Page 3489 - Week 11 - Thursday, 14 October 1993
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Madam Speaker, the Government has been looking at quite a range of areas. We have addressed every area of the public service. The strategies that I outlined in the budget are under a number of broad headings. They were, first of all, management improvement initiatives - for instance, financial management improvement, energy management programs, and that sort of thing, and efficiency improvements. An example there is the 2 per cent reductions in programs, and those are ongoing, the ACTION reduction of $10m over three years, emergency group management restructuring and so on. We also have information technology improvements going on in a range of areas. Service delivery reviews will be undertaken as well in a great many areas of the ACT administration. We have a range of restructuring proposals coming forward from agencies.
I have also some resource reviews which I announced in the budget, in particular into housing and health, where there will be reviews conducted with some outside assistance aimed at looking at national benchmarks for those programs. In addition we have overhead cost reduction reviews and organisational reviews which are under way - for example, transfer of building control from DUS to DELP and so on. So there is a range of strategies which will continue, and the Government will be examining restructuring proposals as they are put forward. That will continue throughout the year. The aim, Madam Speaker, is not just to effect efficiencies this year, but to ease the budget task in coming years as well. In fact, I expect that the greater impact of most of these restructuring initiatives will be felt in future years.
MRS CARNELL: I ask a supplementary question. Chief Minister, have any areas where excess staff exist been identified? If so, which ones?
MS FOLLETT: Madam Speaker, we are in consultation with the unions and we have a central coordinating group. Only after that process has taken place might there be identification such as Mrs Carnell has indicated. As I say, we are in a continuing process of consultation, which, I might say, is in stark contrast to what occurred under the Liberals when they were in government. They had totally untargeted staff reductions; who knows where from, who knows under what process. By contrast, this Government will undertake that work in consultation in accordance with the RR(R) award and, of course, with the principles of enterprise bargaining as well.
Public Transport Costs
MS ELLIS: My question is directed to the Minister for Urban Services. Does the Minister have any recent information as to the comparative costs of providing public transport in the Territories and States?
MR CONNOLLY: The Industry Commission issued today its report on public transport. Predictably, the Industry Commission takes the dry, economic rationalist view of the world. I do not know sometimes why they bother going through the exercise at the cost of vast sums of public money, because their answer to everything is to privatise and deregulate. However, cutting through that and the brilliant observation from the Industry Commission on the media today that, of course, ACTION is inefficient because if you look at the buses they are sometimes half full - a particularly facile observation from a publicly funded research body - the fact is that they did find that the ACTION subsidy in 1991-92 of $49m amounted to a subsidy of some $540 per household in Canberra.
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