Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service and Integrity) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Goldstein says that being here last week with the Assistant Treasurer was the worst experience he has had, but I think that you and I have both shared much worse experiences than that in our lives. He asks three questions, most of which do not fall into my direct portfolio responsibility—but, yes, I will get back to him with an answer to those questions in the way in which he has put them. I cannot promise that the answers I give will be more than the broad outline of why the government is doing what it is doing and how the parliamentary arrangements came about, but I will do that.

In 2011-2012 the Finance and Deregulation portfolio will be appropriated $601.1 million from Appropriation Bill (No. 1) for the ordinary annual services of the government. This will include departmental capital budget funding of $23.8 million, about $400,000 million in departmental supplementation, and administered capital funding of $3.3 million. The Finance and Deregulation portfolio will also be appropriated $210.2 million from Appropriation Bill (No. 2) for non-operating purposes.

A number of new measures were announced in the 2011-12 budget for the Finance portfolio. I will enumerate some of those. The government will provide $7.2 million over five years to increase the number of parliamentarians' personal employees by a total of 10 positions. The additional staff will allow members and senators to better manage their workload and provide them with greater capacity for consultation, understanding and decision making. The unique circumstances of the 43rd parliament have required this, both in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. Members who hold critical positions have required additional resourcing and additional support, and as part of the normal process of ensuring that members of parliament can function properly we have provided additional staff in order to allow just for that. Other measures include appropriations of $2.3 million in 2011-12 to investigate and test ways to improve individuals' ease and use of access to Australian government services. This funding will be used for a scoping study, a technical pilot and business case, improvements to be explored including allowing individuals to communicate updated details to multiple agencies simultaneously, and improve filling in forms using information previously submitted to a government agency. There will also be the ability for individuals to view all of the government communications in one place.

I will say more about the idea of what the government wants later in this session, but the initiative is designed to create both a better digital environment for our citizens and better information management for government, and it is consistent with a drive over time from governments of Australia to ensure that the benefits of the digital revolution are felt by our citizens and can also be used to the advantage of government, reducing both the cost of service delivery from government and increasing the efficiency. The capacity to do this is important to our citizens and I will speak about it in detail as we progress through the session.

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