Page 3671 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 26 August 2009
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supported by the report. We fully agree with paragraph (3), and I understand the government will also be agreeing with that.
Let me move on to the more substantive issues. I have to say that this is a very interesting report, and I am very pleased that the government has tabled it so that we can all have a better idea of what is happening in TAMS. The first point I want to make is about the amount of unfunded things that TAMS is required to do. Page 25 of the report says that the programs and services were amalgamated into one department as part of the Chief Minister’s leaner, more focused public service initiative which anticipated the generation of $18 million in savings. However, as it goes on to say at some length—so I will not bother quoting—basically there was an anticipation of savings without any clear planning for how those savings would actually eventuate. As they say, as is usually the case in mergers and acquisitions, be it government or non-government, savings that are anticipated never usually seem to quite eventuate. That seems to be the case for TAMS in particular. They have been asked to perform and do more with less, and that is clearly one of TAMS’s significant issues.
The report goes on also to talk quite a bit about the cost pressures in TAMS, and I will briefly touch upon some of those. Firstly, I want to talk about what it says on page 6—that the unfunded maintenance expenditure of $25 million represents the annual budget shortfall identified by Roads ACT in maintenance of roads, pavements, bridges, stormwater, traffic signals, lines and signs, community paths and street lighting. The point that I would like to make is that we have got these assets and as a community we have to look after them. We all know the stories that have come from other councils—TAMS is to quite an extent our local council—where road maintenance is not done. It only costs more in the long run.
The second point I would like to make is that, given we are not adequately managing to maintain our road and footpath network to date—that is what this report is saying—we need to seriously look at how we do transport in the ACT. Can we afford to keep going by constructing more and more roads without having the funding to maintain them? This is something you would be expecting the Greens to say, and I will say it again: we need to look at our transport system. If we are not managing to maintain the roads at present, why build more of them? We need to look at a transport system like more public transport, more cycle ways and better footpaths so that people feel safer to walk on them, and a system that is less resource intensive in the long run to maintain.
Another point made is that apparently TAMS does over 1,000 different services, so it is very difficult to produce KPIs and meaningful reporting indicators. That is a theme that the estimates committee took up as part of its recommendations. This was not just for TAMS, obviously, but it would seem on the basis of this report that probably TAMS is one of the areas where we should have most to say about this. What appears to be the case is that the government does not have a sufficient, cohesive set of strategic indicators to work out what the real priorities are and, therefore, where the money should go when funding is tight. Certainly there are comments through this report about the many areas where there are no KPIs and no reporting. That is understandable if there are 1,000 of them, but I cannot see, as I have said before, how the government can effectively balance the competing budget priorities if it does not have strategic indicators which enable it to see what is the more important thing.
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