Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I present an interim report of the Community Affairs References Committee on the Commonwealth community service tendering processes by the Department of Social Services together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee.

Ordered that the report be printed.

I move:

  That the Senate take note of the report.

The committee is presenting this interim report to report on progress on its inquiry into the impact on the service quality, efficiency and sustainability of recent Commonwealth community service tendering processes by the Department of Social Services. We have held one hearing to date for this inquiry, and we have received 97 submissions so far. There are some very important issues that have been brought up so far by the submissions and at the day of hearing. As there is so much information and as the committee also has a heavy workload, we sought earlier in the Senate to extend our reporting date to August. However, because there are some key processes that are happening now—and I will go into those in a minute—the majority of the committee felt it was important to consider this interim report.

The grants process was a new process introduced when the government came in. Announcements were made during the budget about how the new programs for providing social services and supports would roll out across the country. The department opened a very extended tender process—extended in terms of what it covered, the particular services that were covered, and the grants that were covered—and they did it in a very short time frame. One chapter of this report deals specifically with one aspect of the process that we looked at during the hearing and from the submissions that we have received to date. I think it is fair to say that, from the submissions and the oral evidence that we received, there is overwhelming frustration in the community sector about the process that the government, through the Department of Social Services, undertook through this grants process. The report looks at the process around the tender time lines, the process of communication and communicating a funding strategy and engagement with the sector. There has been a huge amount of criticism of all of those things. The things that people are extremely concerned about are not only the short time frames—and I will go into that in a second—but also the fact that they were notified about the results of the tendering process just before Christmas. The impact on providers, both those who were successful and those who were unsuccessful, just before Christmas, was intense—and that just added to the level of overwhelming frustration.

What we have done with the evidence that we received and the comments and the evidence that people gave orally and through written submissions is compare the process with what the Commonwealth grant guidelines say should be done and also with the ANAO's Implementing Better Practice Grants Administration processes. The Department of Social Services, when they came before the committee—and I have to say the committee will be calling them again, because we ran out of time to enable us to ask all the questions that we had—said that they had complied with those guidelines. I am sorry to say that the evidence that we have received to date does not support that claim. It does not support the claim that they have complied with either the Commonwealth grants guidelines or the ANAO's recommendations in Implementing Better Practice Grants Administration. We have also found that there are some holes in the Commonwealth grant guidelines, and the committee is recommending that the Auditor-General have a look at those processes.

There was a short time frame between announcing in the budget that this process was going to be thrown open and when applications opened. There was no consultation with the sector around what the tender process would look like or what was in the tender process—and, in fact, the grant guidelines say that should happen. The department said at estimates: 'No, we can't possibly talk to the stakeholders, because this is a competitive tender process.' That is not what the guidelines say. There was a very short time line for the tenders to go in, and there was a lot of concern and misunderstanding about what was required for the tender process, because this was a whole new process. As I said before, there is a great deal of concern about the time frame and what happened with the pre-Christmas—just days before Christmas—announcement, and also the time process for signing off on grants.

What the committee in its interim report is recommending is that the Auditor-General consider a review of the 2014 Department of Social Services community services tendering process. One of the reasons we want to report now is that the ANAO is currently considering its program for the next round of auditing review processes, and we thought that it was important to make a recommendation that the tendering process go through that audit review. We are also recommending that the Auditor-General consider reviewing the 2004 community service tendering process conducted by the Department of Social Services, with a view to updating the Commonwealth grant guidelines, because the committee process has identified some gaps in those guidelines in terms of how they send the appropriate signals to departments when they are carrying out tendering processes.

This is only an interim report. Quite frankly, we have only touched on a portion of the issues that have been raised by the submissions and the oral evidence that we have received. The report only reflects some of the extreme frustration that the community sector continues to feel with this process. When we finally report on the rest of the terms of reference of this inquiry, we will be canvassing all the issues that have been raised with us by the community, and we will endeavour to reflect the sense of frustration that the sector feels in terms of the way that this process was carried out.