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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-06-23 Daily Xml
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Question Time

PUBLIC SECTOR PERFORMANCE COMMISSION

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (14:58): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister Assisting the Premier in Public Sector Management a question regarding the Public Sector Performance Commission.

Leave granted.

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: I refer the minister to information now in the public domain concerning the Public Sector Performance Commission, formerly the Government Reform Commission. The Government Reform Commission ran for two years (2006 to 2008) under former Queensland premier Wayne Goss. It was meant to 'establish a baseline against which to measure improved performance across the public sector' and to 'further develop the South Australian Executive Service'. One of its recent achievements was 'concluding a successful audit of inconsistencies that will see a rollout of a new framework'.

I note that in recent years the chief executive of the commission has had his salary more than doubled; the commission's staffing has swollen; it uses $1.61 million in salaries per annum; it had a $5.5 million establishment cost; and it costs $2.7 million per annum to run, notwithstanding that the government recently told 360 public servants that they would have to do more with less, as the public sector razor gang looms large.

The minister assisting the Premier, recently described in the media as the minister for public service management, was said to have been unable to cite one dollar of savings achieved by the commission. I feel for the minister here, whom I have time for, as he had to make the media comment, as he often has to, to take the rap for the senior government minister, in this case the Premier. My questions are:

1. What dollar savings for the budget has the commission achieved?

2. What are the key performance indicators for the commission and has it achieved them?

3. Is it fair for the Public Service to be asked to do more with less when commissions such as this one seem to be unaccountable?

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY (Minister for Mineral Resources Development, Minister for Urban Development and Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister Assisting the Premier in Public Sector Management) (15:00): To address the last question first, the Public Service Performance Commission is not unaccountable. In fact—

The Hon. R.I. Lucas: A waste of space.

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: What we are getting is a policy from the Liberals and their friends, the suggestion that within our Public Service we should not worry about things like performance and recruitment, just leave it and do not have a central agency that is looking at lifting the performance and at how we can recruit the best young people from our universities into our Public Service, nor worrying about training them to give the best performance. Let's not worry about that. If you want to have a 19th century cricket oval, I guess you would have a 19th century public service too—it all fits rather well together.

To address some of the issues made in the press article to which the honourable member has referred, it was suggested that the Public Sector Performance Commission has at times expanded from 15 to 22 people. I am advised that the Public Sector Performance Commission has never had 22 staff. The highest number of people employed by the commission was 18 for a period of approximately one month. Currently 10 people are employed. It was claimed that the PSPC has seconded up to seven staff from other departments over and above its publicly stated staffing levels. I am informed this is not correct. All secondments are counted in the total staffing figure, which has never exceeded 18 and is currently 10. Secondments are a cost effective way of delivering time-limited projects.

I am also advised that the honourable member's claim that the PSPC cost $5.5 million to establish is incorrect. The establishment costs were met through the annual recurrent budget allocation. I believe the honourable member implied that the $1.6 million salaries allocation for 2008-09 is additional to this year's budget of $2.7 million. I am advised that the total budget for 2009-10 is $2.767 million, inclusive of salaries.

Claims were also made that the work of the Public Sector Performance Commission is about cutting jobs and finding budget savings. That is not correct; that is the job of the Sustainable Budget Commission. Rather, the job of the Public Sector Performance Commission is to promote efficiencies that will allow agencies to live within their tighter budgets. We have seen in budgets all around this country that in areas such as health and disability demand is growing far faster than revenue and, if we are to meet those demands, there is only one way to do it. Actually, there are two or three ways to do it: one is to keep increasing taxation, and the other way is to find efficiencies in other areas so we can meet the unmet demand, or some combination of those. There is no other way of doing it.

The Public Sector Performance Commission commenced effective operations from July 2008. It is steered by an outstanding private and public sector board comprising Professor Jennifer Westacott, Professor Roy Green, Estelle Bowman, Professor Barbara Pocock, Dr Tom Stubbs, Jim Hallion and Mal Hyde. It has a top board. The Public Sector Performance Commission has been involved in a number of key projects in this state. One was the Public Sector Act that went through. The honourable member talks about what savings it has made, and it would be very hard to quantify them, but we can say that the Public Sector Act, which has now been passed by both houses of parliament, will significantly change the way in which the public sector performs in this state, and it will undoubtedly improve the efficiency of it. How one quantifies those measures—and if we try to put a dollar figure on it the honourable member would argue with that.

I do not think anyone would argue—otherwise, presumably, it would have been rejected by the parliament—that there is a need to overhaul the legislation under which the public sector performs and the measures in which it does so. The PSPC designed and commenced the trialling of the high-performance framework, which is an improvement tool for public sector agencies. The framework helps set clear performance expectations and measures across the public sector with respect to key performance issues. If one does not want to have a body like this—

The Hon. R.I. Lucas: Hear, hear!

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: Well, there we are—hear, hear! The opposition says, 'Let's not even look at it.' I suppose one can understand that, if one does not look at things, one can hide things. It is a bit like the APY lands: 'Don't put any police up there because no-one will go up there. If it's all hidden, no-one will know what is happening, so nothing will happen up there.' The fact that under a Liberal government we had no police officers in the APY lands was a disgrace, but I guess it was politically successful because nobody looked at what was happening up there. So, all the things that were happening—petrol sniffing, child abuse and all that sort of thing—were not exposed.

We see from the comments of the shadow minister for tracking the broken promises of government that the opposition does not really believe in having some focus on improving performance within the public sector. What that high-performance framework does is build on the present annual chief executive performance appraisals to provide greater accountability for achieving strong results and to measure performance over time.

The South Australian public sector is the largest employer in South Australia. This is what the public sector also needs to do. The framework will assist in productivity improvement. It will help bring agencies together to work on performance issues cooperatively and it will help agencies to live within their budgets over the medium term.

We know what happened with the health commission when the shadow minister for tracking the broken promises of government was treasurer: they were all blowing out their individual budgets, so just before the 2002 election he told them to hide them. That was a shameful episode in this state's history. That was what was happening within the health budget: no attempt was made to try to improve the efficiency of dealing with those budgets; rather, it was just sort of leave them all out of the individual agencies and cover it up.

There has also been the development of a training guarantee for our South Australian Executive Service. We need to invest in leaders of the highest calibre, and that means ensuring—

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: We are talking about our senior public servants being properly inducted into the service, that we develop their skills throughout their careers, and that we plan for succession. That is particularly important now with an ageing workforce in this state, and that is as true in the public sector as it is elsewhere. We have to plan for succession and the next group of leaders through good succession planning.

If we do not have a centralised agency of government—as the opposition clearly do not—how are we going to do that? We will be expecting higher performance from our executive leaders in the future. That means we need to invest in them. We need to invest in leaders who know where we will need to be in five to 10 years, with a plan to help get us there.

Last year, the Public Sector Performance Commission ran the state's first sector-wide South Australian Executive Service induction, with a second to take place in early July. Since the commission took over responsibility for the Executive Service on 1 July 2008, there has been a 77 per cent increase in membership, with 505 of the 568 eligible executives now members of the South Australian Executive Service. That was as at 31 March.

The Public Sector Performance Commissioner has also been working on cross-agency action teams and has been developing executive leaders through cross-agency arrangements on practical problem-solving projects, from improving ambulatory care to reducing the call on high user groups, on child protection and related services, developing executive leaders and improving how governments engage with communities. There is also the work of the PSPC, which has involved workforce plans.

The PSPC is developing plans to help use our workforce better for better services to the public. It is working on more efficient processes and practices, aimed at making the South Australian public sector an employer of choice. Our workforce is the key to higher productivity, and we must value and develop it across the whole of government. We need to improve coordination to deliver a strong workforce for the entire public sector. That is what the Public Sector Performance Commission is about; that is, it is about getting the best executives within our public sector and improving their calibre. The opposition clearly do not believe we need that.

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway interjecting:

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: A waste of time! They really think that you just keep managing—don't worry that half of our senior executives will be retiring in the next few years; we will worry about it when it happens. That is obviously their attitude.

In the world we live in, we cannot afford the luxury of that attitude. We need to make sure that we are recruiting the best graduates from our universities who will be the leaders in the future. We have been very fortunate to have a high level Public Service within this state but, with all the extra competition we have, that will continue only if we continue to build a high calibre executive service. That is the key role for a very modest price if one were to compare it with what happens at other levels of government. That is exactly what the Public Sector Performance Commission is about.

The PRESIDENT: The Hon. Mr Darley has a supplementary question.

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