.L. McLACHLAN (14:55): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Business Services and Consumers a question relating to consumer satisfaction in South Australia.

Leave granted.

The Hon. A.L. McLACHLAN: South Australia's Strategic Plan target 32 seeks to increase the satisfaction of South Australians with government services by 10 per cent by 2014 and to maintain or exceed that level of satisfaction thereafter. Satisfaction is rated on a five-point scale, where one means very dissatisfied and five means very satisfied. These scores are then used to measure the average mean score rating.

In South Australia's Strategic Plan progress report 2012, the audit committee reported that in 2008 the mean rating score of satisfaction was 3.31, but by 2012 this score had only increased to 3.32. The audit committee therefore rated progress in this area as 'steady' or 'no movement' and furthermore that achievement of this target is unlikely given the stable trend to date and the limited time frame remaining to achieve this improvement.

Given that there are a number of agencies for which the minister is responsible, I ask which have had a customer satisfaction score below target and where necessary what measures are being implemented to improve service delivery for the South Australian consumer?

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (Minister for Employment, Higher Education and Skills, Minister for Science and Information Economy, Minister for the Status of Women, Minister for Business Services and Consumers) (14:56): I thank the honourable member for his most important question. Indeed, consumer satisfaction in relation to the way we conduct Consumer and Business Services is very important to this government, even though it is an incredibly difficult area to monitor and in which to bring about major change.

Nevertheless, although our efforts thus far are below what we would have liked, we continue our efforts to improve our performance and improve consumer satisfaction. We do that through a series of means. We have particular concentration on our enforcement and compliance efforts, to ensure that those consumers who bring forward complaints and issues are serviced in timely ways and are able to be delivered fair and reasonable outcomes, and to be able to do that in a way that informs consumers not only of their rights but also their obligations.

Sometimes consumers' expectations can be somewhat unrealistic, so there is also the role of educating consumers about what is reasonable to expect and, as I said, what their rights and responsibilities are. We put out numerous pieces of literature to assist consumers in that. Our enforcement officers are out there regularly. They conduct a wide range of different operations. Whether it is credit checks or sales checks, there is a raft of initiatives that they put in place to get out there and make sure that businesses are doing the right thing to ensure that they are treating customers in the right way.

Of course, there is also a significant program around red tape reduction. This often leads to a high level of frustration for both businesses and consumers, and we have worked very hard in an ongoing way to continue to scrutinise our processes and our systems and to put in place simpler and easier to understand systems of compliance.