Page 4309 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 20 November 1990
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quantitative measures or indicators. In other words, a narrow view that the achievement of certain performance indicators is the only test of whether a government department or a budget program is achieving certain goals can either hide a multitude of sins or, on occasions, not show a situation of some concern. I think people sometimes have to make qualitative judgments about the performance of government departments or particular programs, and that means that we need to be flexible about the way in which performance indicators are provided. I am not arguing for one minute that we should not have such things - of course we should - but I am arguing that we should be exercising the greatest caution about the way in which particular performance indicators are applied by government.
What gave me most concern in this report, Mr Speaker, was the additional comments at the back by Mr Moore and Mr Connolly. When opposition members sit on such a committee - I include Mr Moore in that context - there is a tendency to want to use it as a way of finding dirt in relation to a government and then using that dirt in suitably spectacular fashion to make sure that a government is thoroughly rubbished and that its performance is denigrated as much as possible. That is a natural and perhaps not unexpected role for an opposition. To some extent that applies, I think, to everybody who is in opposition.
But we have to draw a line between fair criticism and unfair criticism, and between criticism which is based on facts and evidence and criticism which is not. In particular, I noted Mr Connolly,s comments earlier this evening that he does not agree with the Government,s expected savings on school closures and considers that this area has been left up in the air. At the time he made those comments he may have had a point, but since that time the Hudson report has come down. He argued in debate earlier this evening that somehow the Hudson report vindicates his and his party's position on that matter. It is a question of where one starts, I suppose.
If one side alleges that savings of $3m can be achieved but the other side says that no savings can be achieved, and the final verdict is that savings of $2.5m can be achieved, frankly, I would rather be on the side that said that there were some savings to be made. That, I suggest, is the case here. He also said, rather curiously, that the Hudson report, although pouring doubt on the $3m figure that the Government had put forward, had not indicated what the figure would be, in its view, for the achievement of certain savings.
He said "What the final figure is, we will not know". I have to draw Mr Connolly's attention to the report which indicates quite precisely Mr Hudson's view of the savings, with the revisions made to the program that he suggested, and that figure is slightly under $2.6m.
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