Ms O'CONNOR (Clark - Leader of the Greens) - Madam Deputy Speaker, I am not going to speak for very long on this bill. It is a matter of record that we supported the original Public Sector Superannuation Reform Bill and had a number of conversations with people working in the superannuation and finance sector before coming to the conclusion that it was an improvement on the legislative arrangement that had been in place before. It certainly brought more resilience and kept superannuation accounts safer by moving away from the old RBF super and into a more streamlined Tasplan superannuation regime.
I want to briefly touch on something Mrs Rylah said: consultation is not a hallmark of this Government.
Mrs Rylah - Yes, it is.
Ms O'CONNOR - Well, the people of Westbury would disagree with you very strongly because they were not consulted when your Government decided to plonk a prison in their backyard. The people of Tasmania such as fly fishers, bushwalkers and other conservationists and people who love the wilderness were not consulted about any expressions of interest development proposals which have come before government. There has been no consultation. In fact the only consultation that was really part of the EOI process was the consultation that led to the rewriting of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area Management Plan, which specifically enabled expressions of interest developments and the more than 7000 submissions opposing changes to the TWWHA plan were ignored.
There is nothing that this Government does in relation to consultation that is meaningful, integrated and in any way other than politically convenient. You can consult on the easy stuff like this legislation -
Mrs Rylah - Like Westbury prison, unlike the EOI at Lake Malbena.
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER - Order, the member has made her contribution.
Ms O'CONNOR - Yes, after the fact, or you can use consultation as a delaying tactic, as the Liberals in government have in relation to electoral reform.
All of this stuff about we have to consult, we have to consult; 18 months after an election which was bought by the gambling industry, there is no clarity that we will have anything like robust electoral laws in Tasmania at the next state election. You are consulting into the never-never, and, in fact, there was an almost three or four-month further delay to the development of any reforms to Tasmania's electoral regime because of an obscure High Court decision.
I am in pain today, but I am more pained by having to listen to this sort of rubbish that we got from you just then, Mrs Rylah, when you claimed that consultation is at the core of what your Government does. It is completely untrue.
I have been back to the original act that we passed and recognise that these really are inevitable consequential amendments. Once you put a major piece of structural legislative reform in, there is always a need to tidy up the act once you have seen how it has taken effect and has been implemented. We have no concerns with any of the amendments that we are dealing with today, no concerns at all. We regard this as a mechanical tidy up bill following on from a substantial, and I would say, positive reform, for public servants in Tasmania.