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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-06-01 Daily Xml
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Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union

Mr COWDREY (Colton) (14:03): My question is to the Premier. Does the Premier have a plan to stop the rollout of John Setka's Incolink scheme in South Australia and, if not, why not? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr COWDREY: It has been reported that the CFMEU plans to rollout Incolink, the Victorian workers' entitlement and redundancy scheme across South Australia, potentially leading to increased costs for the South Australian building and construction industry, which is currently served by a local scheme. The Incolink board includes Mr Setka and other union bosses from Victoria.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:04): I thank the member for Colton for his question. Last week—I can't remember the exact day, but late last week—I had the opportunity to speak to the CEO of the South Australian Master Builders Association, who was in touch with me regarding the reports emerging around Incolink's interests in taking over the South Australian equivalent, known as BIRST. BIRST is of course a scheme that has been in operation in South Australia in partnership between the CFMEU and MBA for some time.

The Victorian equivalent in Incolink has the same arrangement between the Victorian branch of the CFMEU and the Victorian branch of the MBA. As has been described to me by the South Australian MBA, the distinction between Incolink and BIRST principally is the sums of money that are involved. The mandate and the objectives of those two organisations I understand to be largely the same, but the costs associated with the Victorian model are substantially higher than is the case for the South Australian model.

From the South Australian state government's perspective, we have a couple of interests here. The first is making sure that workers who are effectively insured under that scheme have their entitlements preserved, which is a principle that I would hope everyone would want to see upheld. We seek to satisfy ourselves that the BIRST scheme in operation in South Australia does that effectively. We haven't received any representations—well, I certainly haven't received any representations—to say otherwise, which begs the question: why change?

The other interest we've got here beyond workers' conditions themselves, which is the paramount consideration of the Labor government, is cost of the scheme's operations relative to the delivering of outcomes to the workers. To the extent that there is a gap there or a differential between Incolink and BIRST, the government would have an interest in that as a matter of public policy.

Following the representations I received from the MBA, I undertook to go away and ascertain what legitimate levers the state government has at its disposal because, as the Treasurer rightly pointed out, our levers here are relatively limited. Ever since WorkChoices of course state governments relinquished powers—

Mr Cowdrey: What about the Labor Party levers?

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: —to the commonwealth regarding industrial relations. Nonetheless, there are still various acts and powers and functions that exist with the state that we are willing to deploy should that opportunity present itself and should the need arise.

The other element that I neglected to mention, of course, is the issue of South Australian workers' money going across the border. That would strike us as being a less than desirable outcome, particularly in the absence of any obvious benefit to either South Australian businesses or South Australian workers themselves. To that end, the state government has an interest. We will examine our options carefully and respond appropriately.

The Hon. D.G. Pisoni: You've got all those union fees going over there.

The SPEAKER: Order, member for Unley!

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