Parliamentary Committees (Referral of petitions) Amendment Bill

Introduction and First Reading

The Hon. C. BONAROS (17:48): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the Parliamentary Committees Act 1991. Read a first time.

Second Reading

The Hon. C. BONAROS (17:49): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

The Hon. R.B. Martin: Seconded.

The PRESIDENT: You do not need to second it, but thank you, the Hon. Mr Martin. Very kind.

The Hon. C. BONAROS: That seconding should indicate a level of enthusiasm which I hope is shared amongst everybody in this chamber for this bill. Mr President, if you have—and you have, indeed—served on the Legislative Review Committee you will know that my favourite words on that committee are—

An honourable member: Cats.

The Hon. C. BONAROS: Not cats, not desexing, not toilet blocks, but rather, 'If we passed the committee on committees bill we wouldn't find ourselves in the position that we do,' particularly on that committee. I suspect that there are others in this chamber who will welcome this bill. I do not say that lightly, because it was a very good initiative and one that a former member, Frances Bedford, the member for Florey, did a substantial amount of work on to get over the line and one that we supported wholeheartedly at the time.

I acknowledge the work also of the former Attorney-General in that respect. I think it is one that enjoyed unanimous support through the parliament, and we have all become very familiar with that bill now. The purpose of the bill was to basically trigger a parliamentary inquiry when petitions were able to be signed off by 10,000 members of the South Australian public.

You might be surprised to know that as it stands right now the Legislative Review Committee has five such inquiries. This is democracy on display for all of us but particularly for those members of the Legislative Review Committee, who are trying to juggle five such inquiries: one into ambos, one into cat desexing, one into radiation therapy, one into highways and one into health care.

It has become very evident to everybody serving on that committee that it is probably time that we reviewed this legislation and came up with a better way of referring those petitions for inquiry. I am not going to put words into everybody's mouth, but I think the purpose of this bill is not to undermine the intent of the previous bill in terms of having those inquiries—they are a very, very important feature of our democracy—but certainly sharing the love amongst all of the parliamentary committees and, more importantly, ensuring that the appropriate committee is the one that is actually inquiring into an issue is really at the forefront of what is being proposed in this bill.

I remember the debate very vividly when we had it, when the former member for Florey was here. There was a lot of discussion about, 'This is going to get over the line. Which committee would be best suited to deal with this?' It was determined that the scrutiny role of the Legislative Review Committee was that committee. I do not think anyone anticipated at the time the number of inquiries we would see pass that threshold but, more importantly, at the same time. We have five ongoing inquiries that we are trying to deal with, and the reality is that there are other committees that are probably much more suited to some of the issues that are being looked at by that committee.

That said, I do foreshadow that in the next sitting week I will be introducing a further bill, which, again, is my second favourite line in the Legislative Review Committee, which is that if we all showed some political appetite here, following the committee on committees report—and that has taken a lot of convincing, but I think we are there—then it is high time that we looked at legislation that restructures our parliamentary committees framework.

Those recommendations also enjoyed the unanimous support of everybody who was on that committee. I will make special mention of our former Treasurer, the Hon. Rob Lucas, who surprised me a lot on that committee because sometimes it was hard to work out if he was actually paying attention to what we were doing and how much was being absorbed of the evidence that was being given. It turns out that everything was absorbed and he played an instrumental role in formulating the recommendations, which ultimately enjoyed the unanimous support of that committee.

The Hon. Justin Hanson was also on that committee and I think we were all surprised at the outcome and the multipartisan approach that we took. In the next sitting week, I will be introducing a bill that is based on those recommendations. There will be a couple of elements to that bill that will be up for debate in this place. The bill incorporated the issue of a human rights impact statement, as they do federally and in other jurisdictions, and a couple of other issues, which we all agreed during the committee would probably be something that we fleshed out on the floor of the chamber, but in principle all the recommendations were supported.

Given the current situation with inquiries, the reality is that, because of the workload of the Legislative Review Committee, unfortunately we are not capable of undertaking and completing those inquiries—and we have five now—in a timely manner, certainly not in the manner that the public would expect if they have gone to the effort of collecting those 10,000 signatures. As we know, there is a great deal of legislation, over 90 per cent of government legislation, which is now made by regulation. So in addition to that inquiry role, that committee performs another very important role in terms of its scrutiny functions over regulations and by-laws and such other codes and guidelines that we pass through this place.

In short, I think it is fair to say that we are doing a disservice to our democracy and to the good people who have put their name to those inquiries by not having dealt with those inquiries in as timely a manner as we would like. I acknowledge the work of the current Chair in that regard and everything that he is doing to make that as expedient as possible in terms of the workload of the committee and the inquiries themselves, but it is not sustainable, and I think that is the bottom line. It is not sustainable for the committee staff, it is not sustainable for the committee members and it is not acceptable to the public of South Australia—I think that is the bottom line.

I will seek leave to conclude my remarks and perhaps touch briefly again in the next sitting week on what the bill actually does, but in a nutshell I think it is pretty self-explanatory. I think members have had the opportunity now to consider that bill. In essence, all I am saying, and I think the general consensus appears to be, that it would be better if we allowed each inquiry that was successful, in terms of getting off the ground, to be referred to the most appropriate committee.

If the other bill is successful, then this can coexist with that, but given that that one may take a little bit more time I think what is really important now is that we deal with the easy part, and this appears to be the easy part. We have carved out the petitions and said, 'Let's deal with that separately.' I expect that could be the subject of very swift passage through this place, and then we get into the nuts and bolts of the structure of the parliamentary committees framework in more detail in due course. With those words, I seek leave to conclude my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.