Page 2665 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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share that knowledge with the community so that we can have a reasonable debate highlights how little trust the government has in the community. We only have to look at some of the areas where information has been released by the functional review. The review has been soundly debunked by the community as being an inaccurate misrepresentation of the amount of spending on tourism in the territory. I am concerned that that is enough to cast enough doubt on the validity of the review.
In the 1992-93 budget, Rosemary Follett was saying, “We are going to have shared services. The bureau will work. It will be a great thing.” Then, in 1993, Lou Westende was saying in the Assembly, “We warned you. It didn’t work. You have not made the savings. It is a failure. It is delivering less service.” When we get down to it, this sort of model has to be aimed at delivering more service. If we look at the Western Australian experience, it has led to a loss of knowledge and a loss of service. The big office over there or down there does not know how we operate in our part of the ACT public service. That knowledge, where you can go and see your personnel section or finance section or whatever and talk to the people who look after you about your needs, will be lost. The ability to manage staff appropriately not only for the benefit of the government but also for the benefit of the staff will be lost.
In Western Australia that benefit was lost, leading to a decrease in efficiency. It cost more staff and more time and did not deliver the dividend that they expected and they lost some of the effectiveness of having in-house services and interdepartmental services looking after the particular needs of the department. What will happen here is that the section that currently looks after foster carers in one department will be now lobbed together with the department that looks after the emergency services authority. They will all be in one big conglomeration. Needs will be different. This is not a case of one-size-fits-all. We need to make sure that we get effective management.
I hope that 12 months from now we actually do have the review. I hope it works. I would hate to see the taxpayers’ money wasted in this way. But, based on what we have lifted from WA, based on the way the story kept changing as the Chief Minister was pursued over this whole issue, based on what has been presented in the papers and based on the fact that we have not been allowed to see the underlying premise of this functional review, my fear and my prediction are that it will not work. In fact, like the emergency services authority, the hospital, the schools, the Gungahlin Drive extension, the link building, the prison, the glassworks and CHRIS 21, this will all end up costing the ACT taxpayer more dollars.
MR PRATT (Brindabella) (4.47): In their dissenting report, Messrs Pratt and Smyth recommended that we not proceed with shared services—
Mrs Dunne: You are talking about yourself in the third person, Pratty. I would be worried.
MR PRATT: It is a bit like stepping out of your body, Mrs Dunne, or moving to a parallel universe—or even cross-dressing, but we will not go into that.
Mr Smyth and I recommended that we not proceed with this particular centre. We were not convinced there would be efficiencies and economies of scale developed by this concept of shared services. The government has said that the centre would combine the
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