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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-04-30 Daily Xml
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BUSINESS ENTERPRISE CENTRES

The Hon. J.S.L. DAWKINS (15:31): I rise today to speak about the business enterprise centre network throughout Adelaide. First, I will list those various centres: the East Side BEC, which is based at Payneham; the Inner Southern BEC at Morphettville; Southern Success BEC, Morphett Vale; the Northern Adelaide BEC at Elizabeth West; the Inner West BEC at Thebarton; BEC Tea Tree Gully, which is based at the North-East Development Agency, St Agnes; the North-West Business Development Centre at Port Adelaide; and the Salisbury Business and Export Centre at Mawson Lakes.

On 2 April, I gave a matter of interest speech in this place about the regional development boards and the current resource agreement situation with those boards and the fact that the government has delayed the confirmation of resource agreements for the next five years. It has refused to confirm whether they will be increasing the funding for the boards, which has not been increased for 10 years, and it also refused, among other things, to confirm whether it will increase the amount of money that is provided to employ business advisers.

In that speech, I actually highlighted the fact that this is a situation which was very similar to what happened with the BECs a number of years ago, and I did not want that to continue. A number of years ago, the BECs were in the situation where they were kept hanging on without any certainty, and they were given 12 months extra funding only about five weeks before their funding levels would have 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. 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.

What happened the following year was that, while they were given 12 months funding at a late stage, they were promised that the following three years' funding would be determined very quickly. It was not determined until the following March, and a similar situation with the resultant pressures occurred.

I appealed to this government to make sure that this never happened again, but it is happening again. We are seeing a situation where I understand that the new three-year agreement for the boards will not be confirmed earlier than mid-May. The funding levels are proposed to be the same as for the previous three years, and there seems to be no indication of increasing the amount of money for business advisers, despite the fact that the BEC network around the country is sourcing these people at at least the mid-$70,000 salary, plus oncosts.

It is important that the government supports the BECs, which have claimed five of the six available national awards for excellence within the BEC national network over the past three years. It is true that selected BECs throughout Australia—I think 36 of the 100—are about to receive some federal funding, but this is provided against some very measured tasks.

I think the government needs to make sure that it supports these BECs. They do extraordinary work. The same minister who is responsible for the BECs is also responsible for regional development boards. Minister Maywald needs to make sure that the Department of Trade and Economic Development takes urgent action to support the excellent work that the business enterprise centres do, and that she gives them the capability to undertake the role that they have been given and that they have performed right across their sectors of metropolitan Adelaide.

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