| Please provide a brief summary of your suggestion. | Use existing Government resources more effectively to increase equity in the Territory. Place a deliberate focus on increasing the benefits of current economic growth/wellbeing for the vulnerable and disadvantaged in our community. Use funds from the investment portfolio if required to ensure that early intervention activities are increased, the social determinants of health are addressed and support for vulnerable people is accessible across the Territory. |
| What services do you believe are most important for the Territory? | The framing of this question is not helpful. The ACT Budget is about more than services. It needs to be on a strategic development process for the whole Territory. That process needs to be based on evidence, such as that underpinning the social determinants of health and equity. Getting the distribution of economic benefit to be more equitable; focussing on early intervention across all human services; and addressing housing affordability and public housing availability are all critical to building a community in which everyone can live a decent life. While challenges faced in the ACT may not be as significant as in other parts of Australia they must still be addressed. The impact of relative poverty in the ACT is enormous, as the "salt and peppering" of public housing means people live next door to those who are much more affluent and are able to easily see the level of disparity between them. |
| How can the Government deliver current services more efficiently and productively or to better meet the needs of Canberrans? | A major focus on how the procurement system works to create much greater efficiency in its own operations is desperately required. The focus on competitive tendering needs reconsideration, along with investigation of current best practice in procurement methods. The Government must address the discontinuity between its rhetoric of promoting collaboration and partnership and its processes of promoting competition, especially in tendering processes for community services. The process of procurement should also take into account the commonalities between human services directorates and ways that procurement can reflect responses to "wicked problems", which require action that is not constrained to current government silos. |
| Are there particular services that you consider the Government should stop delivering or should deliver in a different way? | The biggest improvement that the Government could make to service delivery would be to work on developing an integrated set of human service systems - such that health, education, community services and justice were intrinsically interlinked. It must become possible to link what happens in early childhood (eg: MACH nurse/midwife visits and referrals) through to issues that are specific to education (such as school readiness in the AEDC domains) and to community service support for families that need it. This is just one example. It has to be more holistic than it is currently. The Government needs to give up the habits of functioning separately and learn new, evidence based, integrated practices. |
| Are there any new ways to generate revenue and/or services you consider that the community should make a direct contribution to (a fee for service)? | It is the Government's responsibility to ensure that it assigns its resources to best support its citizens, especially the most vulnerable. Consideration must be given to how resources are distributed between, as well as within, portfolio areas. It is not smart enough to say that x resources have been assigned to one Directorate and that is all that is available. The Government must look at its distribution of resources across the whole and reassign resources to focus on those matters that are demonstrated to improve the livelihoods and quality of life of Canberrans, especially the most vulnerable. |
| What can the Government do to make Canberra even more liveable? | Increase equity across the community. |
