Page 3077 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 17 November 1992
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responded to within three working days, as requested by me, the committee noted that the Department of Health responded especially well, while the Department of Education and Training and the Department of Urban Services need to improve considerably in this area.
Madam Speaker, I now wish to address the key issues and accompanying recommendations of the report. The committee paid close attention to the process of budget supplementation and has recommended that the Standing Committee on Public Accounts have a future role in monitoring the budget supplementation process. The various locations of industrial relations arrangements across the ACT Government Service were queried, with a review being recommended. The Government could also consider the various locations of demographic functions across the ACT Government Service in this review. Although not clearly identified in the report as being an issue of concern, it was noted that several sections exist - for example, in the Chief Minister's Department, in the Department of the Environment, Land and Planning, and in the Department of Education and Training.
The committee was pleased to see ACTEW appear during the estimates process this year, and recommends that the remaining non-budget dependent entities - the Milk Authority, Natex, ACTTAB, Totalcare Industries and the Building and Construction Industry Long Service Leave Board - prepare themselves to be called in future years. The issue of performance measurement was again the focus of much of the Estimates Committee's attention this year and further comment was made on the somewhat arbitrary nature of program and subprogram structures in some cases, especially with reference to the ACT Legislative Assembly, Housing and Community Services, and Health programs. The committee made a number of recommendations concerning staffing. While the human resource management system, which will clearly identify staffing numbers and accompanying information, will be in place by July 1994, attention needs to be paid to doing more in the shorter term. It was suggested by a radio 2CN listener that perhaps all employees of the ACT Government Service should present themselves in a particular fortnight at the ACT Auditor-General's Office to receive their salaries. While this approach is probably not a practical one, it emphasises the community's frustration at the existing situation. The committee has commented extensively on staff training and also has asked that Ministers take responsibility for the 2 per cent across-the-board expenditure reductions to be achieved across most government agencies.
Madam Speaker, I now wish to address briefly the specific issues and accompanying recommendations of the report. The Estimates Committee has drawn the attention of the Government to a number of specific issues concerning the operation of a number of its functions. They cover ACT Government Service child-care, adoption services, Assembly travel, the Belconnen Remand Centre, HIV/AIDS notification, magnetic resonance imaging, the methadone program, postnatal depression and primary school size. Given more time, Madam Speaker, I am sure that the Estimates Committee would have wanted to comment further on a range of other issues. There is no doubt that the estimates process provides members of the ACT Legislative Assembly with time to extensively question Ministers and senior officers, and considerable information and understanding about government expenditure and operations is acquired, enabling the exploration of a number of issues in considerable detail. Once this has occurred, members may often have valuable comments and recommendations that they can pass on to government about current operations and agency functions and practices.
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