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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2016-09-28 Daily Xml
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Parliamentary Committees

Economic and Finance Committee: Annual Report 2015-16

Mr ODENWALDER (Little Para) (11:01): I move:

That the 92nd report of the committee, entitled Annual Report 2015-16, be noted.

The 2015-16 year saw a number of membership changes to the Economic and Finance Committee, with three new members appointed to the committee in February 2016. Throughout the reporting period, the committee met on 17 occasions, tabled three reports, and heard from 79 witnesses. Highlights for the year included completing both the National Broadband Network inquiry and of course the ever-popular local government rate capping inquiry. However, the latter inquiry's final report was tabled just outside of the reporting period.

The committee also continued its inquiry into the labour hire industry, and I am happy to say that we are in the process of wrapping that up now and that we should have something to present to the house rather soon. This inquiry took the committee to the Riverland over two days in March 2016 to receive evidence and to conduct site visits in the area. Statutory functions also kept the committee busy, including the annual emergency services levy reporting obligations and associated public hearings, the sport and recreation fund allocations, and receiving evidence from the Auditor-General in relation to his annual report.

The committee handed over the chair and secretariat duties of the Australasian Council of Public Accounts Committees to the Northern Territory Public Accounts Committee after we hosted the council's biennial conference in Adelaide in 2015. I and the executive officer attended the council's mid-term conference in Alice Springs in April of this year, which gave us another opportunity to discuss common issues amongst the public accounts committees throughout the member jurisdictions.

I would of course like to acknowledge my fellow members of the current committee: the member for Wright, the member for Colton, the member for Light, the member for Schubert, the member for Bright and the member for Hartley. I want to also recognise the contributions made by the member for Kaurna, the member for Stuart and the member for Unley, who all resigned from the committee for various reasons during the reporting period. The committee was ably supported by the executive officers, Mrs Lisa Baxter and Ms Kendall Crowe, and by the research officer, Dr Gordon Elsey. His contract runs out at the end of this week and I wish him well on behalf of the committee. I recommend the Economic and Finance Committee's annual report 2015-16 to the house.

Mr KNOLL (Schubert) (11:04): I will be extremely brief. This is the first annual report that I have been able to speak to as a member of this committee, a committee that I have long harboured a desire to be on. Now that I am on it, it is all that it cracks up to be. Highlights of the year certainly include the ESL hearing, and also the Auditor-General hearings when they come in, and a real chance for us to delve into the detail of the inner workings of how our government operates, and a chance to get some full and frank advice.

We have conducted a couple of good inquiries over the part of the year that I have been on the committee—specifically, the rate capping inquiry and the labour hire inquiry, which we are just finalising now. What excites me is that our committee does actually try to grapple with the issues as they are presented on a genuine basis. At times, we may not agree on the outcome, but we can at least agree that there are issues that need to be fixed and on the ways in which we could potentially fix them.

To me, that is quite an exciting part of our democracy I think most people do not get to see—their parliamentarians actually grappling with the sometimes extremely complex and difficult issues that are presented to us. I would like to thank fellow committee members for their engagement in the committee. I would like to thank Lisa Baxter, Kendall Crowe and Gordon Elsey for their work and I look forward to an exciting 12 months ahead as we tackle some of the new challenges that are presented to us in our portfolio area.

Mr SPEIRS (Bright) (11:05): I would also like to make a brief contribution on the Economic and Finance Committee's annual report for the 2015-16 financial year. As the member for Little Para (who chairs the committee) and the member for Schubert (who is a member of the committee with me) both said, it is a good committee to be on. It does interesting work and has undertaken quite varied work over the past year. As has been mentioned, we have looked at the local government rate capping issue and, in more recent months, we have looked at the labour hire issue, which was referred to us by this house.

As the member for Little Para said, we met 17 times and, as well as undertaking those specific inquiries, we also had the opportunity to undertake our statutory obligations around the analysis of the emergency services levy and the Auditor-General's reports and to look at the sport and recreation fund. As I have mentioned here before and will do again, I do think that public accounts committees like the Economic and Finance Committee should be chaired by an opposition or non-government member and perhaps have a balance of non-government members.

That is the case in other jurisdictions and I believe it should be the case with all committees in South Australia. That is not, by any means, a reflection on the member for Little Para in his role as Chair. I think he has some agreement with me on this point. I think he is a very good chair but, as I have said here before on a number of occasions, I believe that, as is the case in other jurisdictions, the Chair should be a non-government member because that enables a certain level of scrutiny and a different approach to the analysis of the issues before the committee.

In closing, I would like to thank the parliamentary staff who support the committee—particularly, Ms Lisa Baxter and Ms Kendall Crowe—and our research officer, Dr Gordon Elsey. I would also like to thank my fellow committee members for their contributions over the past year. As I said, it is a good committee. We have robust debate from time to time, but we often agree as well. My fellow members are, from the government, our Chair (member for Little Para) and the members for Wright, Colton and Light and, from this side of the house, myself and the members for Schubert and Hartley.

Mr ODENWALDER (Little Para) (11:08): I do not have much to add to my initial contribution. I want to thank members for speaking. I thank the members for Bright and Schubert for their contributions. Oddly enough, I agree with the spirit of much of what the member for Bright says in his criticisms of the committee system, and this is something that we discussed at ACPAC, both at the conference here and at the biennial conference (the handover conference, so to speak) in Alice Springs. There was a lot of talk about better functioning of public accounts committees, and I am sure we will reach some point of agreement in the future about how to better manage public accounts committees in this state. I will leave it at that today. I thank members for their contributions and I commend the report.

Motion carried.

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