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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-03-31 Daily Xml
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Asbestos Diseases Society

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD (15:05): My question is to the Treasurer.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! The Hon. Mr Hood has the call.

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD: Thank you, Mr President. My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer update the house on the recent decision to reduce funding to the Asbestos Diseases Society?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (15:06): I thank the member for the question, because it's an important issue that has been ventilated in the public arena as of Monday, I think, of this week in terms of some radio interviews. During the radio interview, the Labor member for Wright, Mr Boyer, made a number of statements which do bear correcting. The background to this, as Hon. Mr Hood has indicated, is ReturnToWorkSA made a decision—I will outline their explanation for the decision that they took—to reduce their level of funding from $45,000 a year to $20,000 a year next year and further again in the following year.

As a result of that decision being publicly ventilated, the member for Wright said, and I quote from a radio interview:

And I think it really speaks to the priorities of the government that they would seek to make a budget saving—which is what this is, let's make no mistake, this is a budget saving—from a community group like Asbestos Diseases Society.

He goes on further to say:

…I think the instruction here would have come from above…

And then he goes on to say, 'Rob Lucas and the Marshall Liberal Government'. So endeavouring to finger poor old me as the Treasurer as the initiator of the decision as the result of a budget saving.

Can I make it clear that ReturnToWorkSA has advised me—and I knew it to be true because it certainly wasn't my decision—that this was a decision that had been taken by ReturnToWorkSA. They advised me that they had been funding the society for 10 years and had provided the total funding of $391,500. When they signed the most recent funding agreement, a two-year funding agreement, for $90,000 over two financial years, they included in the contract a specific clause which went, and I quote: that 'funding may not continue beyond this agreement'.

Consistent with that clause within their funding agreement, the ReturnToWorkSA management and/or board—I am not sure at what level the decision was taken—took the decision within their relatively modest overall sponsorship budget, which was $115,000. Previously, 40 per cent of their total sponsorship budget had been going to the Asbestos Diseases Society. They took the decision to reduce the allocation of their total sponsorship budget from about 40 per cent to just under 20 per cent of the total sponsorship budget going to the Asbestos Diseases Society.

ReturnToWorkSA have advised me that they also sponsor another organisation, which many members would know—the Asbestos Victims Association—which does some wonderful work. They say that since 2012, ReturnToWorkSA has funded that particular organisation to the tune of $7,000 per year since 2012. So I do want to reject completely the attempt to blame both the government and me as Treasurer as having directed ReturnToWorkSA to make this decision to make a budget saving in relation to the funding that they provide to the Asbestos Diseases Society.

ReturnToWorkSA, as they point out in their public statements on this issue, are an employer-funded organisation through levies, in terms of running the workers' compensation scheme. The scheme is admittedly under some funding pressure at the moment, but these are decisions that the board and/or management take in relation to how they expend their money. There was certainly no direction from me or from the government in relation to any funding allocation to the Asbestos Diseases Society.

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