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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-10-16 Daily Xml
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Public Transport Contracts

Mr DULUK (Waite) (14:19): My question is to the Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government. Can the minister inform the house on the current status of public transport contracts?

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL (Schubert—Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government, Minister for Planning) (14:19): I can, indeed, because there has been some conjecture in recent days about the make-up of our public transport system here in South Australia and the status—

Mr Malinauskas interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The leader is warned.

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: —of who provides the services. If I may, we do have a mixture of insourced and outsourced services when it comes to public transport here in South Australia—an arrangement that is evolving and an arrangement that has evolved over the past two decades. There has been, I think, a little bit of misconception potentially in the public sphere about what degree of outsourcing currently exists—

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan: Well, go and apologise and correct the record.

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: —in our public transport system.

The SPEAKER: The member for Lee can leave for half an hour for that interjection.

The honourable member for Lee having withdrawn from the chamber:

The SPEAKER: Thank you, member for Lee. The minister has the call.

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: The honest truth is that our bus network provides, depending on which figure you choose to use, between 70 and 85 per cent of our public transport services here in South Australia. What is interesting to note is that those contracts are outsourced. In fact, since 2005 until now, the money spent on outsourcing our bus network, which does the lion's share of the heavy lifting of public transport services in South Australia, has been outsourced to the tune of $2.34 billion worth of contracts since 2005. What is interesting is that—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: —there have been some comments made in the public sphere by, in this case, the Leader of the Opposition when he said that—

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Point of order, sir.

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: —it is very, very hard to unscramble the egg—

The SPEAKER: Minister, please be seated. There is a point of order.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Point of order: referencing the Leader of the Opposition's comments, sir, is debate.

The SPEAKER: I will allow some reference, but I take the member's point of order and I will consider it. If I have to intervene, I will do so. Minister.

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: By the way, on the 15th of the fifth:

It's very, very hard to unscramble the egg once you start privatising these sorts of assets…and privatised the bus network, they're back at it again.

Having said that you can't unscramble the egg, there are those who are now putting out policies to try and unscramble the egg, which—

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Point of order, sir.

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: Again, it was on the 15th of the fifth.

The SPEAKER: There is a point of order, minister.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Members on my right, be quiet. Member for West Torrens, I am going to allow some compare and contrast. I have allowed some of that. I don't want to anticipate the point of order, but I am going to listen to it.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Well, sir, if you said you have allowed—

The SPEAKER: For debate? Yes, I have allowed it to a point. I think the minister has made his point and I ask him to come back to the substance of the question and relate the answer to the question.

The Hon. A. Piccolo interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Light is called to order.

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: There are those who suggest you can't unscramble the egg. Those people suggested it in May, when there was a discussion about this. It was also said again in early July, that the reason the bus contracts couldn't be brought back into public hands is because you can't unscramble the egg. There were actually two points over 16 years of Labor administration where you could unscramble the egg.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Point of order, sir: talking about 16 years of Labor is a debating point.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: Point of order, sir.

The SPEAKER: There is a point of order on the point of order.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: The member for West Torrens continues to make this same point of order, which you have ruled is not necessarily accurate, and it is getting to the point where it is just bogus.

The SPEAKER: Yes, I have the point of order. I don't want to repeat myself, but this is starting to stifle the flow of this answer. I will listen carefully. If I feel the need to intervene, I will. Minister.

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: There is a point when a contract is awarded and over the life of the contract where you can actually unscramble the egg, and that's when the contract finishes. There would have been a point in 2005 where the egg could have been unscrambled. Was it? Did we see insourcing of buses? There was another point where, again, a contract ended—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: —in 2011, and what happened? Did we see buses insourced in South Australia? The answer is no. In 2015, when there was an awarding of a contract to change who ran—

Ms Stinson interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Badcoe is called to order.

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: —the bus services due to company change, was there a decision taken at that point to bring buses back in-house in South Australia? The answer is no. This is what South Australians should look at: the Labor Party's record of outsourcing services in South Australia. More than that, I turn now to trains and trams, for which this government has a proud policy to drive efficiency and better services through an outsourcing model. There was, over the past 16 years—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: —$577 million worth of outsourcing happening on our train and tram network, whether that be train maintenance, whether that be security contracts or whether that be cleaning and maintenance of station contracts. The former government outsourced everything it could in public transport, and now being in opposition—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Minister, be seated for one moment.

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: —it is turning the other cheek.

The SPEAKER: Minister, I do believe the question was about the status of contracts. I respectfully ask you to come back to the substance of the question.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: The status of the current contracts here in South Australia shows that over the past 16 years there has been over $3 billion worth of outsourcing contracts in public transport here in South Australia.

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