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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 1 Hansard (18 February) . . Page.. 71 ..

MS TUCKER: I move:

Question resolved in the affirmative.

MS TUCKER: I move:

The Health Committee has made several recommendations dealing with the presentation of information in the annual report. We have particularly noted the need for more detail in reports when major reviews or restructures have taken place within the financial year.

A couple of such reviews been done in health, including the Gallop inquiry, and there have been restructures within the department as well. Obviously that is a significant issue. We were concerned that there should be more detail about that in the report, and equally with the restructures. When there have been restructures within the financial year, it becomes extremely confusing to understand what has happened.

We made comments about the recently added direction on annual reports, which is related to the question of Assembly committee reports, that the government of the day must report, through the relevant department, how it is implementing recommendations of Assembly committee reports to which it has agreed. That is a new direction in the annual reports. In the health report, that occurred for the first time with Aboriginal health, but we were not happy with how that was reported on. We wanted a much more detailed recommendation by recommendation response as to where the government is up to in implementing its response to those recommendations.

We focused on some issues which came up during the hearings and in our deliberations as a committee. We made particular reference in a recommendation to the question of outreach workers working in the mental health field. That has come up in the status of women inquiry as well, and appears to need still more attention from government.

As other committees have, we made comments about making sure material is presented in a clear way-not in a confusing or misleading manner. We also said that we wanted to see future annual reports include analyses of the links between performance measures and outcomes, and where each measure sits within the strategic vision of the agency.

That is probably enough to say in summary about what the report says. I thank members of my committee, and the secretary, for their support.

MS MacDONALD (11.39): I endorse what Ms Tucker has said about the report. I would mention as well, as flagged in the report on the Education Committee's report into the annual reports, that the Health Committee has also recommended that all reviews undertaken by, for, or within the department be included as appendixes. I got the idea from looking at the annual report for Education, Youth And Family Services, and took it along to the committee. Thanks to the acting secretary, I think we got much better wording than that which is in the education report.

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