Mr BAYLEY (Clark) – Deputy Speaker, I rise tonight to talk about the Government Business Sale Reforms Act 2025. I do so with pleasure because this is a welcome bill and I will flag up front that we Greens will be supporting it. The broad point here is that it is welcome and it should never have gotten to this point in the first place.
Our GBEs, or at least most of our GBEs, are critical to many people in Tasmania, whether it’s because they provide employment or services or products, they are critically important to many Tasmanians. Of course there are some we are dubious about in terms of the decisions they are making, some of our energy companies at the moment – TasNetworks and Hydro – are sending us over a cliff with their absolute infatuation with Marinus and the lack of transparency when it comes to the amount of information and data they’re putting on the public record about the inputs that they’re putting into their models. Others, like Tasracing and Forestry Tasmania, we don’t support all and we absolutely want see them shut down or changed radically, but the overwhelming majority provide really good services to Tasmanians and we should not be selling them. We should not be selling them to fund budget black holes. The reality is our budget is in a pretty dire situation, and we’ve had expert after expert, whether it be in Treasury or whether it be Saul Eslake or others, identify that we need to make some really significant and hard decisions. We need to be changing policy. Saul Eslake is clear that our budget black hole is largely due to government policy, be that pork-barrelling decisions in election campaigns, or bad investments when it comes to infrastructure. Of course, I can’t let this debate go by without flagging one of the biggest and one of the worst investments in infrastructure that we have got on the table at the moment, which is the Macquarie Point Stadium. The fact that to pay for a stadium, almost $2 billion worth of debt over 10 years, where the government has been trying to scrape together the dollars. One of the things that they put on the table a year ago, or earlier this year at least, was the sale of government businesses, and that’s a really disappointing situation.
Not only sales have been put on the table, but the government floated the notion of merging some of the government businesses, which has now been pulled off the table. We acknowledge that this bill responds to community concerns, we acknowledge that this bill responds to indeed concerns that have been raised in this House, and we stand in solidarity with many workers and, in fact, union representatives who have collectively pushed back on the government’s agenda to privatise these government businesses.
We know from evidence that when you privatise government businesses, the services they deliver become more expensive, they become of a lesser quality and, in many cases, the security for workers becomes less and less. I read from Unions Tasmania’s letter to us as members of parliament, 2 July 2025, in the election context, Marta Lenton writes:
Time and time again, privatisation has led to higher costs, longer wait-times and reduced services, especially in regional areas.
Of course, they also made a submission to the GBE process saying privatisation does not work. The community knows that privatisation is a failed ideology and a failed policy. Australia’s history is littered with examples of failed privatisations at the state and the federal level.
We know that this policy was a desperate attempt to flag a solution to a budget black hole that is getting deeper and darker with every single investment. We watch and wait with some level of trepidation for the November mini-budget to see what’s in that. Then, of course, May next year will be even more telling.
I come back to some of these massive infrastructure decisions that this government is making, be it Marinus Link, be it the North-West Transmission Developments, be it the Macquarie Point Stadium. These are investments that are made with very little, very rubbery analysis, and we have very little trust in them. Next week’s assessment from the Tasmanian Planning Commission will be really telling when it comes to the stadium.
The government in its comments regarding privatisation didn’t just flag the sale of government businesses or and state-owned companies. Somehow the Land Titles Office was put on the table at some point in this debate, as has public land. We make the point here and I ask the Treasurer to address this in summing up is, what is the policy when it comes to the Land Titles Office? Is it still on the table for some kind of carving out of the department that it sits in? Because it isn’t a government business and yet it has been explicitly named up by the Premier as an entity that could be sold, and, of course, public land.
We have a lot of publicly owned land here in the state, many of them reserves. Some of them are unallocated Crown land. It would be good for the government to be utterly clear that it’s not going to, in exchange for this bill, in exchange for taking our GBEs off the table, go down a pathway of privatising and selling off tracts of public land. Now, I don’t mean the little snippets of land here and there that are quite often rationalised. I mean sales of land to that generate significant amounts of income that could help with the budget. That’s something I ask the minister to address in summing up because they’re public assets that belong to the Tasmanian people and they’re not the government’s. They, too, should remain in public hands. If the government is going to move to sell them, they should be moving to have this kind of check and balances, a parliamentary check and balances on that as well.
We’ve seen the government happily lease public land to tourism companies for absolute peppercorn. Giving away World Heritage-listed islands in the middle of Lake Malbena for absolutely next to nothing. It is a shameful saga. Despite the fact that the company’s bankrupted, despite the fact that the company is not delivering on its commitments, despite the fact that the company’s breached the terms of its lease. It seems to continue to get those leases renewed. We know this government has a propensity to sell or at least cash in on public land. We’d like to see that ruled out.
I have a really specific question for the Treasurer in relation to the mechanics of the bill. I acknowledge the staff in the Chamber and I thank you for your briefing the other day. I asked this question, but it’s coming back to me again now. I want some clarification on the record as part of the second reading speech. The establishment of a two-thirds majority to sell a GBE is really clear. Each of the parts of this act do through that process:
(a) at least two-thirds of the members of the House pass a motion approving the sale
We can understand that.
(b) at the end of 5 sitting days after notice of the sale was laid before the House, no notice of a motion to disapprove the sale is before the House
I can understand that. It’s a disallowable instrument, so if no one moves to disallow it then it’s taken as passed.
However, the last one:
(c) if notice of a motion to disapprove the sale is before the House at the end of the period referred to in paragraph (b), when the first of the following occurs:
(i) the notice is withdrawn;
(ii) the motion is negatived;
(iii) a further period of 5 sitting-days ends.
Mr Abetz – Excuse me, Vica, what clause?
Mr BAYLEY – This is on page 8, for example, but it’s a consistent clause through the whole bill, Treasurer. It’s about negativing a disallowable motion. A disallowable motion is tabled in this parliament and under normal circumstances that would either pass or not by a simple majority. This clause is ambiguous as to how that motion is negatived or passed, indeed. To be negatived, I would assume it would need a two-thirds majority of this House, but it’s actually not clear. If you could seek some advice and see whether, for example, 1(b) or (c) talks to 1(a), and that 1(a) establishes the two‑thirds majority needed to sell something, and therefore that translates to the disallowable instrument, that would be greatly appreciated. At best it’s ambiguous. I think the intent is clear that a disallowable instrument should be treated in the same way as a positive motion to sell. I think in this instance it’s ambiguous. Could we have some clarity on that?
With that, I don’t think I need to speak anymore. This was a policy that was tabled to cash in on government businesses to try to plug the hole that’s coming – or that’s here and is getting bigger. It’s welcome that we’re together with unions, workers, people in this Chamber, and that the government has rethought its approach and is now putting this check and balance on the table and making sure that there is this parliament has got proper oversight when it comes to the sale of government businesses. Really, it shouldn’t have come to this point in the first place, because our government businesses are important and we know that they deliver better services when they are in public hands.
