Page 1140 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 3 May 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
quoted earlier the example of tourism where obviously the government, or the report, has not compared apples with apples. The government runs the flag up the flagpole that we are overfunded by 73 per cent in tourism. If that is indeed the recommendation of the Costello report, we have got things to be worried about.
I then relayed the news that of course this had all been tried before by the Follett Labor government. The interesting thing is that nobody will acknowledge whether or not they knew that this had been tried before. The Chief Minister did not; Mr Hargreaves did not. We are still none the wiser. That is why this report must be tabled.
Then we can move to the example of Western Australia. Mr Costello did a similar report for Western Australia and it has been heralded as some sort of success over there. But, if you go to the Department of Treasury and Finance on the Western Australian government web site and see what the objectives of the savings were, you can see that it is nothing but an abject disaster. The reports coming out of Western Australia now are that the management of their public servants is less efficient and less effective—and to boot it has not saved the government a cent and has cost them a fortune.
If you go to page 14 and 15 of the report entitled Government of Western Australia—Department of Treasury and Finance—strategic business review of corporate services reform within the Western Australian Government sector—7 July 2003 you will see that I am right. When they started this process—when they absolutely started the process, the very, very first year—there was meant to be an expected benefit of $7 million, the following year of $6.2 million, the year after that, 2005-06, of $30 million and in 2006-07 of $40 million. These are significant numbers—$83 million.
But the costs far outweighed the benefits. In the first year, they were $18 million, in the second year $25 million, in the third year $22 million, and in the last year, 2006-07 they were $4.4 million, which should only cost them $70 million for a net saving of $13 million over the years. But what we know from the Western Australian experience is that, after the first three years of implementation, they have not saved a cent. It has cost them $50 million. They expect to spend a further $20 million this year. They have employed an extra 200 public servants.
They have not saved a cent but they have ruined the efficiency and the effectiveness of the Western Australian public service—and that is the whole point. If we are basing what the government is going to do in the upcoming budget on suggestions following the Western Australian model, we are in serious, serious trouble. This is a serious motion about a serious subject. We had the rhetoric and we had the verballing from the Chief Minister in question time about this being the Liberals’ legacy, this being Brendan Smyth’s legacy.
Let us just go to one area that he always forgets to mention. We were left with an operating loss, a $344 million operating loss, from the Follett government—the Follett government that set up the same process that Mr Stanhope intends to set up; the Follett government that set up the shared services group; the Follett government that had their own corporate services bureau and left us with a $344 million operating loss—an operating loss that we removed. What this government inherited was a surplus—hundreds of millions of dollars of unencumbered cash—to get on with the job. The money was there. If the money was not there, how has Mr Stanhope been able to spend it
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .