Page 23 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 22 February 1994
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There will be a range of minor changes to machinery of government arrangements.
That is the best she can do when talking about structure and the way the operation is going to work. This must be the only government in Australia that has not embarked on major change over a period of years. Even now, with this opportunity before us, the best that the Chief Minister can say is that there will be some minor changes in the machinery of government. She qualifies even that statement, because the next sentence says:
These changes are designed to refine and clarify accountability arrangements.
So even they have to do with only the internal mechanisms of this organisation; they have nothing to do with the relationship of the organisation with its outside environment, with its customers, with the taxpayers.
Not only the Chief Minister's speeches on this matter have been totally uninformative; government papers issued during 1993 were quite ambiguous as well. I would like to quote a couple of statements from a document called "Strategic Directions for ACT Government Service, June 1993". The first couple of statements relate to organisational structures. One of the things that I am worried about is that there has been no change. I will quote a great bit of public service gobbledegook:
Different organisational configurations such as minimalist management structures will have implications for administrative structures, the use of senior management levels, devolution of authority and risk management.
Mr De Domenico: You did not write that, did you?
MR KAINE: No, I did not, and neither did the Chief Minister. It is fine; that is a good statement as far as it goes. But it is very academic. What do they mean by it? What are the implications for administrative structures? In what way are they going to change? I can assure you that that is as definitive as this paper that talks about strategic directions ever gets in terms of defining the new structure. It goes on:
Multiple reporting lines are available to the Executive through the creation of offices within agencies and bureaus as sub-agencies ... This has been demonstrated to be a flexible and responsive suite of options and should be retained ... The creation of a separate ACT public service brings this issue into focus and provides the vehicle for resolution at macro levels. This could include the value of existing central agencies.
In other words, what we have now is just great. There is no contemplation that we could be doing it in a different way. Anyway, what does it mean? What does that mean in relation to the structure of the organisation that is about to be put into place? It means nothing. From the same paper, relating to managers, I quote:
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