Page 2438 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 22 August 2006
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Proposed expenditure—Part 1.4—Chief Minister’s Department, $36,418,000 (net cost of outputs), $35,653,000 (capital injection), totalling $72,071,000.
MR MULCAHY (Molonglo) (12.20): The true value of the amounts in appropriations for the Chief Minister’s Department can be both difficult to gauge and almost impossible to compare with previous appropriations, due to the constant reinvention of this department by the Chief Minister and his revolving door of responsibilities in the ACT government.
In one read of this you may note that there is a decrease in funding, but the real impact of this change to appropriation will only be known after the dust settles from yet another reshuffling of ministerial responsibilities within this government. The estimates committee has revealed serious areas of concern with this department, several of which I will now touch upon for the information of the Assembly.
The transfer of the environment and heritage sections of the department into the Department of the Territory and Municipal Services is the latest reshuffle in a long line of portfolio movements and shifts in responsibility since 2001 that serve to confuse public servants and cause unnecessary expense to the taxpayer. Such transfers only create additional work for existing staff and require the creation of additional task forces such as the one now proposed for the new Shared Services Centre, with no guarantee that any real efficiencies will be achieved by such efforts.
The Chief Minister is still holding onto the arts portfolio but has not saved it from another confusing transformation from artsACT to arts by another name, the throwing together of all the disparate elements of art funding into one lump sum and failure to track how much of that pot of money is being devoted to which element.
The estimates committee, and through subsequent questions put on notice, was unable to demystify this section of the Chief Minister’s Department’s budget. We are still waiting for an answer to a request for the funding breakdown for artsACT or the ACT arts fund, the ANU faculty of arts, the cultural council, the government’s arts facilities and public arts programs—seemingly beyond the ability of the department to specify at this stage. We eagerly await this information to be clarified at the department’s earliest convenience.
Further, as the executive director of arts, heritage and environment conceded in estimates, the problem of poorly timed deadlines for arts grants is a real issue raised by those within the arts community. As I have opposition responsibility for the arts area and make a diligent attempt to attend many events within that area of portfolio activity, I hear this issue raised frequently and genuinely on a number of occasions. To cite the executive director’s evidence, it was noted as follows:
That is an issue that we are very well aware of and in the current process we are looking at bringing some of those forward, programming them so that they can come out a bit earlier. That is something the cultural council and Arts ACT have looked at. We are trying to adjust that a bit.
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