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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 4 Hansard (16 April) . . Page.. 895 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

A matter on which the committee spent a great deal of time, because it was a matter of concern to a lot of people, was this question of community service obligations. The committee had the feeling at the end of the day that the Government perhaps does not even know the full ramifications of the existing community service obligations. What are the ramifications? How much do they cost? What resources do they consume in delivering them? In most cases, they are not very clearly defined at all. They flow from a government decision at some time in the past that a program would be put into place, to benefit some disadvantaged people in the community usually. It is put into place and becomes part of a system, and nobody really knows what it is costing. Perhaps nobody even knows who is benefiting at the end of the day.

Four of the committee's nine recommendations have to do with community service obligations, because it is clear that the Government has to get a better handle on community service obligations than it has now. It has to be able to define them; it has to be able to tell the community and this place what community service obligations exist, how much they cost, what resources they consume and who the beneficiaries are. Only then can you begin to understand the impact of those obligations on the community. Are they being properly targeted? Are the right people benefiting? Is the cost proportionate to the benefit that is derived? There are four recommendations on that. Again, I would hope that the Government would take those matters very seriously and come up with better information for themselves, for us and for the community.

Mrs Carnell: How much work was done by the previous Government on CSOs?

MR KAINE: We need to build on that, obviously. The only other matter that I wanted to comment on was the question of intergovernmental agreements. The committee dealt with this matter in a number of paragraphs, because it was raised by people before us. It flowed from the way that this particular intergovernmental agreement was derived and put in place. It flowed, as we all know, from a Premiers Conference, followed by lots of work done by lots of public officials working away in committees - intergovernmental committees and the like. Out the end came an obligation imposed on the ACT by agreement that we do certain things. We had the feeling - and I think Ms Follett dealt with it - that there was a certain lack of definition about the whole matter, that we were not too clear on whether governments, not only the ACT Government but all the governments, really understood what it was that they were imposing on themselves by this legislation; whether they had thought through the ramifications; whether they knew what it was going to cost; and whether they knew that there was going to be any benefit at the end of the day.

The important thing is that at no stage, until the point that this went to this committee to look at, had anybody asked the community and the Australian citizenry at large, "Do you think this is a good idea?". The report goes through all that process of development. There was not necessarily a clear definition; it came to life in the form of a Bill that this Assembly was asked to enact and that the community was asked to accept, but the community did not know anything about it.

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