Industry Advocate Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 4 July 2017.)

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (15:49): I rise on behalf of the Greens to indicate our support for the Industry Advocate Bill, which has been through the other place and is now here. I note that this bill is introduced with the aim of securing local jobs in South Australia in key industries. An identified industry is the building and construction industry, but it is not specific to that particular industry. It will do this by establishing and continuing the trial of the role of the Industry Advocate as a statutory position and strengthening its powers to hold contractors to the commitments they make to utilise South Australian workers or materials.

I congratulate the member for Kaurna in the other place for his work on this and I also thank both Ian Nightingale, the Industry Advocate, and Nari Chandler for their recent briefing on this bill. This bill recognises that there is an important role for the Industry Advocate to play, and indeed that role should be strengthened and continued.

The bill will enable the Industry Advocate to resolve complaints, remove barriers to South Australian businesses, improving their procurement practices and processes, with a focus on local procurement and procurement that benefits our state. It also establishes a statutory role for the Industry Advocate, giving that role stronger powers. This is certainly something the Greens welcome. From the briefing that I held with the Industry Advocate, I was most impressed with the breadth and depth of some of their work to date and, indeed, the potential that this industry advocate role has for our state.

According to the member for Kaurna, local products, materials and labour now make up an average of nearly 80 per cent of South Australian goods and services procurements, or around 90 per cent of major infrastructure projects. This is a welcome development. Since my first days in this role as a member of parliament and as a member of the Greens, I have been eager to see that we not just buy local, but that we build local and support our industry and keep jobs in South Australia. Particularly with a diminishing manufacturing base for our state, we need to be smarter with the spend of government moneys in this state.

The functions conferred upon the Industry Advocate under the bill include advocating on behalf of businesses and investigating complaints about industry participation. It is noted by the member for Kaurna in his speech to the other place that:

This could include how government agencies and authorities are applying the policy through to enforcing the commitments made by businesses under the industry participation plan. The bill provides some powers and functions for the Industry Advocate to ensure compliance with the South Australian Industry Participation Policy. The Industry Advocate will develop an enforcement strategy in consultation with key stakeholders to ensure these powers are carried out in a fair, transparent and measured way…[with] a strong emphasis on education, advice and persuasion…

The member for Kaurna goes on:

The bill includes a power for the Industry Advocate to be able to require participants contracting with the government to provide information or documents in [their] possession. The Industry Advocate must issue a notice to the participant and specify a reasonable time for the information or documents to be provided. [That assessment of] a reasonable time will depend upon the nature of what is being requested [to be provided].

A penalty of up to $20,000 can be applied for a failure to comply with these quite reasonable requirements. He continues:

If a participant is found not to be complying with their contractual obligations, the Industry Advocate can direct the participant to comply with their obligations.

I note that the Office of the Industry Advocate has run some really successful Meet the Buyer events over the past few years and some 5,000 or so people have attended those events. I have been most impressed by some of the work that has been undertaken. An issue that is quite dear to my heart is Indigenous participation in the workforce and I certainly welcome, not just setting targets, but having an ability to assess whether those targets are meaningfully being met.

I do, however, want to focus on an area that I think does need some urgent attention on the passage of this bill from the Industry Advocate, and that is the awarding of government grants and the claims made to achieve those awards of public moneys being met truthfully and in a way that is giving dignity to those who work in our state. To that end, I would like to draw the council's attention and, indeed, the minister's attention to the grants that have been given in recent years to the company formerly trading as D'VineRipe, now trading as Perfection Fresh.

It is a Two Wells food company that will be no stranger to most members of this council. The company in question, Perfection Fresh, which supplies fresh produce to supermarkets such as Coles, is no stranger to controversy. In 2015, when it was trading as D'VineRipe, it was exposed for its use of exploitative labour hire arrangements. Members may possibly remember the Four Corners exposé of this issue where those vulnerable workers were being underpaid by as much as $5 an hour.

Last week, I met with some of Perfection Fresh's current workers and I heard repeatedly from them a common story, that they are required to work in quite hot and stressful conditions. The glasshouse itself can be as hot as 57° and they are expected to work in those conditions without what they term paid smoko breaks, which are more realistically water breaks and rest breaks in those intense environmental conditions.

Also, workers who had been working at that company—formerly known as D'VineRipe and now known as Perfection Fresh—for some three, four or even five years were still being treated as casual. They were on a casual and insecure roster where their behaviour could lead to them losing work at any time. Indeed, a request for leave of any sort could also see them lose shifts on that roster. It is insecure work and I think South Australians would not expect somebody who has given a company loyal service of some three, four or five years to be treated with such indifference.

These longstanding workers, however, do not seem to have benefited from the promised full-time jobs or full-time job equivalents that have been offered at Perfection Fresh's—formerly D'VineRipe's—acceptance of some $3 million in state government grants over the past five years. I spoke to workers who were living pay to pay and having their work taken away on a whim while this company is taking generous government grants, yet failing to make those jobs secure or, I would say, safe, in terms of forcing workers to work in such conditions without adequate work health and safety provisions and rest breaks, for example.

The Regional Development Grant is one of the grants that this state government has awarded D'VineRipe in the past. In that I note that there was a stated 80 full-time equivalent jobs to be created from that $2 million grant. Yet, the National Union of Workers' information indicates that only 70 permanent full-time jobs currently exist on the site. There are 220 workers on that site in insecure casual work, and an additional 100 labour hire and seasonal visa workers, so something is not adding up here.

I certainly think the Industry Advocate should take this on with some urgency and that the Weatherill government needs to ensure that, when it gives out state government grants such as these, workers are not being exploited in the way that the workers at Perfection Fresh appear to be. Yet, this is also a business that has links to one of the richest families in Australia, the Victor Smorgon Group. Certainly, the bosses in this case are living a life and enjoying a security of tenure far removed from those workers who I met last week.

These are hardworking people, many of whom have come to this country through quite difficult conditions. They are migrants and refugees. They are refugees who had been on Christmas Island for some years, who are now not afforded the security of being able to plan their new life in South Australia even though they are committed and loyal to this company and have put in years of dedicated service in a difficult work environment.

With those few words, I urge the Weatherill government and indeed this new incarnation of the Industry Advocate to take on board that when government money is given out and promises made, promises must be kept. This promise appears to have been a very rubbery one. If you go and talk to the workers at Perfection Fresh in Two Wells, these are not quality jobs. These are not indicative of our ambition to have premium food and wine from our clean, green environment. These are conditions that are shameful to South Australia and should not be tolerated when this company is in receipt of government money to create these jobs.

With those few words, I look forward to the committee stage debate. I would ask the government to take on notice and give an update before we proceed through the committee stage on what actions have been taken to date to ensure that Perfection Fresh, formerly D’VineRipe, meets its obligations and what expectations this government has when it awards money with the stated intent of creating jobs, that those jobs are safe and secure jobs that all South Australians can be proud that our money is going towards.

The Hon. K.L. VINCENT (16:02): I would like to start by thanking Chris Picton from the other place for briefing my office on this bill and also for arranging for the current Industry Advocate, Ian Nightingale, to be present at that briefing as well. I would also like to thank Nari Chandler.

The Dignity Party will be supporting this bill. We will, however, not be supporting the Hon. Rob Lucas's amendments to the bill, as we believe they reduce accountability and transparency. Given that this bill is about encouraging local jobs and the use of local skills, transparency and accountability are, of course, vital when it comes to advocating for many, many workers in different industries.

To that end, I would like to thank the government and the Industry Advocate for giving consideration to some of the issues that my office raised on my behalf throughout the briefings on this bill, including the need for the Industry Advocate to support cultural change around two areas which impact in particular people with disabilities through tendering processes.

The first, of course, is the need to increasingly employ people with an identified disability in businesses, companies and organisations to whom the government tenders out their projects. At present, the state government is not even meeting its own targets for public sector employment of people with disabilities. Perhaps at least it could ensure the companies they are tendering out to have better practices in place.

The second issue is around ensuring that projects the government tenders out might consider not just minimum standards of disability accessibility but also best practice universal design and other principles to make the businesses not only accessible to employees and visitors with disabilities but the entire population.

While I appreciate that it could be argued that the points I am making currently do not strictly fall within the purview of the Industry Advocate, given that this is about increasing local jobs, I think it is somewhat relevant because we would very much like to see disability considered within all policies and departments in this state. As we all know, disability is not a discrete topic that we only consider in the context of disabled people or people who are currently disabled. Particularly with an ageing population, it is very important that we invest in making all facets of our great state accessible to all.

Of course, as we are increasingly expected to work to an older age as well, the need to make the workplace more accessible will become more and more apparent. It is fantastic to have this Industry Advocate role in place in a statutory sense to now push for innovation and increased employment in more and more areas. Particularly as employment drifts away from areas like the automotive industry, with the loss of Mitsubishi and Holden's, it is really important that we invest.

The Dignity Party has been very vocal about the need to encourage people to go into growing areas like disability support industries and also about the increasing need for the manufacture of assistive technology—wheelchairs, adapted cars and so on—that will, again, increasingly be needed as our population ages.

We think there is a great opportunity for some people leaving the automotive industry to perhaps take on a role to use their existing skills to produce those types of products. That is something we certainly hope to work on ourselves with the Industry Advocate to ensure that it does happen, as well as the increased employment of people with an identified disability. With those few brief words, I commend the bill to the chamber.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. D.W. Ridgway.