Prorogation - what exactly does that mean?

LG Leader April 2020

Readers may recall that at the end of 2019, the Government prorogued Parliament. The last time Parliament was prorogued was mid-session in 2014, when Labor was in Government.

It was a move said to be aimed at a ‘renewed agenda’, with Leader of Government Business in the House, John Gardner, confirming on 19 December 2019 the Government ‘has a strong policy agenda to deliver on, and the proroguing process will provide a clean slate for us to introduce a bold legislative agenda to the parliament next year’.

It was also said that this would ‘provide the parliament with an opportunity to take a second look at a number of legislative measures that the parliament has previously rejected, despite overwhelming community support for these areas of reform’.

Proroguing Parliament had the effect of ‘scrapping’ any Bills that had not progressed beyond the second reading stage (in either House). Those Bills that had passed the second reading stage, must now either be restored to the Notice Paper (at the stage that they reached), otherwise, they will need to be re-introduced, in which case, it will be ‘back to square one’ for the proposed measures.

A whole host of contentious Bills have now been effectively sidelined, including Labor’s response to rate capping, the Local Government (Ratepayer Protection and Related Measures) Amendments Bill, as well as the proposed amendments to allow for public hearings under the Independent Commissioner Against Corruption Act 2012.

At the re-opening of Parliament on 5 February 2020, the Government had flagged the reintroduction of key election pledges, including fresh attempts at rate capping.

However, two months is a long time in politics, and as a result of the Governments response to the COVID-19 pandemic, ‘rate capping’ now appears to be very much ‘off the table’, while other measures, including ‘benchmarking’ for councils, (following the delivery of the SA Productivity Commission’s report into costs pressures and efficiencies in the local government sector), had also been mooted, it is unlikely that these initiatives will be considered over the next six months, while the local government sector mobilises to understand the budgetary impacts of the pandemic, and the financial assistance that residents and ratepayers, including businesses, may require.

While we had also been advised that the draft Bill for Local Government Reform was with Cabinet, and set to be introduced into Parliament without any further consultation, it likewise, appears increasingly unlikely that the Government will move too quickly on reform in the sector in the near future while these issues play out.