State Government late to pay $603 million worth of bills, but no compensation offered

SOUTH Australian businesses received no compensation despite the State Government failing to pay bills totalling $603 million on time in the past year.

• Public servants have been told to meet less, work harder
• Govt paid just $39 penalty for $500m late payments to SA businesses

SOUTH Australian businesses received no compensation despite the State Government failing to pay bills totalling $603 million on time in the past year.

Just over $118 million of those invoices were paid more than 30 days after their due date, the point at which they become subject to interest payments.

The biggest late fee offender was the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure, which accounted for $100 million worth of late payments.

The interest has to be manually applied for by companies, but Business SA chief executive Nigel McBride said a fear of Government payback and the complexity of the interest formula discouraged businesses from making claims.

The absence of successful compensation applications comes after the Government paid $39 to two businesses in 2015-16.

Opposition Leader Steven Marshall said the Government had a “hypocritical double standard” by not automatically compensating businesses.

“This Government is happy to slug South Australians with late fees if they’re one day late paying their Emergency Service Levy bills, speeding fines or any other government bill but they won’t do the same,” Mr Marshall said.

Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis said the Government’s record had improved considerably, paying 95.6 per cent of its bills on time in 2016-17, an improvement of 0.9 per cent. The Government paid $707 million of bills after their due date in 2015-16.

“Only 0.9 per cent of the more than 2.5 million invoices paid by the Government were paid more than 60 days after the issuing of the invoice,” he said.

He rejected the Liberals’ policy to automatically pay interest on late payments, saying it would be “irresponsible, lead to errors and waste taxpayer money”.

“Interest payments must be dealt with on a case-by-case basis for a range of reasons, including inaccuracies in invoices and faults with the good delivered,” he said.

Mr McBride said the late fees were $600 million that could not be used by small businesses to pay rent, wages and power bills.

“When you’re a small business, cash flow is king. You can’t tell your employees that their pay is in the mail and might take a couple of weeks to get to them,” he said.

The Advertiser reported on Saturday that the state’s 100,000 public servants had been told to lift their game, with a directive order­ing the elimination of “unnecessary” and “inefficient” meetings and a demand to respond to letters from the public within a month.