Page 1474 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 6 June 2007
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There has always been capacity within this most significant central agency to develop policy advice to me as Chief Minister and, through me, to other ministers and other agencies. For instance, there was the very significant work undertaken by the affordable housing task force, with a most significant report that was leading Australia in its breadth and potential implications and that I have no doubt will be a model that will be adopted by other jurisdictions. That was led by the Chief Minister’s Department. It was a piece of most significant work which will have enormous implications for a large number of Canberrans. It is work that was driven out of the policy capacity and functions of the Chief Minister’s Department.
But the resources are thin—very thin. The Chief Minister’s Department would probably have the narrowest or thinnest policy capacity of any central agency of any government in Australia. We are seeking, through this very sensible decision to enhance the capacity of the ACT public service, to provide top-level advice to the ACT government on issues of significant concern to the ACT government and to the people of Canberra—issues such as affordable housing.
MR MULCAHY: I have a supplementary question for the Treasurer. How do you reconcile this expansion-of-policy back flip with your earlier claims to have contained the expansion of the bureaucracy in the ACT?
Mr Hargreaves: He just did.
MR STANHOPE: That is quite right; I just did. It is interesting, isn’t it, the silence that now emanates from the other side in relation to the Shared Services Centre? We remember this time last year the opposition, the scarifying commentary, the total scepticism around the capacity for a Shared Services Centre to deliver the sorts of results we see reflected in this budget that actually allow us, through the efficiencies that have been gained, to provide additional resources to priority areas. Those priority areas are reflected in jobs growth in this particular budget. There has been a significant reduction within essentially the clerical, broadly described, sections of the ACT public service.
In this budget we have invested the dividend from the restructuring and from the hard work that has been done over the last year in high-priority areas, areas of real need, such as an additional 16 ambulance officers; the nurses that are required, along with the doctors, to staff the theatres and the activity that will be generated by the additional $10 million for elective surgery; the disability services officers that will be employed as a result of the investment of another $16 million in disability services; the mental health staff and the community sector workers who will be engaged as a result of the additional $12½ million investment in mental health.
There will be additional employment. They will be ambulance drivers, they will be doctors, they will be nurses, they will be paramedics, they will be mental health workers, they will be people that will work to make the best possible return on the $68 million investment in health which is a central feature of this government, and they will occupy fundamentally important policy positions within the Chief Minister’s Department, an area of high priority and an area of fundamental need for any
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