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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
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Appropriation Bill 2017

Estimates Committees

Adjourned debate on motion:

That the proposed expenditures referred to Estimates Committees A and B be agreed to.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Heysen has a further five minutes.

Ms REDMOND (Heysen) (15:50): Can I say what a pleasure it is to follow the member for Lee, who must be very worried about his own seat because that is the first time in forever that I can remember a minister coming in to do a grievance. I am pleased to know that our candidate in Lee is working so hard and has obviously rattled the minister.

As it happens, when I sought leave to continue my remarks I was commenting on the fact that, in all the budget papers, I had not noticed a reference to 18,000 people being interviewed by trained conversationalists. I want to know how I can get to be a trained conversationalist. The Minister for Local Government, who faced all those questions in question time, asked me as we went up in the lift if I had any plans for after I left parliament, and I thought to myself, 'Being a trained conversationalist might be something I could aspire to.' I have a one-year-old grandson, and I hope that by the time he starts school he is a trained conversationalist.

This government is trying to pretend, of course, that this is not part of their election campaign, and they have put the thing out to tender without knowing where they are going to have these trained conversationalists or how many there will be. They just know how many conversations they are going to have. I will put money on where the conversations are going to take place and which electorates are going to be involved.

Mr Bell: They are outsourcing their doorknocking now.

Ms REDMOND: Yes, they have outsourced the doorknocking, although some of the trained conversationalists might be some of the candidates, no doubt, but I digress. I only have a couple more minutes to conclude my final ever remarks on estimates, after 16 lots of estimates—the greatest waste of time in which this parliament indulges. I would have to say, as I am not going to be here any longer after 17 March, that my wish would be that when we win in March we come to a new mechanism for examining the budget, rather than going through this laborious procedure that does not actually get us anywhere in terms of better information on the budget.

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan interjecting:

Ms REDMOND: I already said before lunch, when the minister was not in the chamber, that I absolutely endorse the government's right to set the budget. They are the government. They have the right to decide how the taxpayer dollar is spent, but we, Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, do have the right to ask questions about it and to understand it. It is now a very big document.

The whole aim of the game from the government's point of view is to make the timetable as difficult as possible to get information, to put vulnerable ministers in the least exposed positions possible, to answer as few questions as possible, but for it all to cost as much money as possible, in terms of money being taken out of the public purse because senior bureaucrats are having to spend days, weeks and months, not to mention the hours in the chamber, waiting for potential questions, only for our potential questions to be met on many, many occasions with, 'I will have to bring that back to you. I will have to get an answer for you.'

I really would love to see a change. The problem is that, after putting up with this for 16 years, the reality is I suspect any new government coming in will not be kindly minded towards those who have inflicted this upon them for the last 16 years, hence it will go on interminably when there must be better ways to handle this particular issue.

I can only encourage people who are going to be in this chamber long after I am gone to think seriously about the real value of estimates and whether the taxpayers of this state would indeed be better served if we could simply add up the money that is taken by all those public servants doing all those things and get a little bit of that as money that we as members could distribute in our own electorates. We could then each ask the ministers for an interview on a one-on-one basis and ask the questions that we believe need to be asked on any aspect of the budget papers. That being said, I am delighted to conclude my remarks for the final time ever on the estimates of the South Australian parliament.

Mr GOLDSWORTHY (Kavel) (15:55): It is always a pleasure to follow the member for Heysen and to sit here and listen to her eloquent words and her contribution. I have been doing that for the best part of 16 years because we both entered the parliament at the same election. I join with the member for Heysen because this will be my final contribution in relation to the estimates process, as I am retiring at the election in March next year.

What the member for Heysen said in her contribution pretty much hits the nail on the head. We know that estimates is basically the committee stage of the Appropriation Bill or the budget bill. As has been the case over the last 16 years, I sat in on a number of the committees, committee A and B in both chambers. I sat in on the status of women and ageing, and the member for Ramsay was the minister responsible for that committee. I then had industrial relations with the Attorney-General, the member for Enfield. I had infrastructure and trade and small business, and the member for Waite was minister responsible for those portfolios. That is a fairly broad cross-section of ministerial responsibilities.

In relation to the process undertaken here in the South Australian parliament concerning estimates or the committee stage of the bill, it is interesting to make a comparison with other parliaments in Australia, particularly the federal parliament. It is my understanding that the House of Representatives does not have estimates committees following the bringing down of their budget but that the Senate does. The Senate has a different configuration in relation to the estimates committee process: they have rolling estimates conducted throughout the course of the parliamentary year, again across a whole range of ministerial responsibilities.

When I was doing a little bit of part-time work for a particular federal member of parliament, I had the privilege of travelling to Canberra while the Senate estimates committee was being conducted and I sat in on that process. That was obviously many years ago before I entered this place, so longer than 16 years ago, but I found it quite an interesting experience to witness the Senate estimates process.

As has been the case over the last 16 or so years of being a part of the estimates process on this side of the house, on the opposition benches, I have witnessed the varying capabilities of each individual minister in their grasp and knowledge of their areas of responsibility in their respective portfolios. The ministers who are across their issues or their areas of responsibility and who have a thorough understanding of the detail of their portfolio responsibilities can often answer questions put to them by the opposition members without any reference to their departmental heads, their ministerial staff or even their notes.

We see mountains of files brought in for the estimates committees, huge lever-arch folders full of notes and information. I have seen that the ministers I regard as more capable, who are across their portfolio areas, do not need to refer to their officers or their notes. Conversely, on the other side of the equation, the ministers who tend to struggle with their overall performance and their knowledge and understanding of the issues within their portfolio responsibilities are constantly referring to their officers, chiefs of staff, departmental heads and their notes.

At one particular committee I was part of, I think that for pretty much every answer to every question—not every question, but pretty much every question asked—a note was extracted from a huge, voluminous lever-arch folder and a response was read. The response did not necessarily match up with the question but, nevertheless, the minister read the response. That was the supposed answer to the question. In some cases, it was not really an answer to the question, but it was the response the minister provided.

I join with members on this side of the house—as I said, the member for Heysen hit the nail on the head—in saying that the extensive period of preparation of the departments and ministerial staff for the estimates committees is disproportionate to the information that is provided. It is weeks and weeks of preparation, probably months; who knows? The government members, government ministers, government staffers and bureaucracy certainly know. We have a pretty good idea that it would stretch into months of lead time in preparing the massive volumes of text.

The astounding part of it all is that, as the member for Heysen said, when the opposition asks a question, notwithstanding the fact that there is mountains of information, mountains of notes and reams of information, the minister cannot provide an answer, so they have to take the question on notice and provide an answer at a later date. That is quite astounding when arguably months of work go into this process.

Obviously, the ministers would have an understanding of the budget before we receive the budget papers on budget day. I imagine that there would be quite a lead time prior to budget day when the departments and the ministers' staff would be heads down and feverishly working away on every aspect of every budget line and every budget paper for which each individual minister has responsibility. But they cannot, or maybe they do not want to, answer the question because it might be a bit tricky. It might be a bit sensitive, so they like to use the old stalling tactics and come back later when the issue is perhaps not the topic of the day or the week.

I have not seen any change in the way the government has run estimates over the last 16 years. The exchange in some of the committees is perhaps not as inflammatory as it may have been in those earlier years when the then member for Port Adelaide was the treasurer. Those particular estimates committees were always a bit of fun; you never knew quite what was going to take place. In those early years, because I came from a banking background into parliament, I was obviously keen on understanding money, so I would sit in on the Treasury estimates as a new member. It was interesting because you did not quite know what the then treasurer might come out with. Over some of the years, some of the carry-on was quite extraordinary.

I remember one committee had to be suspended one year. I cannot remember the year, but the committee actually had to be suspended because things got a bit too willing and a bit too heated. We had to have a little break for a half an hour or an hour. We went off until things calmed down and we could come back and resume. There were accusations being thrown around of people telling lies or something of that nature. I must admit that was a bit of an eye-opener in my earlier years of being a member. After 16 years in this place, you have perhaps seen not everything but most things that can be thrown up in the course of parliamentary sittings.

As I said, I think the more competent ministers are across their issues and areas of responsibility. They can answer questions without reference to briefing notes, or whatever you like to call them, or without reference to their departmental officers. I remember one year when I was the shadow minister for local government and, with every question that was asked of the poor old local government minister at the time, there was this little conflab or communication between the minister and his chief of staff or one of his senior officers on every question before the minister was prepared to provide a response, which I found interesting.

The process of estimates is the committee stage of the legislative process. We all work through the debate on the second reading of the budget bill and, in essence, the estimates committee is the third reading. In the second reading, we on this side of the house communicated our reservations about the budget, particularly about state bank tax. In the weeks since it was announced, we have seen massive opposition to the state bank tax from the community and the business sector, right across many sectors of the South Australian community.

This government hopefully has only another 7½ months to run. Over the 16 years that this government has been in power, they have implemented really what is a failed economic model, and I spoke about this in the second reading speech on the budget. We have some of the highest unemployment in the country, we have the highest electricity costs in the world, we have some of the highest water costs in the country, we have one of the highest taxation regimes in the country and we have some of the lowest economic indicators in the country.

In their quietest time, government members must realise that the way they have been running the economy, through high taxing and high spending, is a failed model. The economic indicators of high unemployment, high energy costs, high water bills, high taxation, low productivity, and all those sorts of things, point directly at the failed model that this government has put in place. I have said before that you cannot tax your way to prosperity; it is a failed economic ideology.

I cannot remember the name of the writer, but it was interesting to read in recent weeks that South Australia is a government state. I think the lines were that South Australia is a government state: if you want to do business in South Australia, you do business with the government. I believe that is the ideology of the state Labor government; it is in their DNA. They like to control whatever they think they are in charge of. It has nothing to do with the free market. They do not let business go and let the private sector manage themselves because they are the engine room of the economy. They do not like that. They like to be able to control things. I will have a bit more to say about this before I leave this place, but it is a part of their ideology.

They purposely implemented this model. If you want to do business in South Australia, you have to do business with the government. In terms of all the big infrastructure works—roads, hospitals, The QEH, and all of that—if you are in the civil engineering business, the only major works or the only major bit of business that you can get is to contract to the government. That is a real issue that the Civil Contractors Federation have raised over the years. If you do not do business with the government, you are going to go out of business. I believe that is the ideology that the Labor Party likes to push through the community.

I have lots more notes that I could keep on about, but I have pretty much used up my time. Things change, but things stay the same. I am retiring, but the estimates committee process has stayed the same for 16 years. I listened intently to the member for Heysen's contribution. It may not change in the future. We do not know, but it certainly will not change if we do not have a change of government. The final thing I want to say is that if the voting public of South Australia want to change the government, the only way they can bring that about is to vote Liberal.

The Hon. T.R. KENYON (Newland) (16:13): Madam Deputy Speaker, as you know, estimates has changed a little bit. The estimates process in its current form was largely set up in 1980 by the Tonkin government. It has been a relatively stable structure since then, and it has not changed much. However, there have been some changes, and I will illuminate the house on those changes. Trending through 1980 to 2001, there was not a huge variation in the way the estimates went. We can look back to that reference and use 2001 as our last year of the former Liberal government and 2002 as the first year of the current Labor government, and we can see how it has changed from that point on.

It is very interesting that back in 2001 estimates committees started later in the day, at 11am, and often finished later in the day. With 11am starts to estimates, about half the estimates committees—six out of the ten—necessitated full dinner breaks between 6pm and 7.30pm, although it must be said that some of these wrapped up less than an hour after the dinner break.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: What year?

The Hon. T.R. KENYON: That was 2001. It should be noted that examination of four estimates committees was completed by approximately 6pm. In recent years, the estimates examinations have reduced the need to sit late because of earlier starts, with much more family-friendly hours, in the same way the house has made some changes over the last few years.

We remember in the past estimates being a forum where members asked longwinded questions, where there were little more than speeches and answers from ministers that were even more longwinded. Whilst since 2001 we have seen a reduction in the scheduled hours of estimates examinations, we have seen far fewer government questions and generally shorter opening statements from ministers. That is contrary to some of the speeches in here. I got the feeling that a lot of the speeches rolled out in the last few days of debate in this place were just pretty much the same speeches from last year and the same speeches from the year before that, regardless of what was actually going on.

Madam Deputy Speaker, you would know that of the 15 former Liberal ministers who appeared before estimates in 2001, only two of those remain in parliament: the Hon. Rob Lucas in another place and the Hon. Robert Brokenshire in another place, who was a former member for Mawson. I am advised that in 2001 the former Liberal government ministers received almost 220 government questions and the former Labor opposition had the opportunity to ask just over 900 questions. Across all the 10 estimates committees, there were 220 government questions and 900 opposition questions. You might think that is a lot of questions for both the government and the opposition, and if you were there at the time you probably were right, as is always the case in estimates.

Members might be curious to know what happened at the 2002 estimates, which was the first year of the current Labor government. Labor ministers received almost 270 government questions, which is almost 50 more than in 2001. However, it should be noted that the Liberal opposition had the opportunity to ask more than 1,100 questions, which is about 200 more than in 2001. The opposition asked 200 more questions and the government asked 50 more questions. In addition, it should be noted that the late Bob Such, the former member for Fisher, had the opportunity to ask almost 70 questions to ministers of the day.

Last year, there was quite a lot of outrage in this place about the supposed overuse of government questions and everything else and, perhaps, a lack of opposition questions. It would be interesting to have a look at the actual numbers from 2016. I am advised that last year the opposition asked 3,100 questions. At this year's estimates, the opposition had the opportunity to ask more than four times the number in 2001: 3,900 questions. This year alone, there were 3,900 opposition questions across the entire 10 committees.

If you compare that with 2001, we had 220 government questions and 900 opposition questions, so there were more than four times the number this year than in 2001. That begs the question, of course: how many government questions were there this year? The answer is 35. There were 35 government questions across all portfolios this year, compared, of course, with 220 in 2001 and 270 in 2002. There was a blip up, and we have seen a steady progression down over time to the point where we had 35 government questions across all estimates committees this year.

Compare that with the Hon. Rob Lucas's 30 government questions that he received in his last year as a minister in 2001. In fact, the Hon. Diana Laidlaw received 36. One minister alone, Diana Laidlaw, had more government questions—36—than the entire total of government questions asked this year of 35. There are some interesting statistics there.

What is happening and the actual number of questions do not reflect the rhetoric we are hearing from those opposite. I mentioned before that the Hon. Rob Lucas in another place had 30 government questions in his last year as a minister. This year, the Treasurer had two government questions in total. The Hon. Rob Lucas, in 2001, in his last year as a minister, had 70 questions from the opposition. This year, the Treasurer had 700 questions directed towards him—this year alone—compared with 70, that is 10 times the number. Between 2001 and 2017, the number of government questions has dropped dramatically and the number of opposition questions has skyrocketed, ballooned.

There are some other comments. This year, we saw opposition members seeking to butt in very early, trying to talk over the top of ministers, and then feigning outrage when they were not getting answers. It is very difficult to answer a question when you are being talked over the top of. They were quarrelling with the Chair. A couple of times when I was in there, I saw opposition members quarrelling with the Chair, trying to lecture the Chair—obviously never a successful venture in my experience but, nevertheless, it was tried.

It is largely an unchanged process from the one they instigated—not them personally, but from the process the Liberal Party instigated in 1980. If they have a problem with the way it is running, perhaps the answer lies in the way in which they approach estimates, the way they treat it and the questions they ask, rather than in the number of questions or the number of ministerial statements that come at the front.

Motion carried.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay—Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion, Minister for Social Housing, Minister for the Status of Women, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Youth, Minister for Volunteers) (16:21): I move:

That the remainder of the bill be agreed to.

Motion carried.

Third Reading

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay—Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion, Minister for Social Housing, Minister for the Status of Women, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Youth, Minister for Volunteers) (16:22): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time and passed.

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