Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Families and Communities) Share this | Hansard source

Minister, can I go back to the answer you provided to me earlier? I asked you what had changed in the department following the Auditor-General's scathing review of the monitoring and evaluation program. Your answer indicated that you accepted the Auditor-General's remarks but, in any case, they just confirmed existing departmental practice and you were putting in place arrangements to ensure that monitoring and evaluation continued. That doesn't sound to me like any meaningful or material change to the way the department thinks about these kinds of tasks. My real question to you is in the context of the amendment before us. Senator Storer is asking for serious monitoring and evaluation, and that is an objective that I support not just in the context of this kind of program but in all social policy. My question to you is: what has been learnt from the failures of the $1.6 million ORIMA review—what has materially changed in the way the department will conduct future reviews of this program?