Page 1506 - Week 04 - Thursday, 25 March 2010
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The chair has already spoken about recommendation 7. Let us make sure that we report on the triple line properly so that it is accessible, so that it is easy. We are interested in this. We have staff who work for us, but the ordinary person who picks up some of these annual reports would find them incredibly hard to read.
Recommendation 14 says:
… that the Government consider including sustainability outcomes in the Chief Minister’s …‘Strategic Indicator 7—Improve the Innovation Capacity of the ACT Economy’.
We do need to improve the innovation capacity of the ACT economy. It is a recommendation the government should look at.
Let me go to recommendation 18, something that has been dear to my heart for some time. It says:
The Committee recommends that, in order to ensure the independence of the Commissioner for Public Administration, a person holding the office should not hold any other position with the ACT governance structure.
Otherwise you cannot have an independent Commissioner for Public Administration. You can have a government Commissioner for Public Administration, which is what we have now. I as a member of the Assembly cannot currently refer an issue to the Commissioner for Public Administration, because the only person that can do that is the Chief Minister, and he has not made very many referrals. No government is going to get the commissioner to investigate the government. The person needs to be independent. The person needs to be resourced. The job is very important, particularly in a unicameral system.
Recommendation 19 goes to the search for budgetary savings. It says:
The Committee recommends that the ACT Government clearly defines ‘priority services’ in the context of the ongoing search for budgetary savings.
We have had a document tabled in this place since we had the hearings, but again it is very unclear as to what really is a priority service.
Let me move to recommendation 20. Recommendation 20 looks at the report that Ernst & Young did for the Minister for Health. The Department of Treasury annual report 2008-09 details expenditure of $502,500 on a consultancy conducted by Ernst & Young entitled “Modelling health for the future: phase 1 and phase 2: professional services”. Under questioning, the Treasurer informed the committee that the consultancy was a review of the work that ACT Health had conducted relating to the expected growth in demand for health services and the associated cost. Given the huge amount of money, given the expense, the committee recommends that:
… the Treasurer report to the … Assembly on the outcome of, and Government response to, the review as soon as practicable.
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