Page 3421 - Week 08 - Thursday, 23 August 2012
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is readily available elsewhere. I did raise this in the estimates hearings, wondering why it was so. There was certain information there that I thought people would have intuitively clicked on and gone through by way of a TAMS portal—things like where toilets were available—than necessarily through this one. I was assured that there was ongoing work being done on this.
The cabinet summaries are quite short. They are a summary, it would be true to say. They are not necessarily telling us anything that we did not already know. Maybe we could have some progress on seeing how that can continue to be improved upon. For instance, there was one example where the government had agreed on a bill, and it had tabled that bill the previous week. It was not exactly how we would see information coming out of that process.
That said, I do think that the initiative is a very worthwhile one. Certainly government transparency is something that the Greens have long advocated for. I hope the initiative does continue to progress and that greater information can be provided. Largely, what I mean by that is that the reasons for actions and the basis on which decisions are made are also published. That is what we see as the next evolution of these summaries—actually having a little bit more information about how the cabinet came to make the decisions that they have made.
I would also like to touch on community engagement as this is another area that CMCD is responsible for. Certainly there have been improvements in this area. One comment I would like to make is that there is still a need to be clear about the nature of consultation being undertaken. The difference between information provision and genuine consultation is often not clear. I think it causes huge frustration for many people out there that what is being described to them as consultation is actually just them being provided with information about a decision that has been made. That may be quite legitimate. There is nothing wrong with that. There are many different ways of communicating and consulting. They take different forms. It is about being very clear up front with the people you are engaging with as to what process you are embarking on, what the outcome is, what the parameters are, and just being extremely clear and extremely honest about what it is that you are attempting to do.
I will finish with a quick observation about the curious exchange that took place during the estimates hearings about plans and plans for plans and frameworks for assessing plans about plans. I must confess I still have not been able to work out what the director-general was saying in that exchange. There is no doubt that CMCD is good at producing plans and frameworks. The challenge for CMCD now is to implement the plans and make sure that all the various plans actually work together and deliver real outcomes, and that they also have some way of being able to report back on whether actual progress has been made. There was one moment when I felt we were swimming in, as I said, the plans and plans for plans and the framework for plans about plans.
MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (4.36): I will speak briefly in relation to the Chief Minister’s directorate, regarding the industrial relations portfolio. Firstly, I touch on a relevant issue regarding the WorkSafe investigation into bullying at CIT. While obviously I recognise this is in relation to CIT in the Education and Training portfolio,
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