Government Business Governance Reforms Bill 2025 (No. 36)

Wednesday 24 September 2025

[4.38 p.m.]

Ms ARMITAGE (Launceston) - Mr President, I thank the Leader for the briefings this morning. They were very informative. It is correct that I have often had a great interest in the board and the compilation.

I have a reasonably short speech, given the comprehensive undertaking by the member for Murchison, which was really good and which I really appreciate, and by other members as well.

I thank the Leader for bringing this forward. It's an interesting and important bill. There's quite a lot of content on which one could comment. Many Tasmanians rightly believe some of our government businesses aren't performing the way they should be, that they might not appear to be as accountable, responsible and transparent as they should be, and find that there's usually quite a lot of back and forth about who's to blame and where the buck stops when something goes wrong.

Some of this has been born out very publicly, and, frankly, in rather embarrassingly informal settings. I have family in Western Australia, and they have mentioned some of the recent things that have been happening with our GBEs. I didn't really think young people would care about that. They don't say too much about the stadium or the football, but they've mentioned, 'Gosh, there's that ship over there we can see just coming to Fremantle', which is pretty sad.

Unfortunately, we've had a few things go wrong in the past few years. Being taxpayer‑funded, the community is correct in believing that the government's governance processes of these organisations should be robust, and that when things do go wrong, we could quickly identify what went wrong, when it went wrong and hold the proper person or people responsible and accountable.

Amongst other things, the Leader stated the governance reforms in this bill being guided by principles such as placing the interests of Tasmania first, improving governance to ensure that it's effective, contemporary, fit for purpose, transparent and has appropriate oversight, expanding performance monitoring options available to shareholding ministers and incorporating levers to manage and rectify poor performance of government businesses.

These are things that I feel should have already and always been in place for our government businesses. It is disappointing to see that these changes have only come about as a result of significant and expensive failings in some of our government businesses and their projects.

This bill coming before us now implies to me that these principles weren't there already, or, if they were, had no formal or practical application to government businesses, their boards or their executives. It indicates that there was no proactive approach to management of government businesses. It is also really prudent to remember that when things do go wrong, the buck entirely stops with the shareholding minister and, if necessary, the government of the day.

I understand this bill is about allocating risks and responsibilities between the government, shareholding ministers and government business boards, but a lot of this has come far too late.

Costly, significant and, frankly, embarrassing failures have already come out and it's only now occurring to the government that perhaps there should be some formal oversight and strategic planning put in place. In the interest of being fair and wanting to ensure these sorts of failures are never to be repeated, we now can point to something that we've done in response to them.

Implementing a requirement that the two shareholding minister roles can't be undertaken by the same person, with an exception for the Public Finance Corporation, is a good step. There does need to be a degree of competition between ministers for resourcing and this can be lost if there's one minister who's the shareholder minister for more than one government business.

I note in the bill there's a limit of two full terms for directors and chairs of government businesses unless approved due to exceptional circumstances, with any additional terms approved beyond the limits needing a notice to be tabled in both Houses of parliament within 17 days and including the reasons for the extension. I would also like to know whether the terms are one year, three years or five years.

Ms Rattray - Three years.

Ms ARMITAGE - It's been indicated that there will be three-year terms, thank you.

The Leader said the bill does not prevent the chair being appointed for another term. It would just require an additional layer of transparency when this occurs. What sort of scrutiny could therefore be applied to these sorts of extensions and decisions? If this does occur in the future, is it then a matter of questioning the shareholder ministers about them? I am just conscious that transparency here doesn't necessarily equate to scrutiny. I don't know if there are any avenues to challenge such decision-making.

While there are GBEs and state-owned companies that operate quite well, I certainly don't want to make it sound that every GBE -

Ms Rattray - You don't want to put them all in the one basket.

Ms ARMITAGE - No, I don't. I don't want to say that every GBE or state-owned company has problems, because there are some that operate very well.

I understand the selection of boards and board members is also being reformed by this bill. The Leader said board selection processes and guidelines will also be updated to ensure there is more focus on appointing directors who understand the business needs in a Tasmanian context. Could the Leader expand on what this actually means and how it will be applied in practice? How will a person's ability to understand the business needs in a Tasmanian context actually be assessed and by whom?

The Leader also went on to say that the government has sought independent expert advice on best-practice board evaluation, including the evaluation approach, what should be covered in an evaluation, the frequency of evaluations and benchmarks for assessing and comparing board performance. Again, can additional details on who will be carrying out these performances be provided? At what point is this sort of advice binding? If a board or board member is assessed as being underperforming, what are the next steps? Are they automatically removed? Is there recourse for them to be reassessed? Can a shareholding minister simply ignore the assessments? Will the results of these assessments be made public?

As I'm sure many of you are aware, I have for a very long time been monitoring the number of Tasmanian-based board members. I have consistently been collecting and retaining data on the number of board members and where they're based. Many members of Tasmania's boards, beyond just those of our GBEs and state-owned companies, are based interstate. This is why I focused on understanding the business needs in the Tasmanian context earlier. The bill seems to stop short of actually ensuring there are formal measures or benchmarks to ensure that a minimum number of regionally based, or even Tasmania-based, board members are appointed to our government businesses.

Only back in November 2024, the Premier issued a media release pertaining to the proposed merger of TasPorts, TT-Line and TasRail that also stated the proposed merger was one part of a wider plan to fix government businesses with governance reforms, including a minimum of 50 per cent of board members being Tasmanian.

I would be really grateful if the Leader could let me know if this is still the plan and I don't mean the proposed merger. Will efforts also be made to ensure we have regional representation on Tasmanian boards? It would be necessary, for example, to have a board member based in the north-west of the state to sit on the TasPorts board. As of June 2024, of the five board members of TasPorts, one was based in the south, one was based in the north and three were from interstate. None was based in the north-west.

Ms Forrest - Not because there are not good people up there, let me assure you of that.

Ms ARMITAGE - I absolutely agree with you, member for Murchison.

Ms Forrest - Capable, competent.

Ms ARMITAGE - I may even add that in my speech. I believe it's written in there somewhere. Anyway, I believe this is symptomatic of the problem. Our boards have been outsourced to such a large degree and have been governed by people who might not perhaps feel like they've got much of a stake in the businesses they're managing because they are not from here and consequently don't really have an understanding of the business needs in a Tasmanian context.

It's clear that quite a lot has gone wrong with some of our boards and some of the projects which have been undertaken and managed. The buck stops with ministers, and some of them have not been immune to the accountability and responsibility that's expected of them when things go wrong. For some of the significant failures that have occurred with some of our government businesses in the past few years, yes, this bill and the reforms it contains come far too late.

That being said, we need to make sure it doesn't happen again. We can't assume that these patterns won't repeat themselves. Giving shareholder ministers and the parliament and people to whom they're accountable greater oversight and scrutiny powers is therefore necessary and important.

While I accept there's sometimes a need for interstate representation on a board, I wonder if this bill goes far enough. I have already stated it's necessary to closely examine the possibility of having a minimum number of Tasmanian-based board members sitting not just on our GBE and state-owned company boards, but the boards of all public entities. We have so many talented, passionate and community-minded people who would do such a fantastic job but are overlooked in favour of people who don't even live here.