Page 3234 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 18 October 2006
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Treasury went on to say:
This very point is often made by officers of this department in discussions with other agencies.
In 2004, in response to a question from my predecessor, Kerrie Tucker, asking if ACTEW and the government would do a cost-benefit analysis of possible water supply options, Mr Stanhope replied:
That is very much the approach we have adopted in relation to the development of the water strategy and it is certainly the approach we will adopt in relation to the work that we are doing as a matter of prudence in identifying possible future sources of supply. The water strategy itself is based entirely on the need for us to assess all of those costs in a truly sustainable way and, of course we are looking at all those issues.
In March last year he supported a cost-benefit analysis of catchment management.
The list goes on, including former Treasurer, Mr Quinlan, and many others who, from their opposition days, have sung the praises of comprehensive cost-benefit analyses. More recently in this place, in May this year, the Chief Minister said:
A budget is being developed and will be delivered on 6 June. The cabinet is giving detailed and the most rigorous assessment of each of the government’s priorities. In that context it is relying on detailed briefings and advice from across our public service, as one does, on a range of expenditure initiatives and other initiatives that have been developed.
On each significant work a cost-benefit analysis, case studies and business cases have been developed on a range of new policy initiatives and proposals on efficiencies and how to ensure that we have the capacity to meet the challenges which the community faces in meeting the growing expectations of the community, the growing need and gaps in need that will develop, particularly in relation to ageing and health, and the need for us to concentrate on necessary infrastructure and planning for the future of the territory.
It seems to me that we should be able to expect that everything in that budget has been subjected to a rigorous cost-benefit analysis. But it would seem that the most dramatic of this budget’s policy initiatives has not been analysed in this way.
In this context, I would like to come back to the ACT government’s risk management framework. According to the Chief Minister’s policy statement, this government’s whole-of-government approach to risk management “demonstrates that risk has been assessed as managed in accordance with stakeholder expectations”. Stakeholders in our government school system have seen no evidence that the education department is being required to follow that government policy. The ACT government is clearly still committed to implementing an ill-considered reorganisation of government schools across the ACT. Its response to expert and community criticisms of its proposal is to damn them. It should never be acceptable to conduct far-reaching change without a proper, careful and public analysis of the risks and costs associated with the exercise.
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