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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-04-08 Daily Xml
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GOVERNMENT BOARDS AND COMMITTEES

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (14:40): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Leader of the Government a question about boards and committees.

Leave granted.

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: The Economic Development Board, formed by this government after it won office, has done many good things and recently made some key recommendations for our future. Amongst its contributions to the state was its involvement in the May 2003 new state economic blueprint report which included one key cost-saving initiative, namely, abolishing government-appointed boards and committees. Responding to the report, release on 13 May 2003, the Premier told parliament that he had asked ministers to identify departmental boards and committees they wished to abolish, saying:

The board and summit have said we are over-governed. I agree. I have asked all my ministers to tell me what boards and committees they intend to keep, and why, and to give me a substantial list of the boards, committees, advisory bodies and statutory authorities they intend to abolish.

This government committed to reducing boards and committees, with you, Mr President, saying in April 2003, in your capacity as chair of the Statutory Authorities Review Committee, that you then supported the Economic Development Board's call for a sunset clause for all government committees and boards to ensure they were closed unless they could demonstrate their usefulness. You said, 'Because there are so many at the moment, it makes it very hard to police what they are doing and keep on top of them.'

The Premier said in October 2003 that the government had abolished 29 of the 75 committees earmarked by ministers for abolition, identified 57 others to be amalgamated or restructured, and a further 217 boards and committees faced further review of their activities. Yet, in April 2005, the Premier would not identify publicly which boards and committees had been abolished, nor which new boards and committees had been started, simply saying that his government had abolished 'dozens and dozens' of them. In June 2005 the Premier claimed that his government had abolished 147 boards and committees. In 2003 when the Premier—

The PRESIDENT: Order! You give the Independents a go, and you think they are giving a third reading speech. Will you please get to the question?

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: Thank you, sir. I will go straight to the questions. My questions, therefore, are:

1. Has this government failed on its pledge to cut boards and committees?

2. How many boards and committees are there?

3. How many of them produce annual reports on their activities?

4. What steps will this government now take, six years after its original promise, to reduce the cost to taxpayers of administering so many boards and committees, when it is now spending $2.8 million per annum more than when it originally said it was going to cut the committees?

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY (Minister for Mineral Resources Development, Minister for Urban Development and Planning, Minister for Small Business) (14:43): I am not sure where the honourable member gets the last figure from. No, the government has not failed in relation to its policies. This government made a commitment to review all of its boards and committees. It has done so and, of course, a significant number of boards have been abolished, amalgamated, and so forth.

Questions were asked about this subject in the previous parliament—certainly, before the honourable member came into this parliament—and, as I have pointed out in the past, this government has never said that there was no role for boards and committees. What we said was that we would review them. Many of them had functions that were obsolete and many were out of date, so we have reviewed them. There have been many boards which have been abolished, others have been amalgamated and, where necessary, some have been created through legislation.

What is important is that the functions of boards should be contemporary to the needs of government. That does not mean that you will abolish all functions and it does not mean you will never have new committees, but we do need to continually examine the work done by boards to ensure that they are more effective and more focused on the issues that we face. In relation to the statistics asked about by the honourable member, I will refer those on. I believe there is some collation of boards and committees within the Premier's office, and I will refer those questions on.

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