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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 9 Hansard (23 November) . . Page.. 2397 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

In the ACT much more attention must be focused on demonstrating how performance is evaluated. How do you evaluate community consultation? What are the community service obligations provided by ACTION, and what is their financial value? How do you measure productivity for teachers? These are just some of the unanswered questions from the Estimates Committee process which must be addressed by this Government if it is going to push ahead with the so-called reforms it plans. At the moment, in the quest for efficiency, we are placing greater emphasise on so-called output-based funding. Yet, despite the introduction of financial management reforms, we have a pretty unsophisticated accounting system which is not up to the task of determining the full cost and benefits of the range of government services and programs. The Government do not seem to have got this point. In their response to the Estimates Committee's recommendations they make it quite clear that their understanding of outputs is narrowly based, and they have rejected the need to integrate indicators reflecting social justice and environmental objectives throughout the budget.

We hear the rhetoric of a greater consumer focus, but underlying this is an assumption that efficiency is the driving element of public interest. Given that the Liberals are planning to hand over to agency managers much more responsibility for making financial decisions, there must be a much stronger basis for identifying the so-called outputs before bottom lines are set. Otherwise these managers will, contrary to Mrs Carnell's claim, be making political decisions, and worse, without even knowing the full ramifications of these decisions. Given the lack of detail in many of these areas, it is not surprising that the three-year bottom line approach of this budget does not give sufficient emphasise to social and environmental concerns.

One issue of concern raised was the lack of a social justice statement. Of greater concern to the Greens is the lack of integration of social, economic and environmental policy in the budget. Unless these concerns are integrated, the budget will not even be internally consistent. For example, there is not one mention of meeting any environmental objectives in any of the business programs. The Government has picked out a bottom line and is trying to fit everything around this bottom line, even when this requires decisions that defy logic or good management. Economic priorities have been set in isolation from the rest of the Government's policy objectives, and important social services are being squeezed in the name of economic efficiency.

Fixing bottom lines for three years may be well and good if we have the necessary social priorities worked out beforehand, and these strategies can be demonstrably consistent with the financial objectives. Yet, in Mrs Carnell's budget, there is an absence of specific social and environmental indicators in many areas, particularly the economic policy units, and insufficient evidence that the Government has developed community service obligations before committing itself to specific financial outcomes. This can only lead one to the conclusion that economic priorities will be at the expense of social and environmental objectives.

We must look at ways of developing a more holistic approach to budget formulation. Budgets are, after all, putting the dollars and cents to the Government's overall policy program. If we want to tackle the management of our community in a holistic way, and the Greens believe that we do, then the budget must reflect this integrated approach,

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