Book 8 - Parliament of Victoria

STATEMENTS ON REPORTS AND PAPERS
1660 COUNCIL Wednesday, 1 June 2011
government, wastage of funding and money spent on
various programs.
It is fair to say that this state needs a government that
will administer public money in a responsible manner.
It certainly does not need a government that is going to
go from one financial blunder to another as the previous
government did with myki and the desalination plant, as
I have previously stated. There are a number of
programs that we are all aware of.
On page 9 the report states that the five goals for the
57th Parliament, as outlined by the Governor in his
speech, are: a growing economy; services that work;
strong families and vibrant communities; secure water
and a healthy environment; and government you can
trust. I would like to focus on the issue of services that
work, because there are a number of very interesting
areas that I think the Auditor-General will be looking
into. Those areas that will have a great focus include
access to public housing, addressing the ageing of the
teacher workforce, casual relief teacher arrangements,
compliance with building permits, individualised
funding for disability services, learning technologies in
government schools, maternity services capacity and
public transport performance.
Although there are many areas in this report that could
be commented upon, the one area I am particularly
interested in is in relation to maternity services
capacity. This is an area I have worked in in the past.
As the house is aware, I spent 10 years at the Royal
Women’s Hospital in that very area and worked in a
number of roles. At that time there were significant
challenges placed on both hospital resources and
resourcing. I think this is going to be a huge issue in the
future. The report states:
Demand for maternity services, while falling slightly during
2010, increased by more than 14 per cent between 1998 and
2009 … Older mothers and rising obesity have also increased
the level of complexity of maternity services.
They are some of the issues that we as a government
face. They are some of the issues that need to be
planned for. In my experience older mothers and an
increasing level of obesity will lead to higher risk
pregnancies, with more resources needed to manage
those pregnancies and very often the neonates.
In saying that, we have an obesity crisis across the
Western world. Here in Australia it is being highlighted
as a problem. I think we need to look at planning for the
future and putting appropriate initiatives into play,
which I am sure this government will do as we are
looking at it very closely. I look forward to hearing
about the outcomes of the audit program after it is
finally completed.
Auditor-General: annual plan 2011–12
Ms PULFORD (Western Victoria) — In the last
parliamentary sitting week I attended a briefing from
the Auditor-General and his staff. It was a most
informative briefing on the Victorian Auditor-General’s
Office annual plan. It is that report, which I believe was
tabled in this place on the same day, on which I would
like to make some comments this afternoon.
Firstly, I think it is appropriate to thank staff members
and the Auditor-General for their presentation. I
would certainly commend the report to all my
colleagues who were unable to be there, especially
part 2. Part 2 goes through the work plan for the office
of the Auditor-General and current and prospective
areas of performance audit focuses from now through
to 2014–15. I expect that a great deal of the work of
the office of the Auditor-General will be of interest to
members given the change in policy in many areas of
government administration in Victoria since the last
election. There are a few I would like to highlight.
One of the areas for prospective focus is the Melbourne
Markets redevelopment. The government has been
flip-flopping on this and has been really unclear about
it, despite the significant investment of public money
into a project that will provide enormous benefit to all
of the northern suburbs.
In 2013–14 there is some work to be done on the
changing profile of the public sector workforce. From
my reading of the budget papers I am not quite sure
how the government makes those numbers stack up,
maintains a wages policy of 2.5 per cent and delivers on
a number of election commitments around wages for
the public sector workforce. I would hazard a guess that
there will be some contraction in the public sector
workforce over the coming years. I will certainly be
very interested to see the result of the audit on the way
in which our public sector workforce is composed,
particularly the impact that a contraction would have on
front-line service delivery.
There is some work to be done on the
out-of-school-hours care program. Ms Mikakos has
frequently talked in this place about cuts to services that
are of critical importance to people with young
children. I see Mr Hall is in the chamber. He and I have
a great shared passion in the area of equitable access to
education for rural students, and we will probably be
rushing to see the results of that audit.