Page 3468 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 25 November 1992
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Assembly has adopted a reference which will enable it to inquire more fully into methods by which supplementation to all agencies can be monitored by the Assembly. It is pleasing to note that the Government will cooperate fully with the Public Accounts Committee's inquiry.
The Estimates Committee spent some considerable time establishing the roles and responsibilities of the various industrial relations sections of ACT Government, and again it is pleasing to note that the Government will undertake a review of possibilities for the rationalisation of these functions and will report to the Assembly in due course.
Recommendation No. 7 covered the possible appearance of further non-budget-dependent entities before the Estimates Committee in future years, in addition to ACTEW. The Government has made the point that these entities will need to provide information in a form consistent with their commercial status. This is a fair point. However, the committee's request calls for consistency in the presentation of material which enables these non-budget-dependent entities to be, similarly to ACT Government Service agencies, effectively scrutinised.
It was noted that ACTEW provided committee members with a range of documents, none of which correlated easily with the subprogram information generally used as the basis for members' questions of government agencies. As a consequence, members' questions were based on various documents provided, including the corporate plan and annual report, and questions were difficult to coordinate. Where non-budget-dependent entities appear before the Estimates Committee in the future, members may need to decide well before the public hearings which primary or principal document will be substantively used as a basis for questions being asked. I welcome the Government's planned review of the program and subprogram structure of each agency.
The committee's recommendation No. 9 concerning staffing involved four separate components. The thrust of the committee's recommendations, I believe, Madam Speaker, involved the need for the Government to provide as much information about the numbers, function, location, classification of and salaries paid to ACT Government Service staff as quickly as possible. It is noted that only limited information can be made available prior to the implementation of the human resource management system. However, it is also noted that the system will not be operational until July 1994. By far the majority of the Government's expenditure is spent on staffing and I believe, Madam Speaker, that it is absolutely essential that major efforts be placed on acquiring the information requested with urgency. The Estimates Committee simply cannot be fully accountable to this Assembly and to the wider community if it is not able to more effectively scrutinise the staffing of the ACT Government Service.
I am pleased to note, Madam Speaker, that the ACT Government Service will adopt a strategic training plan for the training of its staff. However, I wonder what the sentence "the strategic training plan will be a guide to managers and staff, not a panacea" actually means. Perhaps the Chief Minister can enlighten me through her remarks.
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