The State Opposition would abolish the Economic Development Board, South Australia’s highest-level independent advisory panel, if it formed Government.
Liberal leader Steven Marshall, who will outline the measure and urge the Weatherill to adopt it in his budget reply speech today, told InDaily: “Either they’re not providing advice or the Government’s not listening to the advice.”
“Either way we find ourselves in a state where our economy is a real problem,” he said.
“We’ve got the highest unemployment rate in the nation, and no impetus to change.”
The state’s Essential Services Commission would also be wound up in its current form and subsumed by a new state-based Productivity Commission, which Marshall first announced in his corresponding budget replay speech two years ago and took to last year’s election as a major policy commitment.
“We need wholesale deregulation in SA,” he said.
“The key issue the Government always talks about is the need to remove red tape, but we have a highly regulated environment, which is not conducive to creating jobs.
“We’re proposing the Government disband the EDB and establish the first state-based Productivity Commission, a group which is going to be focussed full-time on improving our productive capacity and which is going to do the important work of deregulation, not just an endless stream of press releases about trimming red tape.”
He argued ESCOSA currently had a “diminished capacity of work”, noting that “some of the work (it) was essentially set up to do has already moved to the Australian Energy Regulator”.
The Economic Development Board was established by Mike Rann in 2002, with chair Robert Champion de Crespigny and board member Monsignor David Cappo also appointed to his executive committee of cabinet. The pair was seen at the time as wielding more public policy influence than many of Labor’s elected cabinet ministers.
The board is currently chaired by Raymond Spencer, with former BankSA managing director and current Adelaide Crows chairman Rob Chapman tipped to succeed him.
“We’ve got no problem with the individuals on the board, they’re all outstanding individuals in their own right,” insisted Marshall, noting he saw “some of them being potentially involved” with the proposed Productivity Commission.
“Individually they’re all highly successful South Australians with great achievements, but economically the EDB hasn’t driven an agenda that has driven economic prosperity for SA.
“It may well be the Government hasn’t listened to their plans.”
He insisted it wasn’t merely a matter of replacing one body with a similar one.
“Well, a Productivity Commission isn’t an advisory panel, it’s an independent statutory authority with full-time employees who drive the productive improvement agenda for the state,” he said.
“We’ve had this very successfully at a national level.”
His speech will focus on measures for red tape reduction, along with tax relief and infrastructure spending, instead of the traditional “line-by-line” attack on the Government’s budget.
It suggests a shift away from the “small-target” strategy that was widely seen to backfire on the Liberals at the last election.
“I think that’s what’s required now,” agreed Marshall.
“We’re not a destructive opposition, we’re a constructive opposition… Everyone’s sick of the blame game; we need a plan, a bipartisan plan, to move this state forward.
“We’re calling it an ‘emergency response’, quite frankly… We do have the highest unemployment rate in the nation. Now is the time for real action to address the aspects of our economy that make us uncompetitive.”
