Page 518 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 21 February 2018
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excellent, but when it comes to actual purchasing decisions made on a day-to-day basis, it gets more difficult.
For governments and individuals, as well as business, it can be hard to balance competing priorities. Value for money is not always the same as what is most ethical. How do you balance food miles with the carbon footprint, waste production with ethical employment, or local employment with sustainable consumption? A social procurement process identifies intended social impacts or outcomes as an integral part of developing the procurement scope and objectives. This can achieve value for money and be undertaken in accordance with the territory’s procurement framework.
A great example of social procurement is the Ginninderry SPARK program. This began many years ago as a construction training program, with wraparound supports and mentoring, leading directly to employment opportunities in building in the west Belconnen area. The program has gone from strength to strength and expanded into training young people for other job opportunities in the new development, and I would love to see the ACT government emulate this.
The ACT government has established an open panel of pre-qualified social enterprises to supply a range of services required by government from time to time. I had a briefing about this last year. From memory, the number of enterprises on it is very small; unfortunately, it did not appear that they were getting a lot of work from the ACT government.
Another way we can improve our procurement is by enabling Australian disability enterprises to win government contracts. These are enterprises that provide an important opportunity for people with a disability to contribute and connect to their local community. In particular, people with moderate to severe disability can engage in a wide variety of work tasks matched to their capacity. This can provide a training pathway and the all-important work experience needed for employment in the open job market. BuyAbility is an example of an organisation under the national disability strategy that has been used to great effect in the ACT to promote and facilitate procurement of Australian disability enterprises.
While we are speaking of disability employment issues, and while it is not directly related to procurement but certainly of great importance, I refer to the direct employment of people with a disability. The Greens are pleased that the government is meeting its targets for disability employment. But I would like to draw members’ attention to the HACS committee inquiry last year into disability employment opportunities, which recommended that the ACT government develop a standalone disability employment strategy for the ACT public service, and that that strategy should include a paid internship program and clear employment pathways.
Two other important recommendations from the committee were that all procurement guidelines for ICT products purchased by the ACT government should include accessibility features as a standard, and that the ACT government should review the ACT government’s social procurement guidelines to better support disability employment.
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