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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 6 Hansard (22 May) . . Page.. 1623 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Promises of outputs and more detail to come, but we are still waiting for that. Many of us feel that we were not given nearly enough time to respond anyway, and I do not think the issue of competition policy was being addressed in those consultations, although I would be delighted to hear that it was addressed by the Government in consultations.

Of course, we also have reference made often to the customer commitment program. That is touted as a mechanism for community consultation, but I would quote here from ACTCOSS's response to the Government response:

... the Customer Commitment Program is predicated on a commercial model of service and emphasises individual "customer" feedback and reductionist "units" of service. As there has not, to date, been any detailed analysis of the social impact of services being delivered, it is difficult to see how this model would allow for the identification of the needs of particular classes of consumer. Thus there is the potential for articulate and advantaged "customers" to set the standards by which services are delivered. Producing a situation of increased rather than minimised social inequities in access to Government services.

There are some inherent dangers in calling citizens customers.

Another issue that was of concern to the committee, and this is only reaffirmed by the Government's response, is the extent to which the Government is bundling the competition reforms up with all their other reforms. This is inappropriate, but it is a nice neat way of preventing public scrutiny and debate about when and where competition policy is appropriate. Another issue of concern was the lack of a holistic strategy for the implementation of competition policy. We are told that the Government will be preparing its policy statement on implementation of reviewing legislation for anti-competitive effects and implementation of the competition principles agreement by June this year, but the reforms are being implemented now. There is still no overall strategy for the implementation of competition policy in the ACT which takes into account the full range of public interest factors and weighs up the costs and benefits of competition across the public sector. Nearly every submission expressed concern that the proposed reforms should be carefully assessed on a case-by-case basis rather than being steamrolled as part of a package of measures based on an ideological notion of promoting competition.

Some of the costs of competition the committee explored included unproductive rivalry and waste through duplication of services and facilities when competition is introduced - I am surprised that the Government is not interested in this; consumption of time and resources in preparing tender bids; the cost to the Government of administering the tender process; the failure of private contractors to provide access and equity to services, and an emphasis on quantity over quality; contract failure; the environmental effect of competition in the electricity industry leading to a neglect of demand-side measures to reduce consumption; reduction in public safety and health standards associated with deregulation; increasing the intensity of work through job shedding and reduced conditions of employment; increasing the vulnerability of the most disadvantaged in the labour market; the impact on weaker consumers of services of all kinds; and the list goes on.

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