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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 1 Hansard (18 February) . . Page.. 67 ..

MRS DUNNE (continuing):

I would like to thank the members of my committee who undertook this inquiry at a time of change and upheaval for the committee, with new members coming on and others departing and at a time when we had a new secretariat. I would like to thank the secretary of the committee and the committee office for their generous contribution of time and effort. I commend the report to the Assembly.

MR HARGREAVES (11.19): Mr Speaker, I will not be too long. I just want to underscore something that the chair has drawn attention to in the report, and that is the format. It seems to me from my experience as a former public servant and a member of this place that often annual reports and budget papers are excellent ideas and bureaucratic snow jobs, and that is in fact what we often suffer in this place. Before I became a member of this place I used to pride myself on being able to produce bureaucratic snow jobs.

I think what is needed is a realisation on the part of those people preparing these reports that budget papers and annual reports are in fact part of the continuum of information, the continuum of flow of information to the Assembly and to the community, about what the government of the day has achieved or what it intends or is attempting to achieve by way of its programs.

What we are often seeing in fact in annual reports particularly, and certainly in some budget papers, is nothing more than a litany of workload statistics. Quite frankly, I don't care about workload statistics. I am more interested in effectiveness indicators. I want to know whether the programs are actually achieving what they set out to do.

I would point to the need for those people preparing annual reports to be aware of evaluation techniques. Evaluation techniques talk about efficiency indicators and effectiveness indicators. Efficiency indicators can be workload stats. For example, Mr Speaker, you can have people going through a doctor's surgery at a rate of knots, 45 to the hour, but if they all die the indication is that the doctor is not all that good. So efficiency indicators are not the be all and end all. What we need to do is have effectiveness indicators, and more often than not those are qualitative, not quantitative, indicators.

I suggest very seriously that the annual reports and the budget papers become part of that continuum of information flow on the effectiveness of government programs. We should be able to see as a community the performance of governments of all colours and how they are actually affecting the life of this town.

Can I also congratulate the chair and other members of the committee for the way in which these inquiries are conducted. I think it is a great process. I was really pleased as a new member of the committee to see that politics did not play a part-we actually considered things as four individuals.

I would also like to express my appreciation particularly to Linda Atkinson, the committee secretary, who has produced her first report to this Assembly. She has produced reports elsewhere but this is her first one for this committee. I know that she is probably listening to this debate and that she is as chuffed as anything to have the report finally done and on the table. I extend to her the congratulations of all four of us.

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