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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 1 Hansard (16 February) . . Page.. 174 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

"reflects the complexity of appeals cases at hand". It went from five, target, to 14, achieved, but it was a reduced number, according to this report. One would have hoped that Mr Humphries' bean counters could discern that this was in fact a greatly increased number, at least prima facie, unless there is something there that I do not understand. Finally, compliance revenue per inspector is reported as 149 per cent over target, because of "a large one-off compliance inspection". We might reasonably ask: What one-off compliance inspection? But that is not my question either. It is pretty obvious that the report is incomprehensible. I am getting to my question. What I am pointing out to the Treasurer is that his report is meaningless. So I ask my question. Will you, Minister, undertake to instruct your department to provide in future full, frank and informative information in these reports that is of some use to us, rather than the rubbish that is in this report? Secondly, do you not agree that in its present form each page of this so-called quarterly performance report might perform a more useful purpose if it were carefully torn into four pieces and stuck on a nail in a more appropriate place?

MR HUMPHRIES: Could I ask Mr Kaine to repeat the question, please, Mr Speaker?

MR SPEAKER: It was a long preamble, but go on.

Mr Kaine: I will repeat the question if you like.

MR HUMPHRIES: No, thank you. We do not want that. Without seeing the detail of what Mr Kaine is concerned about, it is hard to answer the question.

Mr Stanhope: There is no detail. That is the point.

MR HUMPHRIES: These reports are not detailed annual reports. These quarterly reports do not describe what the department was doing in a given period of time. They are measures of output as determined against predetermined indicators. We will set up in advance as a test the number of appeals processed by the department, for example, and there will be a target and there will be a percentage performance against that target. We can have plenty of debate about how well indicators describe the objective we are trying to achieve of measuring the performance and effectiveness of our particular agencies. We have had plenty of debate within the Government about that sort of thing, and I have no doubt that members will have views about that matter.

I think the best thing for me to do is pick up the issues Mr Kaine has raised in his long question and examine them and see whether they indicate a need to change the way we produce our reports. If Mr Kaine has some views about how we should do them, that is fine. When Mr Kaine was Treasurer there we no such reports, so it is hard to compare what was done in the past with what is done at the moment.

Mr Kaine: If you make no mistakes, you attract no criticism, Minister.

MR HUMPHRIES: That is true. Reports of this kind are an exercise in trying to quantify what it is that we do and in trying to indicate whether we are doing it as well as we hoped. I will take Mr Kaine's question on notice and examine the issues he has raised.

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