Page 917 - Week 03 - Thursday, 10 March 2016
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
playing the game here of, “Here are some working groups so the minister can stand up in the Assembly and say, ‘I’ve got working groups. I’m listening to the staff.’” If you get on the ground, the staff do not feel as though they are being listened to and they do not feel that things are actually changing.
There are then a number of paragraphs that say that we are doing all these things. If the commitment to change is not genuine, if the commitment to change is not about more front-line officers delivering better services than they already do—I think we all acknowledge that the service on the front line is pretty good—then your reform agenda is about featherbedding and protecting management instead of enhancing the workplace, supporting the workers and providing better service.
It is the standard operating procedure of this government. “We have now got a project officer.” Surely that is what the management of ACTAS are meant to be. They are meant to be there to provide leadership. If you have to bring in a project officer to run the blueprint for change, there is something fundamentally wrong in your structure or there is something fundamentally wrong with those in the structure. That needs to be looked at. It is a great paragraph, and I will read it again:
Madam Speaker, I am very happy to report that all eight of the original blueprint for change recommendations are substantially being addressed or indeed have been completed.
There is another inconsistency. If it had been substantially addressed or completed, why have the working groups? If you have done the job, why have them? There is this mirage, this image, of: “We are doing lots.” The reality is that I am not sure that they are.
Recommendation 3 looks at leadership. It says that the leadership framework has commenced. If work is being currently progressed and work on a new leadership framework has commenced, why are we having all these changes to the upper level of the bureaucracy? If we are doing some work but the outcome has already been determined, why are you doing it? It is just a sham. It is just a joke.
The reality is that the new arrangements are confusing at best and dangerous at worst when deputies and chiefs of the services have different roles. Some deputies report to their service chief and in their other role they report to the commissioner. Whom do they report to? Who has priority? Whom do you say, “Yes, sir,” to first? That is the dilemma. The services should be allowed to run their services. The service chiefs and their deputies should be dedicated to that job. If there is a failure of leadership, if there is a toxic management culture, that is senior management’s fault and senior management should fix it or senior management should go. All of this has occurred in the past couple of years, and people can ask what the senior management have been doing.
Let me go across to recommendation 6. It says:
… Staff Workshop Series, has already been achieved with the conduct of the five very successful facilitated workshops I previously outlined.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video