Page 2352 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 29 August 2007
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opposite will never get the chance to introduce their retrograde, ill-informed and poorly thought out proposals in this area.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (4.07): I want to speak to the Treasury line in the Appropriation Bill. I particularly want to address today issues related to triple bottom line reporting in the budget, an issue that was raised during the estimates process. I note that the government has responded to recommendation No 9 in the estimates report. The committee recommended that future budgets articulate the framework used to apply triple bottom line principles. The government has rejected that recommendation. Interestingly enough, it has noted recommendation No 3 that I made in my additional comments. It gives a very similar answer to both of them.
Obviously, I do not consider myself uninformed on this issue; I have been following it ever since I got into the Assembly. Sadly, it looks as though I know a little more about what the government is doing on this matter than the government does. I was told, through the response not only in the estimates committee but also to my recommendation, that I should go to the document that was issued with the 2004-05 budget, “Supplementary budget paper: framework for future budget—discussion paper”. I was told that the framework for the adoption of triple bottom line reporting is based on performance measures that are reported against in each budget. I was also told that Assembly members were consulted on this approach at the time. Indeed, Mr Quinlan made great play of the fact that none of the Assembly members actually responded except me.
I went to a lot of trouble to respond. I had an intern working for me who developed that response. Not only that but since then I have been to a couple of accounts committees, the Australasian Council of Public Accounts Committees, and tried to get triple bottom line and sustainability reporting on the agenda. It was rejected out of hand by four of the other states, including the commonwealth, led by Mrs Bronwyn Bishop, who, as you can understand, believes that the commonwealth is already on top of sustainability issues. She said that sustainability is not core ACPAC business.
I feel very frustrated by efforts in this territory to have triple bottom line reporting taken seriously. I was told to go back to the document that was produced in 2004-05 where it states that the government has already clearly outlined its approach to triple bottom line sustainability in the 2004-05 supplementary budget. In fact, on page 22 of the document it is stated:
A framework will also need to be developed that ensures appropriate degrees of verifiability, consistent with materiality of the measures and targets, as well as the nature of the particular measure.
The proposed structure is not definitive, and is provided as a reference for consultation and discussion. It is subject to change depending on the outcome of the consultation.
While the general structure is expected to be common to all agencies, the nature of performance measures, reporting format, time horizons etc. will be flexible, and adjusted according to the business and objectives of the specific agency.
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