Metropolitan Fire Service Travel Allowance

The Hon. N.J. CENTOFANTI (Leader of the Opposition) (14:42): Let's hope he answers this one, Mr President.

The PRESIDENT: Just ask your question.

The Hon. N.J. CENTOFANTI: I seek leave to make a brief explanation before addressing a question to the Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector on wage theft.

Leave granted.

The Hon. N.J. CENTOFANTI: At least 50 firefighters in South Australia are owed unpaid travel allowances from 1 August last year, and a recent decision of the SA Employment Tribunal means that the MFS has 28 days to pay up, including interest on the late payments. My questions to the Attorney-General in his role as Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Service are:

1. When did the minister first become aware of this issue?

2. Why didn't the minister step in earlier to address what has been described as one of the worst cases in South Australian public sector history, instead letting it go all the way through to the already clogged courts and costing taxpayers legal fees, which could have been avoided?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector, Special Minister of State) (14:43): I thank the honourable member for her question. In relation to an allowance—I think it was a travel allowance for firefighters, which is one of many allowances that firefighters but also other members of the public sector are entitled to—my advice is that there was an inadvertent administrative error that saw allowances that had previously been paid not being paid.

As I am advised, once the MFS became aware of it, they put in motion steps to rectify it. I am advised it was in the order of some thousands—maybe between 6,000 and 12,000—of individual instances that had already been paid by the MFS after the MFS became aware of the instance. I am advised that it is under 1,000—in some hundreds—individual instances of travel allowance that are still to be paid and that the MFS is committed to doing so.