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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-05-14 Daily Xml
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Statutes Amendment (Boards and Committees - Abolition and Reform) Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 12 May 2015.)

The Hon. T.T. NGO (15:36): I rise to support this bill. This bill seeks to further reform government boards and committees. Last year a major review was undertaken to determine which government boards and committees should be kept, consolidated or abolished. Government boards and committees were required to prove that they are necessary. In total, 429 state government boards and committees were audited. The final audit report determined that 107 would be abolished, a further 17 boards merged and 62 to be subject to other reform.

The government is reclassifying 120 boards and committees that it identified as non-government boards and committees. The remaining 33 are still being considered. A total of 90 boards, less than one in four, will be retained without reform or reclassification. This bill will amend 43 pieces of legislation to abolish 28 boards and committees, merge eight and simplify a further 20.

The review found that, in many cases, there is an unnecessary level of red tape in how boards and committees operate. Thirty-two boards and committees will no longer require the Governor to appoint members. This solidification alone will save hours of work by public servants. Many of these boards and committees have been around for decades. Some have fulfilled their initial objectives and no longer need to continue. Many of these boards and committees were set up to make the departments operate in a more commercial manner, by giving the department and its chief executive a board to monitor its direction, but in reality CEs work directly with the relevant minister on a daily basis. There is no longer a portfolio where a minister has to go through a board to direct the CE of that department.

An interesting point I would like to make is that most appointments of these boards are recommended by the CE to the minister in consultation with the chairman. Very often the minister signs off on these appointments based on the CE's recommendation, because the CE is generally more aware of these issues and the working relationship at board level than is the minister. In reality, you have a situation where the servant is actually appointing the master.

Minister Bignell, in his second reading speech, also expressed several situations where he had to sign off projects coming from a board or launching projects that he had no involvement in or that were outside of the government's policies.

When I worked as an adviser to minister Snelling, as board or committee vacancies came up, we liked to refresh the board with new members who had community or industry experience. I can remember one appointment where the minister went against a recommendation from the CE and appointed two out of three new members who had private industry and corporate experience in that particular area. The CE was not very happy about the minister doing that. The CE spoke to me directly about his dissatisfaction and lobbied pretty hard to get me to speak to the minister to get him to reverse the decision. Now, five years later, I note that those members are still there. They must be doing a good job if the CE continues to recommend them to the new minister.

This bill will not only make decision-making more efficient, it will also lead to greater community involvement in decision-making. Reducing the number of boards and instead using community input where possible would lead to a fairer and more effective system. A key example of this is replacing Community Benefit SA with Fund My Community, which allows the community to have a say in how funding is allocated. More than 2,000 people have had their say in the first Fund My Community so far.

This audit review also gives members of the public with community and industry experience the opportunity to have a say on some of the boards and committees. When I was an adviser—going back to my story—I kept note of who was on government boards and committees, and I noticed that there were people who regularly were appointed on various boards. It was as if being a board member was their career. They seemed to be appointed to lots of boards. Adelaide is a small town and, if you are seen often enough at functions or at meetings and if a CE feels comfortable with you, your name gets thrown around for these board positions. This often creates an unhealthy scenario where the same views and advice are put to the government and views from a different angle are not put forward. So I support this bill to amend legislation to abolish some boards and committees and merge or simplify some of them.

I would like to congratulate the Premier on taking action to reform this area of government. Some members here have raised several concerns about this bill, particularly that some boards that are being abolished should remain. I must plead ignorance when discussing particular boards. I am sure the ministers responsible for those boards in question would have their reasons for implementing these reforms.

I note that there has been some discussion surrounding the tourism board, and the Hon. Mark Parnell has also raised issues with the abolition of the Fisheries Council and the Wilderness Advisory Committee. I trust that the ministers responsible for these boards will find effective compromises to ensure that any relevant aims that the government was progressing through these boards continue to be addressed in one way or another. I commend this bill to the council.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. J.M. Gazzola.

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