Page 2489 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 22 August 2006
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I asked for and received briefings from the government both on triple bottom line accounting and on poverty proofing. I thank them for that assistance. The problem with the ACT government’s current approach to triple bottom line budgeting is, as I understand it, that it is left up to the CEOs. The process is nullified if those same CEOs are given a list of recommendations that have to be met and are in no position to explore the implications of them or to plan alternative responses with others outside their own department.
Similarly, poverty proofing is an ineffectual exercise if it is applied after the event. For instance, I understand that the homelessness strategy was chosen as a pilot project for poverty-proofing analysis, to be managed by the Community Inclusion Board. In this case, there has been a slashing of SAAP and community housing funding, and a massive efficiency dividend is to be extracted from ACT Housing. Not only will the poverty-proofing analysis come too late, it will tell us without a doubt that things will be made worse, despite the strategy.
Furthermore, the Community Inclusion Board itself and its programs will terminate after next year. It is little wonder that the community sector, which has worked in partnership with this government for many years, is becoming increasingly embittered, disheartened and increasingly doubtful of this government’s stated commitment to social justice.
When the estimates committee came to its last recommendation, to consider whether the budget be passed, I moved unsuccessfully that the Assembly not pass the budget if the functional review is not released. That is because this budget largely reflects the recommendations of a review that has been kept secret. I do not believe the ACT community has been given enough information in the budget documents to have confidence in the decisions. This will become more obvious in later discussion of particular programs. The lack of any real insight into the reviews process is a weakness. While we are told that the review was largely based on a benchmarking exercise, the details of that exercise are being kept hidden. We do not really know what is being compared to what, nor do we know whether there has been any assessment of the long-term impact of any proposed changes.
The cost of public servants is one obvious example. New ACT government employees will only get nine per cent super, while commonwealth public servants will continue to receive 15 per cent. Over time we will lose even more of our best ACT bureaucrats to the commonwealth than we do at present. Where is the cost-benefit analysis of that decision? What risk management strategies are being put in place to address the unfair competition the ACT government will face? Was a less discriminatory approach to changing the level of superannuation considered? These are all obvious questions that this government either cannot answer or prefers to keep hidden.
There were no community or environmental experts on the functional review committee. This means that effectively the commitment to triple bottom line accounting has been abandoned and the government has treated community organisations with contempt, badly damaging in the process any trust those organisations had in a Labor government. Clearly this government is very afraid of something that is said in the review; otherwise it would have put all the information on the table and worked with the people who will be affected, to make the best decisions possible.
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