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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (31 August) . . Page.. 2723 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

The government, in its response, has been through a number of the recommendations and given us that reply "agreed in principle". "Agreed in principle" is code for "Look, we agree with what you've said but we are going to do absolutely nothing about it. We are going to ignore it, and we are going to continue upon our merry way".

There are important messages in this particular report. The first message is that community organisations do fear retribution within the system if they are outspoken in any way about their dissatisfaction with how the government or its department acts.

There is quite clearly hostility among the organisations about the way in which this particular process has been implemented, and there is certainly a grave degree of mistrust held within community organisations as to the real commitment to the implementation of the purchaser/provider process within the ACT. All the organisations that came before this committee wanted to know from government: "What do you want from us? There is a need for information. We need to know what this is about."

The government has used, in its rhetoric, terms like "consumer sovereignty". The committee challenged the government to define what it wanted, what it meant by consumer sovereignty and how it intended to facilitate the actual implementation of consumer sovereignty-the input of consumer needs.

The response to that was virtually zero in terms of what it intended to do. Yes, the community organisations asked the government, "What do you want from us? Because you have claimed that the purchaser/provider model will provide economies, tell us where those economies are expected. Tell us how to behave. Tell us how to react."

But, no, the government does not agree with those recommendations. The government had the Rogan Johnston report upon which it relied to implement purchaser/provider arrangements in the ACT. That recommended a mapping exercise to map what level of contestability should be permitted to govern the letting of contracts and the granting of funds to community organisations. And so the committee quite naturally recommended that the government complete this mapping exercise, which is integral to the implementation of purchaser/provider arrangements.

The answer? Not accepted. What the government has said in this reply is: "We intend to implement contracting. We intend to make community organisations more accountable. We're not really going to tell them what they're accountable for. We do not intend to take a great deal of notice of what they particularly want taken into account." As well as the quantifiable measures that are involved in these contracts, they want the quality of service to become a measure.

I recently attended a meeting of the North Canberra Community Council at which the chief executive of ACT Disability Services gave a presentation on the introduction of quality in service delivery. I took the opportunity to ask him for his impression as to how quality was being implemented into the contracting and grants process. I have to say that he was less than happy that I put him in that particular spot, and I do apologise to him now. But I have to say that, immediately following that event, quite a number of representatives of community organisations went out of their way to say, "Good point. Can you do something about it?"

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