Page 4862 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 1 November 2017
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you cannot do a recurring direct debit for your car rego. You can do that for your rates; you can do that for your land tax. Why can’t we do this for our car rego? He actually volunteered to do this for the ACT government, but I said that I thought the ACT government could probably manage to do it itself.
I assume the situation is that the ACT government brought in the motor vehicle registry system—a very long time ago I was the IT manager for that system—and it must be an external system. That is why the government has not been able to set up a recurring direct debit for it, in the way that it has for rates and land tax. That is something that, in the continuum of government services, we should do.
Another thing that I want to mention, which was alluded to here, is that a lot more government services are being provided electronically. In general, this is a very good thing because it is more efficient and it reduces the cost to the government, which means it reduces the cost to the taxpayer. Also, in many instances, it is vastly more convenient for the people of Canberra. But there are a small number of people, as Ms Lee alluded to, who find that this just does not work for them. Either they are older and computers are not really a part of their lives or they cannot find the right bit on the computer. One of the frustrating things about computers is that if you have the right words you can usually find something, but if you are looking for accommodation and the computer article is about housing, for instance, you may never find it. Sometimes considerable frustration occurs and, if there was a human being that you could speak to, they would say, “No, what you really need is this, this and this.”
When I have used the concierge system at Access Canberra, it has been very good. I would say that is a really positive step forward, but it is possibly not in enough places. What about all the libraries in Canberra? They do not have to become full Access Canberra shopfronts and they should not be taking money, but they all have computers and they should have someone there who is trained in what fix my street and Access Canberra can do so that they can be human service people for people in Canberra who are trying to interact with the ACT government and who cannot quite work out how to do it. This could be another access point which would be very cheap and efficient for the government. We already have library staff who see it as their job to be information custodians. It would be something that could fit reasonably well.
The other area where there is a bit of tension in terms of efficiency and equity is after-hours access to shopfronts. I totally appreciate that, from the point of view of the working conditions of Access Canberra staff, doing it from nine to five is clearly a good thing. But from the point of view of many people who work during those hours, it may sometimes be a problem. As Ms Lee highlighted, sometimes you have to wait for an hour or an hour and a half. I wonder if it might be possible, on one evening a week or one morning a week, to have an early opening or a late closing. It could be trialled so that we can work out whether it would be used by a significant number of people. Even if there were not a significant number, there could be a group of people who say, “This actually is the only time I can come.”
I think Access Canberra is going in the right direction. The reviews proposed by Ms Lee in the motion are a step in the right direction. I commend Ms Lee and the government for their work on this motion. I am very happy to support it.
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