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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-04-02 Daily Xml
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REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT BOARDS

The Hon. J.S.L. DAWKINS (15:37): I rise today to speak about the manner in which the state government has mismanaged the allocation of new resource agreements for South Australia's 13 regional development boards. I will quote first from my Address in Reply speech of 29 May 2007, as follows:

...resource agreements for regional development boards are a matter of some concern to me. I will probably go into the detail of that in a few moments; however, resource agreement funding that comes from the state government needs to be determined fairly quickly. There are a number of boards whose five-year agreement runs out at the end of June next year, and the remaining boards have their funding agreement running out at the end of June this year. The minister has indicated to the boards which are due to run out of funding in a few weeks that they would get a 12-month roll-over, so that all the boards would come for renewal of their agreements at the same time.

I do not see anything particularly wrong with that, but I appeal to the government to make sure it does not repeat the ludicrous situation that occurred only a couple of years ago when the Business Enterprise Centres were in a similar situation. They were kept hanging on without any certainty and, in fact, were only given an extra 12 months funding about five weeks before their funding levels were to run out. On that occasion the Business Enterprise Centres lost a lot of very good staff because people did not have the certainty of a job, because if you get to 31 May in a year and you do not know whether you are going to have a job beyond 30 June that is a fair incentive to start looking around for another position. Those Business Enterprise Centres were all situated in metropolitan Adelaide where opportunities for other employment are probably greater than for employees located at many of the regional development boards. So, I ask the government to ensure that in the next 12 months, when it examines the funding of the resource agreements for these boards, it does so in a timely fashion, preferably I would think before the end of this calendar year.

I also mentioned in that speech the role of councils as funding partners with the state government for regional development boards and the discussion paper prepared by the LGA in relation to this cooperative commitment to economic development. State government delays about funding for regional development boards have particular impacts on the budget decisions of their local government partners.

On 31 July 2007, in the Appropriation Bill debate, I referred to the Minister for Regional Development's responses to questions asked on my behalf during estimates earlier that month, as follows:

The minister indicated during estimates that a draft resource agreement is expected possibly as early as October. She added that the Department of Trade and Economic Development and the Office of Regional Affairs would be looking at early next year to finalise the agreement in order to ensure that the boards have adequate time for planning for the next financial year. I cannot emphasis the importance of this time frame strongly enough.

We are now a long way down the track. A draft resource agreement was distributed to all the boards late last year, but those drafts did not include any indication of funding levels. They did not include any resolution of the need for extra funding for business advisers, where currently it is only $65,000 per year and the boards say that, all up, they need to have at least $100,000 to get someone of adequate experience. There has been no resolution regarding the replacement of the new system which has replaced the previous system of discretionary funding. There has been no indication that the level of core funding will be increased for the first time in 10 years.

Many people in this chamber would recognise that the regional development boards do great work within their regions. I say let them get on with it; give them some certainty. We are now in the second quarter of 2008. We are less than three months from the end of those current resource agreements. We are talking about staff security, the ability of these boards to let contracts for office accommodation and equipment, and we are also talking about, as I said earlier, the impact on local government budgets.

The Minister for Regional Development needs to ensure that the Office of Regional Affairs and DTED take some action to ensure that there is financial security for the regional development boards.

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