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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 1 Hansard (22 February) . . Page.. 219 ..

MS TUCKER (4.32): This MPI does offer an opportunity for a stocktake of the broad directions that this Government has taken in its first year of office in the ACT. I have to say that there are a few on the list of broken promises that we are not too worried about. We are quite happy with the fact that they have broken the promise on increasing the gambling tax, not limiting betterment tax to 50 per cent, not reducing the petrol tax and giving less than was promised to business. It is not that there is anything wrong with supporting business, of course, but there is a lack of a holistic approach to what sort of business we want in the ACT. That was very clear right through the Estimates Committee hearings.

I think that this MPI does provide an opportunity to look at some of the big picture issues about this Government's approach to managing the ACT, although I would have to say, and it has been pointed out by the Liberals a few times today, that the Labor governments do not have a particularly different direction in other States, or federally either. One of the concerns about these general directions is the focus on outputs as a measure of success and the introduction of a number of reforms to the way government and community services are delivered. That has been coming up clearly over and over again in the inquiry into competition policy, and it is also coming from the community generally.

There are real concerns about introducing contracting out, tendering and contestable funding right across the system, because of the way that it is being introduced. There has never been any real attempt to model possible negative impacts of the introduction of these kinds of initiatives. Through contracting out, we are losing contact with the community's needs. If you want to provide money and see it used efficiently, and if projects are going to be relevant, there needs to be that grassroots beginning of projects. That is how the grants system has worked. What is happening now - there are real examples of it right now in the ACT - is that we are getting situations where the job description is being decided from above and it is not necessarily appropriate to the needs of the community. For that reason, it is inefficient and, as well, the needs of the community are not being met.

There is also the amalgamation of services. Community services are another example of this. There is a very broad definition made from above of what a service is, and there seems to be, from above, duplication; whereas, in fact, there are quite specific and special attributes to different community groups or different organisations that are very important. It is going to be the community that suffers when these services are forced to amalgamate. The red tape task force identified the huge duplication of services within the Government bureaucracy, and I am pleased that the Government is looking at this duplication. Of course, there are some concerns about the very strong emphasis on business impact assessment that comes out of that red tape task force report. I would not say that I am totally negative about what is coming out of that, because I think there are some very useful recommendations.

There is the question of who is going to be suffering most. I know that I have said this before; but we all seem to repeat ourselves here, so I will not be afraid of doing that. It is the vulnerable in the community who are the ones most likely to be at risk as a result of this not thoroughly thought through approach. This fiscal responsibility that you want to attain is fine to a degree, but it is not fine when you have not worked out the consequences.

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