South Australian Parliament

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (16:27): I move:

That this council—

1. Calls on the Leader of the Government in the Legislative Council to adopt similar rules to those in the House of Assembly regarding earlier commencement times for sittings; and

2. Calls on the government to adopt the recommendations of the Select Committee on Effectiveness of the System of Committees of the South Australian parliament to rationalise and streamline the current committee structure.

To begin, I will speak to the first part of the motion, which is in relation to adopting similar rules to those in the House of Assembly regarding earlier commencement times for sittings. I think for a lot of people here it is obvious why some of us consider that reform important. In fact, I will be making some comments in relation to this motion that will be fairly familiar for anybody who works as a member of the Legislative Council because we understand the system. I apologise to members present who may be listening. I do not expect them to listen. It is more, I think, just to explain to the broader world why I think it is important that the sitting hours for the Legislative Council change.

We all know that we start at 2.15, which, once question time has concluded, leaves approximately 2½ to three hours of debate. In comparison, the House of Assembly is scheduled to start in the mornings either at 10.30 or 11.00, which already provides it 2½ to three hours of debate before they even break for lunch at 1, so by the time they get to 6 o'clock they have completed twice as much business as this chamber has. By its nature of starting later, the Legislative Council is more likely to sit in the evenings and sometimes into the night, which certainly is not best practice.

I am particularly cognisant of the fact that one of our MLCs, the Hon. Laura Henderson, has just given birth, while another will be shortly going on maternity leave. My family is very important to me, so I have some personal reflections. There are a number of us who have primary school age children, and bringing forward the start time and therefore the finish time would mean we have more opportunities to spend valuable time with our kids.

My own experience of being the first serving MLC to have a baby, nearly 10 years ago now, was of being terrified that I did not know how Scott, my husband, and I would manage the juggle, given that he was also working full-time as a cameraman and was often called on to do overtime or late shifts. We managed to place our son into child care for four days, excluding Wednesdays. Scott had an arrangement with Channel 9, who he was working for at the time, that he would have every Wednesday off, which, from a new mother's point of view, was very wise on my part because he had daddy days all day Wednesdays, so he knew what it was like to look after a new baby full-time.

We had an arrangement in this place, which I am grateful for, that I was to be granted leave on Tuesday and Thursday sitting days, to leave at 4.45pm so that I could pick up Mitchell by childcare closure at 5.30pm. When I was appointed minister in 2018, Scott resigned to look after Mitchell full-time, but that was as much about the demands of the role as anything else and less to do with the Legislative Council.

I have spoken particularly with the Hon. Sarah Game, who has publicly expressed her challenges. Her kids are a similar age. The conversation we have all the time is how we are getting along with our kids and the challenges. She has three children, and I take my hat off to her for managing that as a single mum.

I have railed about this issue from time to time, because the way that we operate at the moment belongs to a bygone era. It is not family-friendly, and sitting late unnecessarily carries occupational health and safety risks. We should adhere to the practices that operate in other places and, where possible, we should amend the way we operate.

As we know, current practices still reflect that former members—none probably here—needed an additional 15 minutes to return from dining at the Adelaide Club either for lunch at 2.15pm or dinner. It always blows my mind that we recommence at 7.45pm rather than the House of Assembly's 7.30pm. Let's also put a shout-out to all the staff and Hansard who support us here, who are also subject to our ridiculous sitting hours. If anybody in the community is made aware of our sitting hours operating like this, they cannot understand it. Mr President, it is time for change.

I will now speak to the more mundane topic of the so-called committee on committees. Again, I apologise to honourable members who will be very familiar with this particular committee, which is formally known as—well, you can read it on the agenda; it is in the wording of the motion. Just to recap very quickly, it was appointed in 2019 and reported in 2021. It was chaired by the Hon. Connie Bonaros. Members included the Hon. Tammy Franks, the Hon. Justin Hanson, the Hon. Robert Lucas, the Hon. Irene Pnevmatikos and the Hon. Terry Stephens.

The purpose of the committee was to try to rationalise the topsy number of committees that we seem to have in the parliament. I note the Hon. Robert Simms is guilty of producing some of those. I will just read very quickly the introduction. I think it is worth repeating these arguments. It states:

As a result of the ad hoc evolution approach to the standing committee system established in the South Australian Parliament (and particularly the Legislative Council), and the consistently high number of select committees in the Legislative Council, the current committee system finds itself with an overabundance of committees performing overlapping roles. Staff and Members are struggling to keep up with the number of select committees being established in the Legislative Council…

There were a number of recommendations which I think were quite useful. It has been thoughtfully considered that there be three separate Legislative Council standing committees, several joint house standing committees and a separate range of House of Assembly standing committees. I believe that report is still current and that work should be progressed. It is indeed quite frustrating. We should seek to be as efficient as possible, set the standard for practices and not delay changes to our practice, because we make laws for others and we should adhere to best practice ourselves. With those comments, I commend the motion.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. I.K. Hunter.