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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-10-28 Daily Xml
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STATUTES AMENDMENT (BUDGET 2010) BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 26 October 2010.)

The Hon. K.L. VINCENT (11:05): I wish to speak briefly to this bill which, as I understand it, makes the necessary changes required to current legislation so as to implement the budget. I have a number of concerns, as you can imagine, in relation to the budget that was handed down in September this year; however, I will save those comments until I speak to the Appropriation Bill. I wish to now focus on the negative ramifications of this bill. Of particular concern are the proposed amendments to the Public Sector Act, the Education Act and the TAFE act, which will reduce the long service entitlements for our longest-serving public servants without any consultation. I am not saying that public sector work should necessarily receive more long service leave than that provided under the Long Service Leave Act: I just believe that it is not fair to take a worker's entitlements without first taking it to the bargaining table.

I am also concerned that the 17.5 per cent leave loading will be taken from public sector employees and replaced with an extra two days of annual leave. I have perused a number of federal awards, and I note that every one I looked at provided employees with a 17.5 per cent leave loading. I do not think it is fair that our hardworking public school teachers, for example, will now receive less than their private school counterparts or that public sector clerks will receive less than those who work in the private sector.

Not only have these workers been robbed of their entitlements: they have also been deceived and treated with disrespect by a Labor government that purports to champion workers' rights. I am no historian, but my understanding is that the Labor Party was indeed established to achieve a better deal for workers. Sadly, it seems that the government has all but forgotten its core constituency.

We have received correspondence from the Motor Trade Association, which has raised concerns about the burden placed on motor industry employees who are expected to take reasonable steps to ensure that a vehicle is registered. I understand that the Motor Trade Association has provided the government with a proposed amendment which effectively exempts motor industry employees from prosecution and I, like the Hon. Mr Lucas, would like to know whether the government has considered the Motor Trade Association amendments and the associated cost of such amendments.

To be frank, I am not comfortable with the government's decision to do away with registration labels. While it may signal a $5.7 million saving over three years, I am concerned about the burden placed not only on motor industry employees but also on every person who becomes a designated driver by default; for example, the support worker who drives their client's car or the mate who agrees to drive a friend because the friend has had too much to drink. Is it reasonable to expect these people to call a hotline every time they drive another person's car?

While my concerns with this budget bill may seem minor in the larger scheme of things, I believe they are worth mentioning, obviously. However, that does not mean I have nothing else to say regarding the budget in general, and I advise my fellow members that I will make further comment when we debate the Appropriation Bill later in the week. I look forward to doing so.

The Hon. A. BRESSINGTON (11:09): I indicate that I will not support the government's Statutes Amendment (Budget 2010) Bill. While I should not be surprised, given the callous changes made to injured worker entitlements in 2008, I am frankly incensed that this government, a Labor government, would seek to legislate its way out of an enterprise agreement that has been negotiated and agreed to with the Public Service.

I will not go on about that at great length because I think every member in this place who has contributed has found to be quite extraordinary the lengths to which this government would go to get its own way and cut costs, probably because of mismanagement of expenditure. The Public Service sector is going to have to pay for that.

I also indicate that I will be moving amendments to delete from the bill the provisions to abolish registration labels. I have attempted to find the official estimation of the number of unregistered motor vehicles on South Australian roads, but to no avail. However, in April this year, the New South Wales Road Traffic Authority estimated that there were 65,000 unregistered motor vehicles on their roads. As a direct comparison of population, this equates to about 14,600 unregistered cars in South Australia. While I suspect the South Australian figure is indeed higher than this, almost 15,000 is a significant number of cars. Reducing this figure is where the government priority should be, not on abolishing registration labels on which people have come to depend to remind them when their vehicle registration expires.

Given that the government is investing in additional cameras and mobile data terminals for police that will assist in detecting unregistered cars, I question whether the government has estimated the increase in revenue that will result from fines. I am not alone in suspecting that the government is trying to foster a new revenue stream by abolishing these registration labels. It can only result in more vehicles mistakenly being driven unregistered. Of course, this government will be quick to fine you the minute your registration expires. The abolition of registration labels will apparently save only $5.4 million over three years—almost half the amount saved by restricting the renewal options to three months or 12 months which will supposedly save $10.1 million over three years and which my amendment will retain.

The government plans to do an extensive public information campaign on abolishing registration labels. I ask the government: how much will it spend on the advertising, and how much of that $5.4 million in savings will be eaten away by that very advertising campaign? I also argue that any proposed environmental benefits in reduced production and wastage by scrapping registration labels is offset by the creation of prescribed documents and the waste of advertising the abolition of registration labels, including the printing of the associated government media releases.

Mr President, we spoke with members of the MTA yesterday, who were obviously concerned about their members having to be reliant on a government website, or a hotline, to verify the registration. I put it to you that there are a number of situations where people are not going to want to get onto a phone line or a website before they drive a car. Some of those situations could actually be emergencies, where to make a call or register on a website could be a matter of life and death. We are putting pressure on people to verify registration of other people's cars, not considering the busy lives of families and individual people. I know it has happened to me quite often: you get in the car and see the registration figure (indicating the month) and you think, 'Oh god, next week it's due.' I honestly believe this is a trap for those families and for people who would generally do the right thing.

As I said, there are an estimated 15,000 unregistered cars on the roads already, and now we are going to remove registration stickers. I don't see the sense in it. If it is just a budget-saving measure, then it is a poor one, I believe. It is a poor decision and I don't believe that people out there in the general public are very keen about this either, to tell you the truth.

So, I have had amendments drafted to remove that provision from this bill, and I ask members to give consideration to the fact that our motorists are targeted quite enough already. We have very poor signage for 50-kilometre zones. We are told, 'When in doubt, do 50.' That is all very well, but if you have just come off a 60 kilometre road and turn a corner, you do not always think, 'When in doubt, do 50.' You sometimes think that that the 60-kilometre speed zone continues around the corner. Quite often it does not and that is a trap. I believe that the revenue stream from that has gone up quite significantly and that this abolition of registration stickers is just another ploy by the government to hit the average motorist, who would normally do the right thing, a little harder. I find it appalling.

The Hon. M. PARNELL (11:15): I rise to speak to this budget bill, which provides for numerous legislative changes to give effect to measures announced in the state budget. The state budget was a most disappointing document. In fact, I would say it was a dangerous document in terms of the impact that it will have on South Australia, South Australians and the services that we have a right to expect from our public sector in particular. This budget was mean-spirited and it was dishonest in that it breaks faith with working South Australians and particularly those in the public sector.

I have attended the last big rallies on the steps of Parliament House and, as tempting as it might be for me to recite into Hansard what is written on some of the placards, I imagine that I would be in trouble for unparliamentary language. Certainly, two that stick out and directly relate to this bill are, first of all, 'Leave our leave alone’ and, secondly, ‘Negotiate Don’t Legislate’. What that means is that public sector workers, very rightly, are angry that commitments that were made by this government to them and to their unions as recently as last year have now been thrown out the window with this legislation.

In fact, the chief executive of the Department of the Premier and Cabinet wrote to the general secretary of the Public Service Association on 7 December 2009 in relation to the wages parity enterprise bargaining salary group offer. Included in that letter was a summary of the significant elements of the offer. It included these two items: firstly, 'continuation of the current provisions in relation to the security of employment' and secondly, 'existing conditions continue'. It has taken less than a year for both those to turn out to be untrue.

My colleague the Hon. Tammy Franks has already declared that the Greens will be opposing part 10 of this bill, as the provisions of that part are matters that should properly be in the realm of negotiation between the government and public sector workers and their unions. I agree with the placard that the government should negotiate and not legislate.

In relation to the budget more recently, we have seen some backflips and many of those are welcome. Certainly, the decision in relation to the Parks Community Centre was welcome. I remembered fondly that my children were taken to the Parks regularly. We used the library and a number of the facilities there. That was too important a facility to the people of the Western Suburbs to allow this government to close, and I appreciate that the funding will continue.

In terms of adult re-entry programs in education, there does appear again to be a backflip, which I welcome, but I want to know whether it really is and, whether it is in connection with this bill or the Appropriation Bill, I would like clarification from the government about whether this backflip on adult re-entry courses extends beyond the SACE courses to include pre-SACE, bridging and foundation courses, vocational training courses and specialised literacy classes for migrants learning English as a second language.

If the backflip does not incorporate those, then there is clearly more work to do. I note that the Eastern Courier Messenger has reported that at the Marden Senior College, more than half the students were studying the courses that I mentioned, rather than specific SACE courses, so the government needs to clarify that.

There are two aspects of this bill that I want to focus on briefly. Both have been mentioned earlier. The first one is in relation to this idea of getting rid of registration labels and the impacts that that will have on ordinary South Australians as well as those people who regularly drive cars that belong to others. My initial reaction is that I am open to the idea, in a digital age, that we probably could get away with abolishing stickers on a car windscreen. But, for goodness sake, if we are going to do that it needs to be done properly and you need to make sure that you are not putting innocent people at risk of prosecution, otherwise it will be seen suspiciously by the community.

As with other members here, I have been approached by the Motor Trade Association and, whether it is at the conclusion of the second reading or in committee, I need assurances from the government that car repairers and others who are going to be in the temporary possession of cars and driving them will not be prosecuted if they were unaware that the car they were driving was not registered or insured.

I do not think it is reasonable to suggest that every time you drive a car belonging to someone else you have to ring a hotline or get onto a computer to find out whether or not it is registered. Yes, I think we can go to a digital solution but I do not want to put ordinary South Australians at risk. If members here were honest, we would have to ask ourselves—the last time we borrowed someone's car or someone said to us, 'You drive my car and I'll meet you there'—how often would we walk around to the front and check the date on the registration label? If we were—

The Hon. A. Bressington interjecting:

The Hon. M. PARNELL: The Hon. Ann Bressington says 'every time'. She has different friends from mine. I tend to trust that my friends will have registered their cars. The point is that failure to do that is part of the offence if you are caught. My point is that we possibly can get rid of labels but I am not prepared to support that measure unless the government does it properly and innocent people are not put at risk.

The second point I want to raise relates to the Environment Protection Authority and the inclusion of sustainability licences. Whilst we are only seeing these forms of licences legislated now, the government has been talking about them and, in fact, doing them for the past 12 months. You can go to the EPA website and get a copy of, for example, the Castalloy sustainability licence dated 26 November 2009. The first question that arises is: if the government has been doing this already for a year within existing legislative provisions, what is the particular need for these changes? I look forward to the minister's response.

It may well be—and the minister will confirm this—that the sustainability licences issued so far have very little legal weight. In fact, if you look at the New Castalloy Pty Ltd sustainability licence, it has two footnotes in the first paragraph. The first footnote states:

This EPA sustainability licence refers to the Environment Protection Authority interchangeably as 'EPA' or 'the Authority' and New Castalloy Pty Ltd interchangeably as 'New Castalloy' or 'the licence holder'.

That is just routine but the next footnote states:

EPA and New Castalloy acknowledge that New Castalloy's commitments under the environment sustainability agreement are not legally enforceable obligations.

What I would like the minister to clarify is the extent to which the environmental sustainability agreements will, in fact, become binding if these changes are made to the Environment Protection Act by virtue of this budget bill. If, in fact, the government has been trumpeting the benefits of non-binding agreements, then I think that it should have come clean with that and not just have it as a minor footnote.

One of the other sustainability licences was issued to OneSteel. As members know, I have had a longstanding interest in that matter and I am very pleased that OneSteel's environmental performance has improved. Project Magnet, which was instituted a few years ago, apparently has resulted in a reduction of red dust pollution. However, I am still outraged at the process that this government and this parliament followed in terms of passing special legislation with the specific purpose of undermining the authority of the EPA in that matter.

So, I understand that, whilst the government is now proposing to move to sustainability licences, no change was necessary to the specific Whyalla steelworks legislation, and I ask the minister why was that not necessary in that case?

When it comes to these licences, what I find interesting is that the EPA put the licences it is proud of up on the web and then make them freely available. As I have said, the licence for the New Castalloy Proprietary Limited is up on the web. You can download it and you can print it free of charge. Members might remember that the Castalloy foundry was one of the worst performing, in terms of pollution, industrial operations in this state. The pollution levels were excessive, and it was only as a consequence of a number of major contracts falling away and a change in the management and ownership of that corporation that improvements were made.

So, the licences the EPA is proud of are put on the internet. The ones that they are not so proud of, for example exemptions, special permissions, under the Environment Protection Act, that say that the companies involved do not have to comply with pollution standards, you will not find those on the internet. You will not find the exemption that has been issued for the Northern Power Station up at Port Augusta, because that exemption embodies what the EPA know and what the government knows and what the community of South Australia should know, and that is, that that facility will never meet South Australian pollution standards. It was listed not that long ago as the dirtiest power station, certainly in South Australia, per unit of energy produced.

So, a call that I have made, and I will continue to make, is for the EPA to do what was envisaged over 10 years ago, and that is make pollution licences and exemptions freely available to the community on the internet. Every other state does it. In every other state you can go online, you can type in the name of a company, and you can download a copy of their pollution licence. If, as community members, we know what is in a pollution licence, we know what the legal obligations are on polluting industries, and we can report breaches if they occur to the relevant authorities, in this case the EPA.

The EPA prefers a regime for restricting access to these documents, and they restrict it by virtue of their exorbitant charging regime. Members might not be aware, but for the privilege of inspecting a document held on the public register of the EPA, you need to pay $16.80. If your search of EPA documents requires access to a computer, you will be charged $100.80 per hour of computer time, in order to access records that are on the EPA's own computer system and freely available to all their staff; but if a member of the public dares to want to see a pollution licence, they need to pay $100.80 per hour for the time that it takes. If you want a hard copy paper version of an EPA licence, you will be charged $4.25 for the first page. You will be charged $1.45 for each other page.

What a crazy regime, in the digital age, when all these licences are recorded and available electronically. That is how they are transmitted between licence holders in the EPA, and if you actually ring the EPA and ask, and they trust that you will pay their invoice when it arrives, they will email them to you as well. What a silly system! Why can't South Australia do what all the other states do, and that is, put EPA licences, exemptions and statutory monitoring data up on the internet? I think that it is quite outrageous, and in fact it stands in stark juxtaposition to the approach that has been taken on car registration labels, where they do want to go to a more electronic recording system. They want to do away with the little sticker on your windscreen.

Why on earth can the government go down that path without having sorted out the problems that have been identified that will result, when it cannot do the simplest action of putting a fairly limited number—I think it is only a couple of thousand—of Microsoft Word or PDF documents on the internet and enable the public to access them for free? Like I said, every other state manages to do that. We are living in the dark ages here. With those words, I look forward to the committee stage of this debate, and we will go through some of the detail in each of these pieces of legislation sought to be amended by this bill.

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY (Minister for Mineral Resources Development, Minister for Urban Development and Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister Assisting the Premier in Public Sector Management) (11:30): I thank honourable members for their contribution to this debate. Can I just say at the outset that we do have a couple of members who wish to speak to the Appropriation Bill before other engagements at midday, so I may seek leave to conclude my remarks during this response, and I will come back to them later. There are just a couple of matters that members raised this morning that I wish to address. The Hon. Kelly Vincent talked about teachers under these measures allegedly being worse off than the private sector.

Can I just reinforce to the council that teachers are not affected by the 17.5 per cent leave loading provisions; that is quite clear in the act. They will retain their 17.5 per cent leave loading. In relation to long service leave, I think it has been pointed out repeatedly that the 15 calendar days of long service after 15 years of service is a much more generous provision than what is provided for in most of the private sector and, I would expect, in most private schools. I do not believe it is sustainable that teachers will be worse off than those in the private sector as a result of these measures.

The Hon. Ann Bressington talked about one particular measure, saying it is a poor saving measure. However, what we have heard in all the debates from members opposite and from the Independents is an attack on all of these measures which, of course, cumulatively are an important part of the budget. As a result of these measures they deliver the government's bottom line and deliver the savings targets, but not once have we heard an alternative approach from any of the non-government members in this place. They could have gone to the Sustainable Budget Commission. There was a smorgasbord of alternatives—tax increases, cuts to other areas that they could have put forward—but they did not. All they have done is attack this government for some of the savings measures.

We had the really extraordinary speech made by the Hon. Mr Lucas, who is the shadow minister for finance and, of course, the chair of the Budget and Finance Committee, who spent most of his Appropriation Bill speech attacking the government for overspending; we were overspending. Of course, he mentioned health in that context. Country health is an area where this government has just increased expenditure in this budget by 13.5 per cent; it is almost a 10 per cent real increase in funding for country health, and yet what did we get yesterday? We got opposition members saying that it is not enough, that 13.5 per cent—10 per cent almost real—is not enough; we need more. There has to be some reality coming into the financial debate in this state.

One only has to look around the world, you just have to look at Europe and the austerity measures that are being imposed within the United Kingdom, where they are not talking about just removing a few benefits that are much more generous, such as the extra long service leave provision, than is the norm in the private sector. They are talking about pay freezes for two years and they are talking about cuts of half a million public servants out of 6 million; that is one in 12 in the public service going in the UK. There are a number of other severe cuts as austerity measures. One could look to France, Greece and most of Europe.

This country, due to good financial management by the federal government and this state government, has been able to avoid most of the horrors of the global financial crisis, but it has had an impact on this state. We must adjust accordingly; we must adjust to the underlying factor that is driving the budget, which is the huge increase in demand in the health and welfare sectors—the disability sectors—with big demands on the budget. We must address that fundamental structural shift, where there has been a huge increase in demand. In health it has been growing something like 10 per cent a year, when revenue grows at about 5 per cent a year; and that is all set out in the budget papers. That has been happening for decades, it is likely to happen in the future, and it is likely to happen also in the disability sector.

So, how do we fund that? We cannot just say that if a budget works in 2009, 2002, or whenever, you can use that same budget and reproduce it every year into the future and it will work; it just will not happen. It is not happening anywhere else in the world. There has to be that fundamental budgetary restructuring, of which this budget measure is an important part. It is so that we can cope with increasing demands.

It is very easy for the non-government members to sit back and say, 'We oppose all of your cuts. We don't like what you're doing, but we won't put forward a single alternative. If you increase taxes, we'll criticise that; if you cut services, we'll criticise that. So, we'll reserve the right to criticise government but we won't put up any feasible alternative.'

If we were to ignore the situation facing us, then inevitably what would happen is that we would have exploding budget deficits and, eventually, some future government would be forced into the sort of austerity measures which we are now seeing in Europe, where they are, as I said, making cuts that are far harder on the public sector, for example.

It is very difficult for any government to have to make these sorts of choices, of course it is, and every member on this side of the house, every Labor member, would rather not be in the situation where we have to do that, but what are the alternatives? What all governments have to do is look at the realistic alternatives before them. We can either have the sort of measures that we have set out in the bill that we are now debating or we could have other measures. We could have tax increases or we could cut somewhere else.

Most of the debate in this council has been about the public sector measures. If one did not take those measures—and collectively, when they are fully implemented, they raise something of the order of $60 million a year—then the alternative would be to cut another 600 or 700 public servants and the commensurate services, and then everyone would be complaining about that. What is fairer—

The Hon. T.A. Franks interjecting:

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: Logbooks. What is that going to do? That is going to solve our financial problems, is it? So, just deal with a handful of petty cash things that probably will not making any saving. This is the sort of thing that you get, Mr President. What you would have with the Greens' policy is what happens with similar governments in the world: you would have unemployment at around the 10 or 15 per cent mark. That is the alternative. Look at Greece: ignore the problems, don't manage the economy properly, and what happens is that you get 10 or 15 per cent unemployment and, eventually, the country is totally bankrupt and someone has to come in and fix it, with huge austerity problems.

The Greens talk about 'negotiate not legislate'. How do you change long service leave provisions when they are enshrined in the act? Incidentally, they did not come about as a result of negotiation: they were put in on some election promise about 20 or 30 years ago in a different situation and they were enshrined in the act. How does one negotiate when those provisions are in the act? There is only one way they can change; they are not like other conditions.

I have made it clear, and the Treasurer has made it clear, that the action taken in this bill does not set a precedent for other areas. It is to deal with a very difficult situation that this government has been forced into: do we either save the $30 million (or whatever it was) by not giving a benefit in the future that was far more generous than the provisions we see across the rest of the workforce, or do we go for some other measures like hitting families with further taxes and the like?

They are the real alternatives that face any government. They are not pleasant. No-one on this side would like being in that position, but it has to be faced. You cannot just pretend it away. You cannot just hope that, somehow or other in this little cocoon here, in the Legislative Council, it will all go away and vanish if you do nothing about it. You need only look around the rest of the world to see countries, such as Greece and others, that thought they could do that and, a few years later, it all came back on them. At this point, I seek leave to conclude my remarks on motion.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

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