Legislative Council, Thursday 17 November 2022

Ms FORREST (Murchison) - Mr President, this bill seeks to address the issues related to workload and good governance in this parliament. I agree, there have been issues in the recent past that have highlighted these matters. However, there are issues other than an increase in the numbers of parliament which are being ignored. Structural problems were identified in the recent Bolt report, Motion for Respect that go much deeper than the workload of Government members. My consideration of this bill, noting the large body of work needed to ensure parliament is an effective, well-functioning, adequately resourced and safe workplace for all is there is much more that needs to be addressed well beyond increasing the size of parliament.

These matters and the required change of human and financial resources to address them yet, here we are, debating the additional expenditure that current estimates have not been provided for - as to the additional cost of adding ten members of parliament to the House of Assembly and two additional ministers. We have appeared to overlook the reality that other costs will occur, broader than the additional MPs and their staff.

This change has been progressed at a time of record low levels of trust in politicians and a lack of understanding across all areas - including within Government - of the importance of a well-functioning, and thus well-managed, parliament.

Mr President, in preparing my contribution on this bill, I read part of a book. I did not try to print the whole book, because it is very large. I want to refer to some of the comments made in this book, because I think it highlights the bigger body of work that needs to be done. It is written by Val Barrett who wrote it as part of a body work she has been doing. She is a long-serving, senior administrator who worked in the Parliament of Australia, as well as in the Legislative Assembly of the Australian Capital Territory - so, she comes with great experience and great knowledge in these areas.

I will read a couple of parts out of it. I am trying not to take anything out of context, but I want to capture some of the essential points that need to be considered in how we ensure a well-functioning parliament that does not just rely on having enough members to do the work.

She says in the book:

The research leading to this book was precipitated by evidence of a dissensus in management priorities among officials and members, a purported decline in public confidence in democracy and a lack of public engagement with parliament.

So, would more members fix that? Maybe; maybe not. She goes on:

The research drew four main conclusions, which have implications for the future management of parliaments. First, parliament is overwhelmingly an agonistic institution and competition between parliamentary actors for status, resources, influence and control has pervaded its administration and impeded reform. Second, in the context of parliament’s role as a deliberative forum and broker of ideas, managing public expectations remains a principal challenge for its administrators. Third, parliament's claims to be unique and a consequent emphasis on differences rather than similarities with other public organisations have reduced the potential for learning from others. Fourth, a lack of constructive engagement with administrative issues from members of parliament has contributed to a vacuum of leadership in an institution where no one has overall authority.

This book may have raised more questions than it has answered

Mr President, she goes on to say:

Parliament's supposedly sovereign role ensures its place at the apex of the constitutional constellation, along with the other two branches of government: the executive and the judiciary. The doctrine of exclusive cognisance means that parliament, and only parliament, retains control of its internal business. Moreover, the adoption of the separation of powers, while not strictly applicable in the loosely defined Westminster system of government, is often called on to support the belief that the management of parliament, including decisions on its funding, should be carried out independently of the executive even though their powers are closely intertwined.

Parliament is indeed unique, or is it?

She makes a number of points expanding on those matters, but she says:

Fourth and, perhaps most importantly, public perceptions of the relevance and effectiveness of parliament have declined and the deference that politicians, institutions and officials could once count on has all but disappeared.

What a sad indictment, Mr President. This relates to other parliaments; but as we have seen in the Bolt report it suggests that there are problems here, too.

Members of the public do not appear to appreciate the enduring significance of the contest between a government's prerogative and a parliament's right to scrutinise, viewing it instead as the pursuit of power and self-interest by politicians from opposing political parties. This phenomenon has been accelerated in no small part by the rise of social media, enhanced mainstream media scrutiny and, paradoxically, even the broadcasting of parliamentary proceedings themselves. It seems that the more people know about politics, (and by extension parliament), the more disaffected they become. Parliament's public standing is also complicated by the fact that many people conflate parliament, government and adversarial politics, consigning them all to the same fate of poor public opinion, distrust and disenchantment. But the problem is also part of the cure: it is widely held that a lack of awareness and understanding about how politics and parliament work can equally feed into public disaffection.

She goes on:

This book is, indeed, a defence of parliament, notwithstanding its acknowledgement of widespread criticism through the decades. But it also argues that for parliament to remain relevant, inclusive and publicly respected, it must enhance management capability.

This book is available in the library if you want to have a look, and you can get it online. I urge members to have a look at it, because it could have been written about this parliament as much as the federal or ACT Parliament.

Why is this important? It is important to ensure the proposed change to the number of House of Assembly MPs is not seen as a solution to the lack of trust and respect in politicians, and also to ensure that other important work, particularly that outlined in the Bolt report and in the book that I have referred to, do not slip under the radar as this work will also cost money. It will require expertise and human resources. The question is - will this increase in members of parliament and ministers actually serve the people of Tasmania better? The other question that is of particular interest to the people of Tasmania, from my understanding of the public commentary, is, what is the actual cost?

I absolutely acknowledge there is a cost of not doing something here too, as there is a cost of not responding in full and appropriately to the other matters I have just referred to. However,, it is right that, on behalf of the people of Tasmania, we should ask about the cost; acknowledging that there is a cost of not making a change to reduce the repeat of the impacts we observed over recent years related to the resignation of premiers and ministers.

We cannot stand here - I certainly cannot stand here - and tell the people of Tasmania what this will cost. The best we have is an estimate figure from 2019 that considered only a portion of overall cost of this particular measure.

We were told that $5.9 million was the one-off cost to increase the numbers to 35 and two additional ministries, and $6.5 million annually recurrent expenditure. This would, obviously, rise every year subsequent to the CPI increase at least. These estimates are out of date. Clearly, we have seen significant increases in inflation and the rest. These estimated costs only include additional costs associated with the Tasmanian Electoral Commission, costs of the additional electorate officers, ministerial staff, additional support for ministers and the additional members of parliament, and the additional work that will be required on the already existing 35 seats in the House of Assembly.

Mr President, for the life of me I cannot see why that even requires a significant investment of funds because there was a significant and fairly recent major upgrade of that Chamber that included the reservation of 35 seats.

Ms Rattray - Through you, Mr President, the member for Launceston and I went down and counted the seats this morning.

Ms FORREST - I did not need to count them to know they were there. I know they are there.

Ms Rattray - There are 17 on either side and a Speaker's chair.

Ms FORREST - Regardless of these known areas of additional cost, it does not consider the costs related to shared services which are an integral part of the operations of our parliament, or the impacts on the Legislative Council. There will be impacts on the Legislative Council, which are completely unknown and not costed because this House was not even provided the courtesy of being consulted.

Why were we not consulted? 'We' being the Legislative Council; you, Mr President; the Presiding Officer, the Clerks -

Mrs Hiscutt - Through you, Mr President, a member in this House did respond to the consultation period.

Ms FORREST - However, they were not consulted.

Mrs Hiscutt - However, there were weeks of consultation available. There were four weeks, I believe.

Ms FORREST - You can defend it in your summing up.

Mrs Hiscutt - Okay.

Ms FORREST - I ask the question again, Mr President: why were we not directly consulted instead of being presented with a virtual fait accompli in the form of this bill?

We know that the Legislative Council Clerks and the Presiding Officer were not consulted, and the impact on shared services has not been factored in. We asked at the briefing and that was confirmed in the briefing today. How disrespectful.

That is why when I go back to the book I read, by Val Barrett, that talks about the important management of parliament, that can only occur if all parts work together.

As we have had no consultation with a significant and key stakeholder, I ask the Leader, how are Legislative Council members served by this change? How will this assist the Legislative Council members in undertaking our roles in engagement with the community and those we represent, with a single staff member to manage an electorate office?

All other parliaments have a greater allocation for their members and backbenchers, and Legislative Council members. As Independent members, we need to research every bill and be equipped to scrutinise all areas of government. I do not think government members and even their Opposition MPs in the House of Assembly actually fully understand this workload.

In my time, I have seen a reduction in the reporting from the Auditor-General about government departments and businesses at a time when parliament should be receiving more. This is not a criticism of the Auditor-General. He does a great job with the resources he has at his disposal, and I understand it is a very tight jobs market there at the moment, and it is difficult to recruit in all these areas. I think all audit offices are finding it difficult.

We rely on the Audit Office and the work the Auditor-General does. We, as a parliament, I believe, and I have spoken about this - not so much recently, but a number of years ago, and bashed my head against a wall long enough to stop talking about it for a while. We need a parliamentary budget office to help us.

None of us in this House have a finance background. Other parliaments have them, an independent budgetary office. There has been no discussion with us, half of the parliament, in this process. It might not be half in numbers and members but it is half of the parliament. There has been no consideration of flow on of cost to the committee systems that sit behind much of the work that we do, nor the need for additional resources for MPs in this House. We have a vital role in scrutiny and holding the government of the day to account.

I know that there are members in the other place who might prefer we were not here. There has been moves and discussions from time to time about getting rid of us. They want to have a discussion, let us have a discussion.

The reality is that the committee system is vitally important and we are seeing much more of it, and it needs to be adequately resourced.

So, how does the parliament - which includes the Legislative Council - meaningfully and effectively engage with the people we represent? Increasing the number of the members in the House of Assembly does provide a greater pool to draw from, to fill the ministry, increasing to 11 from nine members. However, this does not, in itself, ensure in any way, that the people who are elected in either House add to the needed capacity, necessarily, other than the number of members to work for the Government, which is what the bill is predominantly about. Nor the parliament as a whole.

I could - and I do it at my peril - talk about the salaries of MPs in this place. The lowest paid MPs in the nation and we have a similar workload to every other MP. I am not asking for a pay rise. I feel we are adequately remunerated, but I have had many people, including people in my electorate say to me, 'Why would anyone do it for that amount of money?'. Why would you put up with the public scrutiny, be on call 24 hours basically? The public scrutiny you get, the criticisms of yourself, the way you look, the way you dress, and some experience that more than others. All of that. Why would you do it? How are we going to attract people from the legal profession, the finance sector and accounting professions, and others, the corporate world, if you like? They would have to take a significant pay cut to do a job that has very little thanks at times.

We need to look at this as a whole and try to understand what the problem actually is, that we are trying to fix here.

I suspect the events that persuaded the Government to proceed with the increase in the House of Assembly numbers have been predominantly around resignations of members, like Will Hodgman, Peter Gutwein, Sarah Courtney, and others. They are all intelligent, capable people, the sort of people we actually need in public life. But has there been any suggestion that their tenures would have been longer if there had been a couple more party members on the backbench at the time? I do not think so, I have not heard that as an argument.

Will spreading the ministerial workload across eleven instead of nine make all that much difference? I do not hear much discussion about reducing the number of ministries. At least think about that. Do we really need the number of ministries we currently have? Not minsters, ministries. We have had a minister who did not even have a budget item line to consider when we were scrutinising in budget time, not even a line item in the budget. There have been occasions where one line item has been shared between two ministers.

Mr Valentine - Frustrating.

Ms FORREST - Yes, I know, and then there is the ongoing folly of one department having multiple ministers. Every year, we get the budget papers and I need to check to see how many ministers fall into the Department of State Growth. This year it was nine. There are nine ministers, that is all of them currently, in one department. The departmental head has nine ministers to look after.

Mr Willie - He would be able to find someone he likes working with.

Ms FORREST - You would hope so, but why are we not talking about that? Some ministers doubled on ministries,

Ms Rattray - The Department of Communities had four ministers, I believe.

Ms FORREST - Yes, well not anymore. Anyway, some ministers have doubled up on ministries. Some have even had to deal with seven different ministers. So, there were nine ministers, but two of them were the same person. Can someone explain to me why this is the best way to organise government departments? We are having another change again now, so it is just a revolving door of changes.

Is the way departments are structured a contributing factor to the number of ministries and, as a consequence, the workload of ministers? Should we not be tackling that problem? Surely that is a problem that needs to be addressed.

Once you get to a certain age, there is a tendency to hanker after the past. I am not sure if I am at that stage yet, but we must be getting on the way to that stage where you look to the past. We got a bit of a history lesson yesterday. There is an element of that in the return to a 35-seat House downstairs, 'Oh, for the return to the good old days'.

However, hankering after the past often glosses over the reality of the time and ignores all of the things that have happened since. Yes, our population has grown and the world has changed and this response is in no way a panacea to the challenges these changes present. It implicitly assumes that all these happenings will not affect the revival of the good old days.

Since the good old days, we have seen an alarming increase in the number of ministerial advisers. We have seen a downgrading of the public service and a rise in consultants. We have seen an increase in the debilitating effects of increased partisanship. We have seen an increase in political interference in our public institutions. Let us not cherrypick: if we go back to the good old days with 35 members downstairs, let us go back to the days where they were fewer party hacks imposed between the ministers and the public service. Let us rebuild the expertise inside the public service instead of outsourcing to consultants at a greater cost.

Let us acknowledge that almost all our issues entailing the delivery of services to Tasmania are best delivered by a non-partisan body politic. The concept that politics at the state level is best conducted as a contest of ideas is just plain nonsense. Let us tone down the partisanship. That is what I fear will be one of the adverse side effects of a few more members downstairs. More members to sit on the backbench committees or more members to waste time in hijacking the process with Dorothy Dixers? If they are government members or partisan gibes from Opposition members, will we actually be better off without addressing the other glaring problems that I have alluded to earlier. I suspect not.

We need a much broader approach to reform of practices within and of parliament and its operations. A review and improvements operations are needed to ensure parliament can adequately support all members, not only the Government members to do their jobs. Everyone agrees, the body politic is exhibiting serious ongoing problems. We have review after review, not only in this parliament, but every parliament that has had a review, same sad story.

All this bill proposes is to address the body politic in a brand new suit and pretend it will be all okay. It will not. It is a worrying sign we are prepared to accept a quick fix when far more is required. Whilst I will not oppose this bill, it is not the panacea or the solution to the problems we have. We need a much broader look at the operations and management of parliament, the actual recognition of the parliament as separate from the executive. It is a completely separate beast from the executive and we must recognise and address that and we must fix up the work place, both in the executive and in the parliament, who are identified by the Bolt Report, because if we do not do that, why would you invite more people in to be harmed?

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