Ms BADGER – More than happy to take this one on notice, if necessary. Minister, can you please outline for the committee how many FTE positions last financial year and this financial year to date, have been subject to recruitment freezes, targeted negotiated voluntary redundancies or any form of redundancies; and any other vacancy management or workforce renewal initiative resulting in positions being eliminated or unfilled?
Mr DUIGAN – Thank you, I will hand that to my secretary, who I’m sure would have that information to hand.
Mr JACOBI – Can I just clarify, Ms Badger, are you talking about the whole department, or just the customer service?
Ms BADGER – Just Parks, please.
Mr JACOBI – Okay, if you could just bear with me. If you could just help me try and find the specifics around Parks.
I will just talk about the recruitment freeze and how we’ve dealt with that. As I mentioned before, we’re taking a very measured approach to ensure that all of our essential public service functions can be delivered, noting the fact that we do have a budget savings plan and we do have a target that we’re trying to meet, and we have met in the last financial year. We have the Establishment Management Review Committee stood up and it considers each and every decision. I’m certainly not aware of any position in the Parks and Wildlife Service that has come to that committee, that we have determined to not continue. In fact, I’m pretty confident that every position that has come, we have determined to fill to ensure that we’ve maintained our full complement of positions.
There have been positions, though, that have come to the committee that have warranted some questions about is the purpose and intent of that position the same now as it was three years ago? Is this an opportunity to reclassify the position or to change the role description, so that it better meets the needs of the workforce of the team, and we certainly have taken the opportunity to do that.
I can recall, several months ago, there was some concerns about host ranger positions, I think on the Three Capes Track, and that they hadn’t been filled or they were reported to not have been filled. It actually wasn’t the case; that was a point-in-time piece of advice. Those positions that had come to the committee; we’d ask some questions about the nature of the positions and how they could be filled because there were other people – it was an opportunity to put other people who are running out of work into those roles, that were perfectly skilled and capable of doing it. Moving our workforce around to keep people employed is a really important part of the decision-making that goes on in this space and those positions were further recruited.
I can also clarify there’s been no redundancies and there have been no workforce renewal ‑ WRIPs (Workplace Renewal Incentive Program).
Ms BADGER – Fantastic, thank you. On the work that’s been done – or possibly being done – at Mt Field and also the work to be done at Hastings Caves, is it Parks’s intention after that work is completed to seek a private operator to run those operations? For example, the huts ‑ public, or as you’ve suggested possibly a new form of accommodation at Mt Field, also the Hastings Caves booking system there, if that’s going to be through a private operator, outside of the regular EOI process?
Mr JACOBI – In the case of Mount Field, the government huts has been an incredibly successful public product. It’s much loved, it’s in a great location, it’s consistent with the management plan. Clearly, we would like to see the investment in Mount Field result in a significant improvement to the government huts. There is an opportunity to upgrade them, to make them better, to make them last longer. I don’t know if this has been resolved yet, but there might be an opportunity to build some additional accommodation, because the accommodation is fairly limited at government huts. It might be just small – another cabin, or a couple of cabins. I don’t know if we’ve resolved that yet. I think the intention is for it to stay as a government-run, public-owned and -managed product. I don’t believe there’s any intention to commercialise that, because people are pretty passionate about Mount Field and they have expressed that clearly in the past.
In terms of Hastings Caves: the expressions of interest for opportunities at Hastings Caves is still being progressed, and we intend to progress that because there has been some interest in the past the Hastings Caves pool. I think it’s important, though, that particularly the cave product continues to be run and operated by the public service, because the caves are in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, they are important to our brand as a Parks service, and we play a really critical role – a range of staff, and the guides at Hastings Caves ‑ play a really important role in educating the public about the values of the karst systems – not just in Hastings Caves, but across the whole of the TWWHA.
I think it would be fair to say the expressions of interest process for Hastings Caves will probably draw up a number of different ideas. It might be the pool, but it might be something completely different, because there has been talk and ideas in the past about wellness opportunities in that area, and it might be that an operator decides, ‘Look, I just want to do a wellness‑type thing.’ We don’t know the outcome of that yet, but I think the intention is to go out with that in the coming year.
Ms BADGER – In the coming year, that will be?
Mr JACOBI – I believe the intention is we’re trying to get the expressions of interest process out for early next year.
