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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 9 Hansard (23 November) . . Page.. 2401 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

Similarly, Ms Tucker spent a great deal of time speaking about achieving outcomes. The issues that she raised were particularly important. I refer to two of them in particular. The first one was economic priorities and the second one was productivity. In terms of economic priorities, Ms Tucker made the point again and again that it is not good enough simply to suggest that the economic priorities are the priorities that we should follow; that there are real questions of social justice, the environment, population and health that you really must address. They require a serious and appropriate response.

The second issue that Ms Tucker spoke rather eloquently about was productivity. What the dry economists mean by productivity is that you save a bit of money. One excellent example where this fails is when you look at productivity outcomes in education. A dry economist looking at productivity says, "Our budget for education will be some $200m. If we can teach the same number of students for $180m we have a productivity outcome". The real productivity measure to which you must respond is how we increase the outcomes as far as those students are concerned. How do we ensure better productivity measures that do not look at just those dry economic terms, but look instead at how we can ensure that our students are more literate, more well-rounded, and have better opportunities to move into the work force? It is not just a case of looking at ways to cut money. That is unacceptable to us. We will expect more.

In your three-year budget we would expect that those sorts of issues were dealt with appropriately. At this stage, according to the Estimates Committee, they have not been dealt with appropriately. I was happy to sign that report. I believe it was appropriate that we signed that report. I would ask you to take very seriously the issues that have been raised in this debate; that you look particularly at those issues of productivity, performance indicators and economic priorities, all of which are things that are generally driven through this department and Division 40 of the budget. They are issues that are dealt with there, and I believe they are issues that come to the very heart of how governments operate.

Similarly, I would like to raise the issue of the all-of-government strategic plan that was raised by you publicly in a joint press statement with the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Howe. It is something that I have long advocated, not only prior to this election as part of my election platform but also prior to the last election. It is something that I would like to lend support to. I appreciate the fact that you sent officers from your department to talk to me about that yesterday and today, and I am delighted that the Chief Executive of the NCPA, Michael Ratcliffe, has joined in those discussions. I think that we can get a very positive outcome in terms of that all-of-government strategic planning. Hopefully, I can take to my own Planning and Environment Committee for members to consider tomorrow some ideas about how is the best way to achieve the best possible outcomes on the work that we have already started with the tenders that we have already called. I think it is possible to do that, but it will be possible only when such a strategic plan takes into account the sorts of issues that Ms Tucker raised in her speech over the last few minutes. These are fundamental issues. They are issues that you have to get right if you expect us to support things like your proposed reforms of the public service. They are serious issues, and issues which we will be watching very carefully.

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