Page 2120 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 21 June 2011
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to meet current and projected demands as the city grows. These priorities and actions reflect the government’s commitment to achieving a safe community for all.
Our success in delivering these priority projects and initiatives for the people of Canberra will rely in no small measure on the capabilities and the capacity of the ACT public service. We are very fortunate to have highly skilled and dedicated public servants in our hospitals, our schools, in our parks and gardens and, of course, providing advice and support to ministers as we discharge our responsibilities.
In May I made new administrative arrangements that see our public service unified under a single head of service and organised into nine directorates. Later this week the Assembly will debate legislation that will reinforce this single ACT public service agency structure. I am confident that the new structures we have established will assist in delivering the levels of coordination and alignment of effort behind identified priorities that the government, and the people of Canberra, rightly expect.
But structural change is only the beginning. For the government to deliver its promises to the community, we need a public service that is committed to a genuinely citizen-centred design and delivery of services. We need a public service that is open to scrutiny, open to diversity of experience and opinion, and open to innovative and new ways of thinking.
We need a public service that works in genuine partnership with groups in the community with whom, and to whom, it provides services. I will outline to the community, through the Assembly, later this week additional measures to promote and increase the information available to the community about the issues the government is considering and deliberating on.
We are embarking on a strategy that puts the community at the centre of everything we do, that makes services more easily known and accessible, that embeds feedback mechanisms to improve services, and allows service delivery to be tailored so far as it is possible. My decision to announce the government’s priorities for the next 12 months is one small part of this process.
Releasing these government priorities today is a simple and practical act of transparency that will enable our government to work more effectively with the Canberra community over the next 12 months. The government priorities come from what we have heard from our community, they focus on the decisions the government needs to make and they set measureable targets on which I, as Chief Minister, and my government as a whole, will be measured against. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Mrs Dunne): The question is that the Assembly take note of the paper.
Mr Seselja: I do not think that is the question.
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Sorry, did you not move, Chief Minister, that the Assembly notes the paper?
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