State action needed for real reporting reform

Last week the NSW Audit Office released its first performance audit into NSW Local Government covering council reporting on service delivery. The report said most councils need to do a better job. The findings come as no shock to sector professionals, who believe there needs to be a reduction in the overall reporting burdens on […]

PC Report on Government Services – Child care, education and training

The final section of the Productivity Commission’s Report on Government Services (RoGS) has been released, covering child care, education and training (CCET). Expenditure on CCET services is significant. Total government expenditure on the sector was just under $71 billion in 2016-17, around 31.6 percent of total government expenditure on service. School education was the largest […]

PC Report on Government Services – Health

The Productivity Commission’s Report on Government Services (RoGS) has a large section on Health. The  sector is broken into public hospitals, primary and community health, ambulance services, and mental health management. Total government expenditure across Australia in 2016-17 for health services was estimated to be over $96.7 billion in 2015-16, around 43.2 per cent of […]

PC Report on Government Services – Emergency Management

The Productivity Commission’s Report on Government Services (RoGS) has a section on Emergency Management. These are categorised as Fire and State and Territory Emergency Services (STES). Ambulance services are covered separately in the Health section of the report. Total government expenditure across Australia in 2016-17 for fire and STES services was $4.3 billion, around 1.9 […]

PC Report on Government Services – Justice

The Productivity Commission’s Report on Government Services (RoGS) also covers Justice – Police, Courts and Corrective Services. Total government expenditure for the justice services measured in RoGS was almost $16 billion in 2016-17, around 7.2 percent of total government expenditure on services. Police services were the largest contributor (65.4 percent of this amount), followed by […]

PC Report on Government Services – Housing and Homelessness

The Productivity Commission’s Report on Government Services (RoGS) has a detailed section on governments’ delivery of services in the housing sector. It covers social housing services and subsidised rental housing provided by not-for-profit, non‑government or government organisations to assist people who are unable to access suitable accommodation through the private market. The report also examines […]

PC Report on Government Services – Community Services

The Productivity Commission’s Report on Government Services (RoGS) contain a large section on Community Services. It breaks the sector into four categories: aged care, services for people with disabilities, child protection services, and youth justice services. It is an enormous sector, second only to health. Total Federal, state and territory government recurrent expenditure on community […]

PC Report on Government Services – Approach to Performance Measurement

As the old saying goes, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Perhaps that is why the ‘Approach to performance measurement’ report is the first part of the Productivity Commission’s 2018 Report on Government Services series. This first component of the report focusses on the importance of measurement, the scope of the report, and methodology. […]

Productivity Commission Report on Government Services – Overview

The Productivity Commission has begun releasing its 23rd annual Report on Government Services (RoGS). It is major exercise, with separate chapters released in seven parts over the next week on all areas of government service delivery. Government News will examine each report in depth. Our special Australia Day newsletter will highlight all sections released by […]

GST distribution report delayed

Treasurer Scott Morrison has announced a delay of more than three months in the release of the Productivity Commission’s inquiry into how the Goods and Services Tax (GST) is distributed to the states. The distribution system, known as horizontal fiscal equalisation (HFE) has been widely criticised for giving too much to some states and too […]

Some regions are booming – others need ‘managed decline’

Government assistance to Australia’s regions has often been poorly directed, says the Productivity Commission in a major new report. It wants a more efficient system, which would admit that some regions are in decline and will remain so. The report, ‘Transitioning Regional Economies’ is the latest in a series of reports by the Productivity Commission […]

Consumers to own their own data, with new bill

The Federal Government has announced plans to legislate a national ‘Consumer Data Right’ bill, which will allow customers of banks, utilities and telecommunications companies better access to their transactional data. Under the proposed legislation consumers will own the data, not the companies they are dealing with. This will make it much easier for people to […]

Even the Productivity Commission wants a carbon price – OPINION

They didn’t make a big deal of it, but the Productivity Commission’s new five-year overview report, commissioned by the Federal Government, has recommended the introduction of a carbon price. The productivity commission is of course an advisory body, and the Government has explicitly ruled out a price on carbon or anything that can even remotely […]

Productivity Commission recipe for effective government

The Productivity Commission has released its first ever five-year productivity review, called ‘Shifting the Dial’. It was released in conjunction with the Commission’s annual report. It is “a look out across the landscape of factors and influences that may affect Australia’s economic performance over the medium term, in order to offer advice on where our […]

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