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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (2 July) . . Page.. 2164 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

a reasonable measure. When you get to the environment, you have achievement of greenhouse gas targets as a measure. That is fine. But under that you have state of environment indicators. That is quite odd. What is the objective in state of environment indicators? They do not sit with the others at all. They are something that the Commissioner for the Environment is developing. What is the objective?

Then - and this is what was also pointed out in debate when I raised the issues of equity - we have opportunity and fairness as a measure. That is fine. But the really critical question that has to be asked here is: How are these measures applied? We have heard the Chief Minister say that they have done work on this with ACTCOSS, who was obviously a significant witness at the Estimates Committee. One can only infer from the Government's response to the Estimates Committee report, particularly the statements on equity, that they are finding fault with ACTCOSS's evidence. That is pretty concerning, because the Government has worked with ACTCOSS a lot and relied on their not inconsiderable expertise.

ACTCOSS have always produced very well thought out and researched documents. I imagine that is why the Government has worked so often with them and produced good documents - the service purchasing document and, more lately, the More Than the Sum of Its Parts document, which was about planning for and assessing quality in ACT government services. What came out of that report clearly was the need for the very broad statements that government has produced as outcome statements, which are really little less than rhetoric, to be linked with a process of measurement which you can understand and see and which is transparent.

The statements from the Government about equity and how they have proven progress are not supported in any way by anything that we can read in any document. When I asked for something in writing, particularly in estimates, about how they assessed their revenue measures in this budget for impact on disadvantaged people, I was told that there was a process, but it was obviously not one that they could table. It was done by the bureaucrats and there was no consultation with the community when it was done. That is not satisfactory if the rhetoric that is being produced by government is to be believed. Those outcomes, broad as they are and supportable as they are, have to be supported by actual methods and links to how they are measured and how they describe quality. That is exactly what More Than the Sum of Its Parts is about and what it recommended that government should do. The work just has not been done, and the statement that it has cannot be substantiated.

There was also the comment: "Where is the evidence that there is a social deficit?". These indicators that government has produced do not show us that it does not exist. However, we do have other more recent evidence to show that it does exist. Today or yesterday ACOSS produced a report called Australians Living on the Edge No. 2. The key findings show clearly that there are real concerns in the welfare community about what is happening to people in Australia who are disadvantaged and on low income. The issues are broad. The issues are very much related to what is happening, for example, with work. We hear this Chief Minister talk about jobs, but we do not hear how many of those jobs are casual. We do not hear what the real impact of the changes in the working conditions of Australians means for them. When we look at reports such as Australians Living on the Edge, we see real consequences being experienced on a daily basis by agencies supporting disadvantaged people.

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