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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-05-26 Daily Xml
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PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEES (MEMBERSHIP OF COMMITTEES) AMENDMENT BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 25 May 2010.)

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (21:06): I rise on behalf of the opposition to speak to this bill. Members would be aware that we have a number of standing committees of the parliament and, as has been the practice for almost the eight years I have been here, we have had an opportunity for every member of the crossbench and the opposition to have at least one position on a committee. Government numbers are somewhat reduced because they have a couple of ministers and the President, and there are several opportunities for members opposite to be serving on committees.

This election, we are pleased to see Kelly Vincent and Tammy Jennings being elected, so we have an extra crossbench member and there is not a neat number of positions to go around. We should not adopt the view that every player wins a prize and everybody automatically can be on a committee, because when I was first elected that was not the case. When I was preselected, Angus Redford thought that Terry Stephens, at No.5, would not be elected, that I would be the last person elected and, therefore, I would not get a committee position because I was the junior person. He said, 'We divide everything up on seniority,' and added, 'Your office will be a broom cupboard at the end of the corridor and, if we have an uneven number of pieces of paper, you will get the lesser number.' There was a view that we did not all get a committee position.

In the first term of parliament that I was here we saw the government establish the River Murray committee, because that was something it needed to do in order to provide the Hon. Karlene Maywald with chairmanship of a committee and a chauffeured car, although I do not believe she took up the offer of a car in the early stages. It went on to become the Natural Resources Committee and at about that time the Aboriginal lands committee was also established. That meant extra committees and everybody had an opportunity to serve on one.

With the election of an extra crossbencher—sadly, we are one less than we were before the last election—the opposition believed that we should have at least one person on every committee, and to do that we suggested to the government—and I am glad it agreed—that maybe the best way to resolve this situation was to put two extra people on some committees. Kelly had expressed a real desire to be on the Social Development Committee and, as Dennis Hood, who is also a crossbench member of the Legislative Council on that committee, expressed a desire to remain on it, it made sense to the opposition to suggest to the Leader of the Government that maybe the best way around this is to increase that committee's number by two members.

The Hon. Mark Parnell is a bit of a student of elections, but even with his wildest dreams fulfilled at the next election there is a chance that we have reached a high watermark for the crossbenchers. But, who knows what happens in elections—they are very strange things. The Liberal Party at the next election clearly will win five or six seats in this place, and if there are extra positions for the crossbenchers they will be at the expense of people like Bernard Finnigan and others who will be relegated back to the union somewhere, having not been re-elected.

The Hon. B.V. Finnigan interjecting:

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: Strange things can happen, Bernard. At the end of the day—

The Hon. B.V. Finnigan interjecting:

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: It looks like you are going to be up here in about 12 months or so and Paul will be mowing the lawn and smelling the roses. I am sure he is looking forward to that day, whenever that day does happen.

This is an opportunity to increase the committee by two positions, one in the Legislative Council, which will be taken by the Hon. Kelly Vincent, and one in the House of Assembly. This is a joint house committee, and it has always been a time-honoured tradition and the convention in the South Australian parliament that, when you have a joint house committee, you have equal numbers from both houses. That is something we agreed on, and we thought it was a good compromise. It will be sunsetted until the next election, and then we will re-assess it, as we do after each election, and nominate new members for committees. If we need to rejig the make-up of things after the next election, that can be done.

This amendment bill deals not only with that committee but also the changes to the Natural Resources Committee. While we do support the changes to that committee, it is a little disturbing when we see that the government in the House of Assembly, where it clearly has the numbers, has made a decision that it would like to increase the House of Assembly committee membership on the Natural Resources Committee by two. We are a little disappointed about that. We understand that Don Pegler was the nominee for that committee, and we support that. We also believe that the major opposition party needs one person from each house on that committee as well, and I think our representative is Dan van Holst Pellekaan, the member for Stuart. Don Pegler was the extra one to be added.

We would have seen it as being sensible to provide the Legislative Council with another position because it is a joint house committee; the chair comes from the House of Assembly. However, we thought that a nine member committee, four from each chamber and a chair from the House of Assembly, would have upheld the time-honoured tradition and convention that joint house committees are somewhat balanced between the two houses.

While we are happy to support the changes, we are a little disappointed that the government has sort of undermined the Legislative Council. We have always had joint house committees that are relatively balanced, and now we have this committee with nine members, six from the House of Assembly and three from the Legislative Council. Clearly, that is a disappointment to the opposition on the basis that joint house committees should always be more balanced.

The two houses of parliament have equal standing when it comes to dealing with legislation—ministers in this place can introduce legislation in the same way as ministers in the other chamber, and we have the same powers. However, in this case, the value of the Legislative Council has been diminished. Likewise, it is my understanding that that particular change has been sunsetted and that at the commencement of the first session of the 53rd parliament it will be nine members and thereafter seven members. Clearly, it has been sunsetted to be in line with the change to the Social Development Committee.

The opposition is happy to support the changes. We in this place think it is a common-sense solution to allow everyone on the crossbench to be involved and participate in the committees they have some passion for and interest in. I am a little disappointed that the government has not been as balanced in its view in the House of Assembly and allowed the Legislative Council to have an extra person on the Natural Resources Committee to give us that same balance in a joint house committee. With those few words, I indicate that the opposition supports the bill.

The Hon. M. PARNELL (21:14): Very briefly, the Greens will also be supporting this bill, which increases the membership of the Social Development Committee and the Natural Resources Committee. The Hon. David Ridgway said that it should not be the case that every player wins a prize. Clearly, the fact that it is being sunsetted shows that this bill has more to do with the specific make-up of the current parliament rather than any great commitment to parliamentary democracy and the role of committees on the part of government.

What the Greens would call for is an overhaul of the committee system. We have already had some debate today about whether the Budget and Finance Committee should be a select committee of this council—it is an important committee—or whether it should be a standing committee. I think it is time for us to look at all of the committees in a collective and holistic way rather than this ad hoc amendment of individual committees' membership and then sunsetting those changes.

I would also like the parliament to have a good, close look at the entitlements that accompany committee membership. Clearly, much of this is about pay and conditions for members. For the life of me, I cannot understand why there are chairs of committees who get chauffeur-driven cars as a part of their responsibilities for a very small number of meetings and, in my experience, not a great deal of extra work.

It seems to me that we should be overhauling the whole system of the chauffeur-driven car fleet and perhaps moving to a pool which different members can use, including members who are not chairs of committees or ministers; that would be a better way to go. The idea of someone winning a prize where, if they miss out on a ministerial position, they get to chair one of the committees that has a car and a chauffeur I think is a very poor way for us to manage our parliamentary resources.

I also think that, rather than just increase the membership of a couple of committees, we should look at some of the practices and procedures, many of which date back, I think, to close to the Dark Ages. There is a presumption in favour of secrecy, denial of access to information and, in fact, many of the traditional practices of committees do not relate to democracy in the digital age.

The fact is that most of the people who interact with this parliament do so electronically: they send us emails and electronic submissions and, whilst the parliamentary website has undergone a number of improvements, and I commend those people responsible for that, we still find that the content is dependent on some very outdated rules which basically value privacy and secrecy over openness and transparency. So, I think there is a lot more work we can do there.

For now, I understand the intent of this bill. It does enable, for example, someone like the Hon. Kelly Vincent to take a place on the Social Development Committee, which absolutely no-one would deny that with her constituents and her own experiences she will have a contribution to make on that committee—that makes eminent sense—and if increasing the statutory number on the committee is the way to achieve an outcome like that then we support it.

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) (21:18): I thank the Hon. David Ridgway and the Hon. Mark Parnell for their contributions in debate. I will respond, firstly, to the Hon. Mr Ridgway; he was expressing disappointment that the two extra members of the Natural Resources Committee were from the House of Assembly rather than this place. There are two important points to make on that: first, there are 47 members of the House of Assembly and there are 22 members of the Legislative Council.

For those committees which have traditionally been balanced, we have done that. For example, the Social Development Committee, which has traditionally been joint house, that has been preserved, but there was never a balance on the Natural Resources Committee, which, of course, is a relatively recent committee of this parliament.

Why should members of the House of Assembly be treated any differently from members in this place? The Hon. Mark Parnell talked about remuneration and other matters relating to these committees. I would point out that members of the House of Assembly generally, certainly those in city seats, have a much lower electoral allowance than members in this place, and there are some members of the House of Assembly who will probably not be on any committees because of the larger number of members there. I think that needs to be borne in mind.

The important thing is, to answer the arguments of the Hon. Mr Ridgway, that there has never been an exact balance on the Natural Resources Committee as there has been with other committees.

Finally, just in response to the Hon. Mark Parnell, he expressed the view that there should be some review of the committees. Part of the problem has been that, whenever that has been done in the past, inevitably amendments have come out of this place to it. I would like to see the committees system reviewed as well but, unfortunately, I have no confidence whatsoever that we would get anything out of it other than playing politics, given the debate we heard earlier tonight. Yes, committees should work better, but they can do so only if the playing of politics is removed. We just saw examples earlier tonight—

The Hon. T.J. Stephens: Well, you got your numbers; why are you trying to lose them?

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: Because I want to make a point, that's why, because it is important that—

The Hon. T.J. Stephens: Do you want to lose your numbers?

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: I would like to see this parliament actually work. You might not want to see it work, Mr Stephens, but I would actually like to see it work better. Committees are a very important part of parliamentary life. It is important that they work. I actually agree with Mr Parnell in that, personally, I would like to see some changes made. However, I disagree with him in relation to one of his comments about moving away from some of the traditions of committees, where the consideration of those committees are not made public until the committee reports. In my view, it is absolutely essential to good committee work that all the information that is put into it is considered and then released at the end of the process, not during the process.

I think we are now increasingly seeing that the process in parliamentary committees is becoming more important than the outcome. Surely the best committees are those that bring down a well balanced report after duly considering all the evidence, rather than the process dominating it because of politics being played through the selective leaking of documents that come before the committee. The whole lot should be released at the end in a balanced way. So, to that extent, I cannot agree with the Hon. Mark Parnell.

However, I definitely think that we need to modernise committees in many ways. Certainly in relation to modern technology, there is no reason why we cannot update the processes to allow some greater interaction between the public and the committees. In my view, I think it would be a sad situation if we had the continuation of the selective leaking of information before it has all been properly considered.

I thank honourable members for their support and look forward to this bill swiftly going through the other house of parliament. As I have indicated, in our case, we would then nominate the Hon. Kelly Vincent to join the Social Development Committee when this bill has been assented to.

Bill read a second time and taken through its remaining stages.

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