Bills

Parliamentary Committees (Public Assets Committee) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 5 July 2017.)

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (23:17): I rise on behalf of Liberal members to indicate that we will be opposing the bill. In speaking to the bill, I indicate on behalf of Liberal members that we are sympathetic to some of the underlying principles that have driven the Hon. Mr Brokenshire to this measure. Essentially, it has been driven in large part by a small number of very significant privatisations that the Labor government have entered into but did so through a mechanism of avoiding a vote in parliament, and that was the Motor Accident Commission privatisation, which has so far netted $2.7 billion, and the Lands Titles Office privatisation, which has netted about $1.6 billion. One could also refer to others, namely, the privatisation of the South-East forests and the Lotteries Commission.

It never ceases to amaze me that Labor ministers, such as ministers Malinauskas, Hunter and Maher in this chamber, can stand up with a straight face and indicate that the Labor Party does not support privatisation. As the Hon. Mr Brokenshire and others have highlighted, the evidence and the proof is apparent to anyone who looks at this particular government's record. The stark difference is that the former Liberal government, when it went through the process of the ETSA privatisation, took that process through the parliament and, contrary to the claims of government ministers and others, it was supported by the parliament.

It was a vote of both houses of parliament. It was not able to be achieved without the support of two of a small number of Labor members in the Legislative Council, the Hon. Mr Cameron and the Hon. Mr Crothers, who crossed the floor and supported the privatisation. If all Labor members had stuck to the position, as espoused by some of their leaders at the time, the privatisation would not have been supported.

Putting aside the particular arguments, the process that was followed by the former government was the sort of process that the Hon. Mr Brokenshire is supporting; that is, with a significant asset such as the electricity assets or the Motor Accident Commission or the Lands Titles Office, the parliament should be required to vote on them. That is what happened with electricity but it did not happen and has not happened under this Labor government.

We have seen the sophistry of the government. We have all seen the pledge card from 2002 when the Labor Party then promised to oppose all privatisations, and when they got the taste of privatisation blood in their mouths they said, 'What we really meant when we said that was that we didn't support the privatisation of certain assets,' and so they then started to redefine their original promise. It did not really mean all assets; it only meant certain important assets.

More latterly, it is, 'We are now only talking about essential utilities.' They started saying it was essential services. They then got hung, drawn and quartered on that one to say, 'Hold on, compulsory third party is an essential service; it is actually a requirement of the law, and the Lands Titles Office is pretty much an essential service,' so it is now just essential utilities. Of course, we know, if they are re-elected, heaven forbid, that they already have a secret plan to privatise SA Water. How do we know that? Because the Treasury has already commissioned $100,000 worth of secret consultancy work, which they have never released, into how to privatise SA Water: how to go about it, what to do and what the asset would be worth.

We also know that, under the water minister, the SA Water board has also looked at how they would privatise SA Water. So, the only party that has actually spent taxpayers' money on investigating the privatisation of SA Water is the current Labor Party and their Labor government. Given their record with the Motor Accident Commission, the Lands Titles Office and so on, and given that they promised that they would never privatise any asset at all, it is quite clear, if re-elected, they would be seeking to privatise SA Water.

The Liberal Party understands the principle that drives this bill that is being developed. However, from our viewpoint, we see some very significant practical issues that have led us to say that we cannot support the bill. In relative terms, the member has set this at a very low threshold. Compared to $5.2 billion for electricity assets, $2.7 billion for the Motor Accident Commission and $1.6 billion for the Lands Titles Office, the member has set the threshold at $50 million.

Whilst that is a lot of money for each of us as individuals, there are any number of government assets—land, commercial property, buildings, hospital car parks and a variety of other assets like that—which would potentially be valued at more than $50 million. For all of those sorts of assets, there will be a requirement to go through this process; that is, the establishment of the committee in the first instance, inquiries and reports, and then motions to go through both houses of parliament.

I have not had a chance to take high-level legal advice, but there is the interesting question of whether government agencies like Funds SA and WorkCover Corporation, which manage their own funds investment strategy—clearly they are government entities with significant funds and assets—take investment decisions in relation to the sale of assets.

The Motor Accident Commission, for example, recently went through a process of the sale of their property holdings. I think it was about $500 million or $600 million, but there is a range of other assets that they regularly transact. There was the decision in relation to the State Administration Centre, which is still a process that is going through, I think, in terms of the sale. There is the Riverside building, and a range of other assets like that. For all those reasons, we see practical difficulties in relation to support for a bill of this particular kind.

The final point I would make, and I think I referred to this before, is that this has been an unfulfilled goal for this particular parliament. I, together with one of my colleagues, have been having some discussions with the Attorney-General and other members of the government about potentially looking at a realignment and restructuring of the committees of the parliament.

Sadly, that never got to a stage where something could be presented to the parliament for discussion. I would hope that whoever is in government after March next year will look at various proposals for committee reform. For that purpose, that is another reason why I think it would be foolish at this stage to be establishing another committee prior to that particular discussion and debate.

For those reasons, I indicate that, whilst Liberal members understand and indeed probably support the underlying principles that the member is driving at in relation to this bill, because of the practical implementation of this, we are not in a position to support it.

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL (23:27): I just want to quickly put on the record that the Greens support what the Hon. Robert Brokenshire is trying to do here, at the risk of giving him a heart attack; it is not that often. I will temper my support somewhat by saying that we support the establishment of a committee to look at flogging off public assets, absolutely. We do not in this chamber get to participate in the Public Works Committee, for example, which deals with big items of expenditure, and so I think it is a good initiative to have a committee that deals with big items of revenue that arise from selling off public assets. So, I absolutely support having a committee.

It appears that the honourable member does not have the numbers tonight, so he probably will not get into committee. If we were to get into committee, there are two areas of the bill that I would have some concerns with. The first one is the membership of the committee. The honourable member has three from each house. I think the government of the day would probably put all of their own people in the lower house. For the upper house, we know the government has not controlled the upper house since the 1970s and they are not going to control it after the next election, so it might be a bit of a mixed bag. There might be some tweaking needed on the membership to get the balance right.

The one aspect that I really do not like is extra pay. I was very pleased when we got rid of pay for committee work. I would oppose the idea of giving someone an extra $27,000 for chairing a committee that may never meet, because if the government of the day does not try to sell off any public assets worth more than $50 million, the committee will never meet and yet the chairperson is going to get an extra $27,000 salary. I would be opposing that part of it, but let's not quibble about the detail. If the idea is that we should have a parliamentary committee that can scrutinise the proposed sale of public assets, then the Greens are all for it.

I note that the Liberal Party have said on several occasions that if they were to be successful in the next election, they would do an overall review of all the committees. That is something that I would welcome. It is not just a committee to deal with issues like this, we also need a committee for the proper scrutiny of bills. There is a range of worthwhile inquiries that could be done if we had a revamped committee system. For now, suffice it to say that the Greens are supporting the honourable member in his attempt to create a new public assets committee.

The PRESIDENT: Before the Hon. Mr Brokenshire takes the microphone, I would like to draw his attention to the state of dress of everyone in this council. We are now on live stream and there could be thousands of people watching you get up and speak, and I think their expectations would be a little bit more formal.

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (23:30): Thank you for your guidance, Mr President. It is 11.30pm, and I will not be wearing a tie in here after about 10pm if I am re-elected; I will have my sleeves up like this and I will be representing the people.

I have a son out on a header at the moment, I have sheep in the shearing shed, I have someone having three more hours' sleep before they start to milk. That is the real world out there, trying to battle through before this 20 to 40 millimetres of rain that will dump on the crops and put black tip on the wheat and cause problems for people. So, after 10 o'clock at night, unless my party orders me to, I will take off my tie, I will roll up my sleeves and I will be focused on trying to get work through.

Alternatively, we could do this in a sensible and sane manner and we could sit next week, the alternative sitting week, and actually look at this in the better light of a new dawn. However, that is up to the government of the day, that is trying to push—

The PRESIDENT: In this chamber, Mr Brokenshire, you are paid to be a member of parliament, not a farmer.

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: I hear what you are saying, but I do not apologise for not wearing a tie. What I do apologise for is two major parties that do not listen to those people who are not sleeping tonight, right now; they are so focused on watching us debate this issue, because it really does hurt the people of South Australia.

We have seen broken promises by this government. We have seen work done for the Labor Party, as the Hon. Rob Lucas said, or whoever gets into government, to potentially privatise SA Water. We have seen the sale of the LTO, which never in my wildest dreams did I imagine would ever be sold. We have seen ForestrySA sold, we have seen the lotteries commission, we have seen the MAC. The list goes on.

The bottom line is that we are in a diabolical position, because if you add all that up the figure that has been privatised by this Labor government—which made a promise and a pledge to the people of South Australia that there would be no privatisations under a Labor government, a promise they have broken several times—the bottom line is that if you added it up it is over $4 billion not of government money but, as Leon Byner, the radio presenter, has said several times, and he is correct, it is the people of South Australia's assets, sold without their approval. That is what I am here for.

I want to thank the Hon. Mark Parnell for saying that he agrees in principle with what we are trying to do. Unlike the populist ego-politics of the leader of SA-Best, Mr Xenophon, we are not proposing simplistic situations for reform ourselves; that is, whilst we would not oppose but would support a review of ministers and MPs and the like, we are talking about micro or macro reform that will make a difference to South Australia, not the stuff that just grabs a headline.

I want to give the example of the Motor Accident Commission. They are now going to deliver at least $2 billion to this state government, the Labor government that privatised it, and the next government, whatever colour that government is. Most of it has come in now and it has all gone into recurrent. When it is finished we will not be back in the black, we will be in big trouble, because none of it has gone off core debt. We have $14 billion of core debt. SA Water alone, which the Hon. Rob Lucas talked about Labor wanting to sell if they are re-elected, has had one way or another a total of $6 billion of debt transferred to it—gone across. That is still debt to the people of South Australia.

Whilst the science professor of the cabinet, the Hon. Mr Ian Hunter, can waffle on time and time again about the fact that water will be dearer under a Liberal government, and whatever else, the fact is that water prices have gone through the roof under this government and so has the debt. Enough is enough, and the people of South Australia have said that. I will not put this past a second reading speech, but I am going to get a vote on the record because I was not reassured by the Liberal Party, the alternative government, that they are not going to still run down the track of privatisation either.

We know the Labor government are, and have, and will continue to because it is all about holding power and glory for them at any cost—that is what it is about. The Liberal opposition could have put forward an amendment that said, '$50 million is too low—way too low—because we cannot interfere with off-balance sheet corporations and subsidiaries of the state government like Funds SA.' Well, make it $100 million, but there was no amendment, so $50 million is enough.

Frankly, given the gross irresponsibility of this government in what it has privatised, I think $50 million is plenty. When I talk to the people of South Australia, I ask, 'Do you know one of the other things that this government wants to sell?' I say, 'It's actually the State Administration Centre, where the cabinet actually work from.' They said, 'Really?' They do not believe that that should be sold. I said, 'It will be the parliament that will be sold if we are not careful. They will sell this off and lease it back.' Where will they start and stop?

Why do they not go and talk to the Canadian superannuation fund? It is not a philanthropist and never will be, but it has a responsibility to not South Australians but to their superannuants in Canada. That is why they bought the LTO. I have a letter from the Treasurer, and I am not very confident about his response about how he is going to protect all the transactions from going through the roof on property or, indeed, protect the intellectual property within the LTO. Having said that, the bottom line is: where do you start and where do you stop when you become grossly irresponsible and flog off assets?

You stop by giving the parliament, the people's house, the voice of South Australia, an opportunity to correct bad management by the government of the day, namely, in this situation, the Labor government. Whether you get $27,000 as a committee chair or whatever, I would be happy if that gets knocked out; it will not worry me. The whole idea of that was to keep the vibrancy within the committee structure. I am going to call a divide on the second reading because I want to make this an issue that the people have a voice on as we head to the election. They are not happy. They hate privatisation, and they want to see what the parliament is going to do.

Can I just finish with this: up until about 2000, there was a convention in this house. There was a committee of the parliament that looked into funding grants. That is another one we have to look at after the next election, with the pork-barrelling that is going on right now in South Australia, buying votes. A very high-profile minister (he has retired now but he was a high-profile minister) went out and breached every convention of this parliament and broke confidentiality to expose an agreement that the Liberal government at that time had to get a new business or expanding business into this state. Even with scrutiny, they break protocols and procedures.

I would suggest that when we get reform—micro or macro—and we get more effective and efficient and more focused on the best interests of the people of South Australia, we will be a better parliament and the state will progress much better. I am very strong on this. I know that people out there in voter land do not want to see any more privatisation.

We are not going to hold it up. If it goes through both houses, after coming through the committee, and it says that it is in the best interests of the people of South Australia to sell that asset, then I would expect the parliament would say to the people of South Australia, 'We have taken on the inquiry that the government put to us and we recommend that they do sell it.' Likewise, if they say no, then we protect the people of South Australia. I think it is a sensible bill and I commend it to the house.

The council divided on the second reading:

Ayes 6

Noes 14

Majority 8

Second reading thus negatived.