Page 2714 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 June 2011

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The original appropriation bill provides for the appropriation of funds totalling $4.231 billion across government in 2011-12, including the Treasurer’s advance. This remains unchanged from the original bill under this amendment.

I commend the amendment and the supplementary budget papers to the Assembly. I will speak further about the Chief Minister and Cabinet Directorate after other members have concluded in the debate.

MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Convenor, ACT Greens) (7.51): The most significant whole-of-government changes are, of course, those that have come about as a result of the Hawke review. That will obviously have significant flow-on effects on the Chief Minister and Cabinet Directorate. There are a number of changes to the directorate planned with outputs shifting between agencies. However, the most notable point is, of course, that they will retain responsibility for whole-of-government outputs. This appears to have been extended in the sense that more of the coordination-type role will also be played to ensure the public service delivers for Canberra.

We have recently discussed the merits of the Hawke review changes, and I do not think there is any real need to go over that ground again. I would, however, like to take the opportunity in the context of whole-of-government service delivery to again note the importance of cultural change and the need for the new Chief Minister and Cabinet Directorate to be an integral part of that change.

One key new initiative is, of course, the new strategic board, which is designed to better respond to whole-of-government issues and hopefully prevent duplication and better coordinate outputs. The Greens think this is a good initiative that has the potential to overcome some historic problems and better reflect the size and unique nature of the territory.

We all know that there are parts of the public service that have developed some undesirable cultural practices and that there is not always the best interaction between the various parts of the service. The Greens strongly support the initiatives designed to address this and sincerely hope that the directorate can drive cultural change in a number of respects—be that openness and transparency, greater collaboration amongst agencies, or improved responsiveness to community concerns.

I would like to take the opportunity to say that one challenge will be to respond to the particular concerns of the Ombudsman and the reluctance of agencies to respond to concerns from the community and to see the complaints handling process as a real opportunity for improvement rather than an additional task to be dispensed with as quickly as possible.

The performance and accountability framework is another issue that has been identified as a priority from the directorate, and this is, of course, something that the Greens have been talking about for some years now, with unfortunately little result. I think the move to the one public service model offers some real opportunities for improved accountability and reporting on coordinated outcomes as well as individual agency outputs. It is, of course, an ongoing debate as to what is a reasonable scope for


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