16 August 2011
Mr MORRIS (Mornington) — I want to make some comments this morning on the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee report on the estimates but on part 2 of the report. Part 1, which the member for Gippsland East was just referring to, was an analysis of some key aspects of the budget and included references to the evidence given by ministers at the hearings, whereas part 2, which was tabled on 30 June examines the departmental performance measures, examines the program performance measures, considers some options for improvements and reviews those performance measures that are proposed for discontinuance or are proposed for substantial variation.
The report makes some 24 recommendations, which, if adopted, will certainly lead to improved clarity for not only this house but for the Parliament as a whole and indeed for the people of Victoria.
I may have had a bit of a misspent youth in that from an early time I was very interested in the way budgets were presented — in the formats, the clarity and the sort of idea of government activity that you could get from those documents. Indeed the first state budget I had a close look at was a budget of the Cain government of 1986. That was in the early days of program budgeting; it was back in the days when the word ‘programme’ still had two Ms and an E. It was in the very early days of performance measures, when financial statements were very much cash statements rather than accrual‑based as they are today.
That practice of looking closely at budgets continued throughout my time in local government, and indeed it is a practice that I renewed prior to my election to this Parliament. Clearly it is an acquired taste, but one thing that became very obvious fairly early in the piece is that programs evolve.
The scope of a program, the shape of a program and the very existence of a program need to be reconsidered each year as the demands of the community and the demands of the state change, and of course as a consequence indicators need to change as well. However, unfortunately the change of indicators often seems to occur unnecessarily, quite often simply for the political convenience of the government of the day, and that makes year‑on‑year comparisons of actual performance very difficult.
Having had some experience in this, I was very pleased to hear the Minister for Finance specifically request the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee to review the performance measures proposed for discontinuance or proposed for substantial change by the government.
The Minister wrote to the committee to that effect in May, and concluded by saying:
The government is therefore moving in this budget to enhance accountability for its performance measures by adopting the policy of not discontinuing or substantially changing an existing output performance measure without the prior approval of PAEC.
That is an excellent thing, and it certainly improves transparency.
Briefly, there are some key findings of the committee in part 2 of this report. There is agreement across jurisdictions that nationally and as states we can do better in performance management and reporting. Certainly there is scope for improvement in Victoria, and the committee has formed the view that the central agencies — the Department of Premier and Cabinet and the Department of Treasury and Finance — could take a lead in a review of our current performance measures, particularly in the development of guidelines and principles because the situation is not always clear.
There is a considerable difference between outputs and outcomes, and only a relatively small proportion of the performance measures relate to outcomes rather than simply outputs.
The committee considered that the Government’s new strategic management framework had the potential to improve that as well.
I certainly commend the report to members, it is not a large report, and it contains very useful information.
Legislative Assembly 16 August 2011
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