Address by The Hon Lindsay Tanner MP
Minister for Finance and Deregulation
22 June 2010, Canberra
Good morning, it is a pleasure to be here to kick off this conference for another year.
The State of the Nation has over the years become a major date on the Canberra calendar; the line-up of speakers you have over the next two days is testament to that.
This Government – as is the case with all Governments at some time or another – has received some criticism about the way we work with the business community of late.
I can assure each of you here that I – and my colleagues – highly value the input of businesses of all sizes into the policy development process. And it is in forums such as these that discussions around that input often begin.
So I would like to take this opportunity to commend CEDA for their work in bringing together business and Government.
I also understand 2010 is CEDA’s fiftieth anniversary and I congratulate all of those involved in the Committee for reaching that milestone.
The focus of this year’s conference is a topic that has been at the centre of much debate in the past six months. Since the Government released the third Intergenerational Report earlier this year, nearly everybody has had their say on Australia’s changing demographics – and more specifically how we are going to deal with those changing demographics.
Unfortunately most of the debate has focused on Treasury’s prediction that our population would reach 35 million by the mid-point of this century, and much of it has been of the doomsday variety.
We’ve heard suggestions that if we do reach 35 million people our cities would come to a standstill, our rivers would be drained dry and the “Australian way of life” would be lost forever. I can even recall a prominent Australian telling a radio station that we needed to stop this growth unless we want to see a population of 100 million by the end of the century.
What this extreme kind of commentary does is take away from the ability to have a rational public discussion. There is no doubt that an ageing and growing population presents Australia with a host of challenges. But they are challenges we can meet as a society.
What is needed is for serious discourse to occur around the issues; for informed discussion to occur on how our changing demographics really will impact on the environment; our need for infrastructure and services; and the nation’s economy.
That is why I am pleased to be part of this conference and to see so many leaders of Australian business keen to join in the discussion.
The last two years I have spoken to you about the Government’s program to improve Budget transparency – Operation Sunlight – and about our continual efforts to find savings in the Budget.
As is the case with most of the work I have direct responsibility for as Minister for Finance and Deregulation, it is not necessarily headline grabbing stuff. But I think that as business leaders, those of you in this room today recognise more than most, the importance of improving the internal workings of an organisation.
The topic I want to focus on today is similar in that it is improving the way the Government does business.
I would like to take this opportunity to talk to you about the Rudd Government’s agenda to reform the way we deliver services to Australians.
As our population grows and ages over the coming decades, there is going to be a significant increase in the demand for services. An increasing proportion of our population reaching retirement age will in particular present a major challenge for delivery of government services.
The Government’s aim in delivering services to citizens is very much in line with the aims private business has in its interaction with customers and the broader public.
First and foremost we want a system that works for the people receiving services, rather than the people delivering the services.
While for some of us, interactions with government service providers will be infrequent and incidental, millions of Australians rely on support from Governments – federal, state and local.
The social service and welfare agencies in particular, are central to the lives - or at least a period in the lives – of many Australians.
It is often the case that those using agencies such as Centrelink are doing so because of difficult circumstances in their lives. The social safety net that we have in this country today exists because of the Australian belief in assisting those in need.
As a government, it is our duty to see those services are delivered as effectively as possible.
The Minister for Human Services, my colleague Chris Bowen has responsibility for the majority of these social service agencies and is taking the lead in this area. I will go into more detail on the reforms he has been instituting in a moment.
There are a number of other services the Government provides as well. These are services such as applying for a passport or submitting a tax return that most of us utilise at some point or another.
When we do interact with these service delivery agencies we want the process to be as quick and efficient as possible. The Government must ensure people’s needs are met.
The Government’s second goal in delivering services is that those services are delivered in the most efficient way possible.
Any of you that work in businesses with multiple physical public interfaces will know exactly how important it is to get the best geographic coverage using the least amount of resources.
The Government’s resources are, of course, finite and every extra dollar that is spent on delivering services is a dollar less we have to achieve their intended purpose.
It was with all this in mind that the Rudd Government has commenced a major reform of the way the Australian Government delivers services.
With the impending increase in pressure that will be on service delivery agencies as the country’s demographic changes, it is evident our current service delivery structure is in need of a major overhaul.
Current arrangements are fragmented and characterised by high levels of agency autonomy. And feedback indicates many Australians find the services offered confusing, with little understanding on where they need to go for what services.
The Government has made better co-ordination of service delivery mechanisms a key priority and this is currently happening on two fronts.
Traditional interactions between citizens and service delivery agencies – particularly those agencies in the social welfare area – have occurred face-to-face in the physical office of the service provider.
If you wanted to make a claim on medical expenses you visited the local Medicare office, if you needed to discuss your social security benefits you visited the local Centrelink office.
This is not only inefficient for the Government, in that we are paying to have multiple shop-fronts in a single location; it is also inefficient for the person travelling between each office and retelling their story to different Government agencies on multiple occasions.
To address this issue the Minister for Human Services has commenced a program of co-locating agency offices within his portfolio.
A good example is at Batemans Bay, on the NSW South Coast, where a new community hub is being developed. The purpose-built building will house all the Human Services agencies – Centrelink, Medicare, Commonwealth Rehabilitation Services, Australian Hearing and visiting Child Support services.
The feedback received at other co-located offices has been extremely positive and the Government is currently looking at broadening the scope of agencies involved.
These traditional channels of service delivery are crucial to the way the Government delivers services and need to be maintained, but increasingly the Government is looking to focus on delivering services online.
It is the online component of our service delivery reforms that provide the vehicle to revolutionise the way citizens and Government interact in this country and that – for someone concerned with the operations of Government – is an exciting prospect.
Each year my department conducts a study into how Australians interact with Government. This year’s report shows that for the second year in a row the Internet is the most common way people last made contact with government.
In spite of the less than optimal web-based services the Government has offered in the past, there is a general acceptance of technological change in the community; change that is transforming transactional convenience and capability.
You only need to look at the online services offered in the private sector – particularly in industries such as banking, retail and travel – to see that government has not kept pace in this area and significantly lags behind best practice.
Our efforts to date to improve online service delivery have largely been uncoordinated, with disparate and disconnected systems being developed across agencies at substantial cost to government and inconvenience to online clients.
To address that issue my department has been working on a tool to streamline people’s engagement with government through a more accessible single whole-of-government interface.
Our aim is for the Australia.gov.au website to become a single whole of government on-line service portal through which the majority of interactions between citizens and Government could occur.
This move towards greater online engagement is very much in line with the Government’s Gov 2.0 agenda for which I am primarily responsible.
Twelve months ago Senator Joseph Ludwig and I created a taskforce to report to us on how the Australian Government could utilise web2.0 approaches to improve engagement with, and deliver better services to, the public.
One of the key recommendations of that taskforce was encouraging public servants to engage with the public online. Our service delivery reforms will give public servants a further reason for doing that.
Finally I would just like to speak briefly about a project that will enhance the ability of Australians to engage online with Government, but also has much broader implications for the Australian economy and society.
You will have read in yesterday’s papers that last weekend the Government announced historic heads of agreement between NBN Co and Telstra.
It’s an agreement that paves the way for delivering the national broadband network. It also provides us with a clear pathway towards reforming the telecommunications sector to achieve structural separation.
This structural separation is a significant and long overdue microeconomic reform that will ensure Australia finally has a genuinely competitive telecommunications industry.
The agreement involves a progressive migration of customers from Telstra’s copper and cable networks to NBN Co’s new wholesale-only fibre network, plus the re-use of suitable Telstra infrastructure – including pits, ducts and backhaul fibre.
In effect this means that once the NBN rollout is complete and Telstra has completed the migration of its customers to the NBN, Australia will be served by a national, wholesale-only network not controlled by any retail company.
In other words, structural separation of the wholesale and retail components – so long argued for by many stakeholders in this sector, including the ACCC – will have been achieved.
For the people in this room the benefits from universal access to superfast broadband will be in the boost it will provide to innovation and productivity in this country.
The opportunities created by the a super fast information network are limitless – the talent, skills and imagination of people in communities all around Australia will be unleashed – driving local and national economic growth.
It will create new opportunities for education, for health and aged care, for infrastructure management, for energy conservation and for businesses or all shapes and sizes.
The delivery of services to Australian citizens is at the core of the Commonwealth Government’s obligations. And with our country’s population growing and ageing over the coming decades there will be increased pressure on the agencies delivering services to citizens.
The need to find more effective and efficient ways to deliver these services is at the heart of the Rudd Government’s service delivery reform agenda.
As I said at the outset, it may not be the sexiest work this Government will undertake, but ensuring Australians can access the services they need is crucial nonetheless.
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