17 November 2021

The Hon. R.A. SIMMS: I will speak very briefly, because I am conscious that we have a lot to get through tonight. I will not reprosecute the arguments, but the Greens will not be supporting the amendment from the government. I recognise, as I have done previously, the work of all sides of politics in this place in terms of taking action on climate. However, the purpose of this motion is not a collective backslapping exercise or some sort of celebration of the virtues of the Marshall government, as the honourable Treasurer has proposed. We do not share that assessment.

Indeed, the motion does call on the government to go further, to set meaningful targets for a transition to 100 per cent renewable energy for South Australia, and also calls on the government to block the ruling by the Australian Energy Market Commission to allow networks to charge solar customers fees for exporting solar energy to the grid.

The honourable Treasurer has made the point that this issue was dealt with yesterday. My motion on notice was lodged some time ago, well before we dealt with yesterday's bill, which had been pushed back many times. This may provide an opportunity for members who perhaps made an error yesterday to think more carefully about their position and to remedy that today. That is always a positive thing.

Just to conclude, to sum up the contribution I made previously, this sun tax that is being proposed is going to allow networks the power to charge solar households in a way that was previously prohibited under the national energy rules. It has been argued that this is justified as necessary to fund required upgrades on the grid, but this is despite the fact that solar surges have been shown to occur at night and in areas of low solar uptake, and we are very concerned that these charges will unfairly impact those who in good faith have made long-term investments in renewables.

These are South Australians who are wanting to do the right thing, who are doing the right thing for our environment, and the Liberals want to stand by and allow them to be penalised. I do not wish to be divisive, as the honourable Treasurer has inferred, but when a party has got it wrong, when a government has got it wrong, we have to call it out. I urge members to support my original motion and to reject the amendment proposed by the honourable Treasurer.

17 November 2021

The Hon. R.A. SIMMS: I move:

That the report of the select committee be noted.

Very briefly, the privatisation committee was established back in May and handed down its report earlier this week. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the members of the committee for their efforts: the Hon. John Darley, the Hon. Heidi Girolamo, the Hon. Frank Pangallo and the Hon. Irene Pnevmatikos. I also acknowledge the contribution of the former member, the Hon. David Ridgway, who departed the committee in June. I acknowledge the work of Leslie Guy in the Secretariat and I want to thank her for all of her efforts in ensuring that the committee ran so smoothly and that we were able to provide a timely report to this chamber.

In terms of a brief summary, we received 22 submissions and there were six public hearings. The committee heard a range of evidence. In particular, it is clear that privatisation has had adverse impacts on services in South Australia and also on the experience of many staff working in public services that have been privatised.

The report made a range of recommendations for the future that would improve the accountability of private corporations that run public services and safeguard them against the sell-offs of our public services without due consideration of the impact. In terms of some of the key recommendations from the majority report, these include:

• the establishment of an independent regulatory body to provide oversight over services that have been privatised;
• the establishment of a standing parliamentary committee to review existing privatisations and make recommendations on any proposed privatisations prior to government approval;
• subsidiaries of multinationals awarded contracts for delivering public services to publicly report on their domestic and international revenues and tax payments;
• protections of employment standards for those working in government services that are privatised; and
• a moratorium on further privatisations on government services until all recommendations are actioned.

That is just a snapshot of the recommendations. There were 13 recommendations in total, and I certainly think that if these were implemented they would greatly improve the transparency around privatisations in our state. With that, I conclude my remarks.