 Thank you very much. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests. It's wonderful to be here this morning. Could I begin to be acknowledging we're gathered on the lands of the noneable people and to pay my respects to elders past and present. This morning I'm very pleased to be able to launch the ACT's Community Sector Development Program. The program has five integrated modules, sustainability and strategic risk, governance and financial management, collaboration and strategic alliances, working with government and tendering and procurement. And as we've heard, this period of tremendous change, this development program is not the only ACT government initiative that's going to impact on the community sector in the territory. Many have already participated in the design work for the Human Services Blueprint. The government has also commenced a series of major reforms to community sector procurement, to contracting and to reporting. Today's seminar on sector sustainability and strategic risk is the first of a series of events on this topic over the next 18 months. So from the ACT government's point of view, a sustainable sector is one that has the genuine capacity to play a part in delivering positive social impacts. Sustainability is organisationally neutral, though. In simple terms, our community needs just enough capable organisations, not too many, not too few. And they won't be the same organisations over this extended journey. At the level of individual community sector organisations, sustainability means that over the next 10, 20 years and beyond, a specific organisation has to have the ongoing capacity to play its part in delivering a positive social impact. Sustainable organisations within the sector will have a skills-based board, good governance, an appropriate business model, financial strength, a strong and skilled management team and skilled and well-led workers. And the government is more interested in these high-level characteristics and in delivering outcomes than we are on the black ladder of reporting. This has got to be a step forward in the relationship between government and the community sector, one that's based on trust and on collaboration, and I look forward to it continuing. We know that there are considerable challenges ahead in the sector for the government and for our community as a whole. The Australian Federation, particularly in the context of our federal financial relations, is rapidly approaching breaking point. Some of you may have heard Ken Henry, the former Secretary of the Commonwealth Treasury, recently talking about the unsustainability of the tax bases of states and territories. Dr Henry spoke of the great difficulties that governments face in funding new, large social programs from budget cuts alone. And as Treasurer of the ACT, I can tell you I'm in a pretty good position to know that his comments apply just as much here in Canberra as they do to any other part of the country. And that's why the ACT government has embarked upon tax reform, a hard but necessary task to ensure our city's long-term economic sustainability. And there will come a time in the not too distant future when the territory simply runs out of land and other assets to sell to finance our city's needs. And if we've not reformed our tax system by this time, then the city will be in serious financial trouble. And what this means specifically for the community sector is that in the short and medium term, sustainability is not going to be achieved off the back of rising contributions from the territory government. In the long run, a more sustainable revenue base will allow for important and strategic investments in the territory's community services. But during the transition period, it will be very challenging. We all know that demand for services will rise thanks to the inevitability of demographics and the ups and downs of the economic cycle. The big risk is that we will collectively fail to achieve the social impact that we're striving for to build a strong and fair community and a strong and fair economy. There's also a big risk that individual organisations will succumb to the many pressures that they face. We don't want this to happen. Whilst a rational perspective might be so long as there is some in the sector able to pick up the slack, it doesn't really matter if the makeup of the sector changes over time. We don't necessarily want to bring that hard headed rational approach to sector reform. None of us want to see organisations failing. None of us want to see people's jobs threatened. None of us want to see clients forced to find alternative support. But to make sure that this happens as infrequently as possible in the coming period, there are some fundamental strategic risks to sustainability that every single organisation is going to have to address, including those in the community sector. Many of these risks do sit with the sector to address, but not all of them. The government will seek to find ways in which we can reduce or mitigate this impact. There are also some policy risks. From the ACT government's perspective, we're fairly well aligned, we think, with the community sector's policy priorities. We've worked closely over many years to develop a strong shared framework. Most recently, the collaboration on the Human Services Blueprint has demonstrated the strengths of this relationship. Another example, the NDIS, a significant policy reform strongly supported by the community, especially people with disabilities and their families. The policy shift, though, from block funding to a market-based model is very, very significant and could well be the first area of social reform to undergo such a shift. The tough part of this significant reform, the implementation phase, is starting to happen now. There are certainly risks associated with the rollout of the NDIS, but there are risks to engage with and risks to manage, not risks to avoid. But as you would all know, no major social reform is easy. No major social reform is risk-free. At a national policy level, we're still to get a better sense of how the new Australian government settles and how much difference there's going to end up being between how and what they wish to deliver for our community and how we wish to deliver community services in Canberra. Equally, the anticipated abolition of the ACNC is creating uncertainty. We had planned to shift our regulation of charities in the territory to the ACNC to reduce duplication and to make improvements to reporting. Sadly, I fear that opportunity is now lost. There are also financial risks at this point in time, largely posed by the Commonwealth Government. Here in Canberra, we face two risks, the broad risk to our economy and to our community from potential job cuts and a significant withdrawal of the Commonwealth Government from our economy. The specific risk also of budget funding for specific programs or national partnerships ceasing or significantly diminishing. This is a challenge that is unique to Canberra. Yes, all state and territory governments face the second risk, but only we face both. This risk may also be magnified right now because of the uncertainty. While we always have a firm eye to the Commonwealth budget, this year, ladies and gentlemen, I think the anticipation and the trepidation is high than it has been for many years. But the financial risks are more fundamental than just the Commonwealth budget, as Ken Henry and many others have noted. Government budgets across the world are under pressure. Australia actually has stood out in recent years. And in the ACT, we've stood out within Australia as having fundamentally strong economies. But the challenges remain. Traditionally, governments have supported community sector entities in doing the good things they do in the community. Sometimes just because they were doing good things in the community. But in these times of competing priorities for scarce resources, government owes it to taxpayers to fund for outcomes. And this is a national and an international trend. What we're doing here in the territory is to shift our service funding agreements from a focus on delivering outputs to one that focuses on delivering outcomes. And then, ladies and gentlemen, we come to one of my favourite categories of risk regulation. Now, let me tell you, the ability of parliaments and bureaucracies to generate useless time wasting regulation can be staggering. I probably don't need to convince anyone in the room of that. I think we are in competition at times, not always, but in times with some of the worst bureaucratic outcomes in the nation. Not necessarily in the world, but certainly in the nation. We've had our share of challenges and problems, and we need to work through those. But this government is seriously interested in reducing those burdens, not least for our own internal purposes, but also for yours. I recognise this as one of the more significant risks to your operations, and I'm actively looking at ways to reduce this. I see the government's role as being a catalyst and a resource aggregator. Something that can bring together different forms of assistance to community sector organisations. Virtually all of the modules of the sector development program operate on this principle, where we've aggregated the co-contribution that many of you make and turned it into what we expect to make a valuable contribution for your strategic benefit. And I hope today's session is just the beginning of this. So to summarise, the strategic risks to your sustainability are very real. I'm certain that in five years' time, this sector will look very different. Many of the risks we've talked about, particularly those arising from economic pressures from demographic, societal, technological and similar changes, cannot be avoided and have to be engaged with head-on. You will only be able to manage these risks if your organisation has a clear mission. Is financially strong, operationally nimble, efficient, has capable workers and is well-led. By implementing the Human Services Blueprint, by focusing on outcomes, by removing unnecessary regulation and administrative clutter and by providing targeted support through the sector development program, we're determined to play our role to help this sector continue to grow in strength and in capability. We look forward to partnering with you in the future. Before I close this morning, I'd like to take the opportunity to acknowledge the valuable assistance of the community sector reform advisory group. Many of you are in the room today. Thank you for giving your personal experience and your insights into what would be the most valuable reforms for the sector. Input also has come from consultants, sector leaders and people outside the sector. So it's no surprise that as a result, we now have a flexible and an innovative development program. But I'm confident it can be of great value to the sector to help now and into the future. Thank you very much. Thank you, Minister Barr. And the minister has kindly agreed to take questions for about 10 minutes if there are people from the floor who would like to take this opportunity to ask some questions and we have some roving mics as well. Have a question back here. Minister Simon Rosenberg from Northside Community Service. I guess the major theme today is community sector reform. If I can ask a somewhat cheeky question that is what about government sector reform? I think most of us in the room would be very much in favour of an increasing partnership arrangement and while we'll never be equals because you have the funding or the policy agency, we will hopefully contribute increasingly to policy development with you. There are issues of capability that I think are being recognised in government that need to be handled as well as in the sector. So can you tell us a bit about your thinking there? So well, Simon, the press club is the place for cheeky questions, isn't it? Excellent star. Look, yes, I acknowledge the need for further reform in the way the ACT government conducts the entirety of its operation. So a lot of what I've said in my speech this morning applies equally to how the government goes about delivering services either directly to the community or directly through stakeholders. We have a digital first policy now for the territory government. We will be needing to transition the bulk of our operations into that online space. In theory, with an upfront investment delivers considerable savings for the government in the way that we engage with stakeholders and that can be a straightforward or a simple example is that for every face-to-face transaction with the ACT government it costs us about $10. Every online transaction is about $0.10. The difference between those two is money that could be put to more useful purpose. You can't go, obviously, from removal of all the kind of instantly removal face service provision and not all areas of government lend themselves to that reform. But some areas do and in some areas we lag well behind either other governments or other organisations that deliver similar sorts of services. In terms of the organisational structure of the government since the Hawke review and the one government model there have been some improvements in cultural operations, if you like, within the government and some reduction in the siloing approach. And unfortunately the ministerial system and the budget system tend to reinforce. So the next iteration of ACT government reform that the Chief Minister will announce in due course, not being my place this morning to make that announcement, will see further development of that one government approach looking to ensure that in terms of the outward focus of ACT government that people don't have to shop around many different forums, don't have to have the conversations with health, justice, education and community services to break through on solutions to the wicked problems that we know we face. I've been driving that change through the budget process. It's nothing like the flow of money to generate cultural change within an organisation and part of that has been to provide a pool of funding for new initiatives within the territory budget that require cross agency collaboration, that require agencies to work together to deliver better outcomes. And you can see that in the corrective services area working more closely with community services and with education. In terms of for example how we approach the support systems for those who exit from our corrective services system. That's one example there are many more that we're seeking to pursue. Nothing happens quickly in government but it should happen more quickly in the ACT than elsewhere given the smaller size of our bureaucracy. And I think with the right incentives in place by way of a clear directive from the cabinet that we want that sort of agency collaboration and we want some of those silos removed that will help. There's still a fundamental challenge though in that there will still be ministers who have in a particular portfolio streams and there will still be directorates. As an old Churchill quote about democracy being the worst form of government except for all the rest. Westminster and the arrangements we have here are not ideal but there hasn't been a better model but we're working on improving the one that we have in the territory. So we have time for a couple more questions one at the back here. Hi Andrew Christina Ryan advocacy for inclusion. You mentioned being more virtual and doing a whole bunch more stuff online. I guess I'm aware that the ACT has got a very high rate of internet usage but for people with disabilities and particularly for people who are highly isolated it's less than 50%. So I'm really concerned about the access of our consumers our members to that world if we if we shift it without the government coming forward. A good example of that the treasury consultation documents for the budget process last year were only available in PDF. Completely useless to a huge number of people. So we need to be mindful in the context of that of how to make sure that everyone comes forward and particularly with the NDIS when people will become more engaged potentially more employed in the community sector we would hope is going to be acting as a major employer for a lot of people. So I guess I'd like to be aware that you've got some recognition of that that you're actually remembering it on an ongoing basis and in fact have plans in place for how government will ensure that accessibility is across the board and not an afterthought that we constantly have to remind you about which is kind of where we're sitting now. Sure yeah look though we've not done digital particularly well. No we haven't and it has to get better but it is inevitable. So there's certainly no point trying to hold back that tide everything that can possibly digitize will and in just some areas of the economy it's happening at a rate that is you know beyond what you would think is fathomable but it is happening but it is going to it is going to impact upon every area of our lives that it possibly can where anyone can possibly make a dollar out of it. That is a given the challenge for for government is that we are even in the ACT a slow beast when it comes to turning turning to this area but I recognize that the change is inevitable. The challenge of implementation is the is the big one and yes we will probably need constant reminding of those points because yes it is easy to get lost in the you know in the if you like the statistics of 92% home internet connection in the ACT the national broadband network the highest take-up in the nation is here in the ACT in the areas where it's provided. So we have a significant element of the community who are way ahead of government you know they're five years ahead of us and there's a significant part of the community that's five years behind and how you bring that part of the community forward. One thing that is good in this area I guess is that the economics of it are driving costs down and down and down that the technology is improving what you used to be able to get for a certain certain unit cost is now massively enhanced and as as this technology just you know rolls over the world it will get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper that's the good news in terms of its universal availability. The challenge for the government it's going to be what we do in the intervening period you know which could be another five years or so before this technology is just so ubiquitous that we're not having this conversation about about who's left behind. Some of the things very practical things we can do are to provide free Wi-Fi throughout the city that will will give people access to the internet for free and the capability to access the services that that can be delivered in that in that context. That won't be the complete answer but it's part of it in the short term but over time as the pace of change of technology continues I suspect our challenges are going to be keeping up with people rather than needing to to ensure that there aren't people left behind but we're there's a few years to go before we get to that point. And there was one more question in the in the middle here and then one down the back and then we'll wrap up. Thank you Stephen Fox National Disability Services. My question also relates to the NDIS minister. You talked about it in a sense perhaps being a forerunner in terms of moving towards a more market driven environment and I think that offers two challenges which I'd seek your views about. Firstly how the sector itself retains its community character its engagement out in the broader arrangements for supporting people in need and who are vulnerable and secondly I think that market driven side of things faces challenges for government and I'd be interested to know if the government has any further views about its role either as a service provider or indeed looking forward to the full rollout of the NDIS what the ACT's continued mission will be in the space concerned with disability. Okay well I'll go to the second question first to say that's the subject of some consideration within government in the very near future possibly even tomorrow so I won't I won't be preempting any cabinet decisions on that at this point. Suffice to say though that it is it is a significant issue that that we are considering and over what time frame and in terms of a transition if if indeed we are to make a significant transition from the way we've currently been doing business to the to the first question well look I think there will there will inevitably be as a result of this change people coming in to deliver services with a profit motive I think that's an inevitable outcome of the NDIS model and as to whether or time will tell us to whether the NDIS model is successful everyone loved it in theory the practical implications are going to be the challenge different government implementing it to that that proposed it different state governments with different approaches so it's a save and you know in the inside of six months it's a very different beast to what it was when Prime Minister Gillard passed the legislation and provided the funding in her last in her last budget so I suspect that it will continue to be an evolution there from the community sector's perspective doing the job well well will certainly assist and I have no doubt that across the sector locally and and nationally that that will occur but I think it's going to be universal way I don't think I could put my hand on my heart now and say that every community sector organisation is going to get this right and be outstandingly successful in in this new world I don't think that's true I think the majority will but I think there will also be some new entrants who might deliver some innovation and deliver services in a different way that we might not have thought about yet and technology again will play a significant role in that but it does remain to be seen we need to closely monitor it if this service to every model doesn't work then I wouldn't foresee it being rolled out in other areas of the community sector in the long run it might need some refinement along the way there'll be interesting questions particularly in smaller jurisdictions in regional areas whether there will be a sufficient base for the market to be able to provide services efficiently and effectively there could be market failure look that could happen in larger jurisdictions as well the design of this will be important and consumer expectations are going to be a challenge too I think there's no doubt and rightly so expectations are very high so there is there is also a risk that that we won't broadly as a as a sector meet those expectations that risk is very real too I think we had one more question down down the back here and then the minister will need to leave us to take some some press questions Good morning Tim Bavinton from sexual health and family planning ACT thank you for your overview minister a question in the spirit of the ones that have come around your thinking we hear a lot about a changed world for community service organizations over the next five to 10 year lot period of time could you give us some of your thinking on who should be picking winners and losers in that kind of environment and what sort of criteria should inform that that's a look it's a very good question it's it applies in so many areas of public policy I think I can best sum it up by saying the consumer is now king or queen depending on your outlook either way either way consumers are going to drive are going to drive a lot a lot of change in many areas I think there are probably some sectors some elements of the community sector where the consumer or the client is not particularly empowered and where really it's we take what's available or there's nothing else available and that will probably slow change in in some in some parts of the sector it's probably not going to be well there is I should say there is a power imbalance in some areas some people's voices are stronger than others some people have better advocates who can champion their cause for reform of service delivery or more resources going into a particular area and that applies within the sector and across the broader realm of public policy take a long run view of these things unless we reform our revenue bases then everyone no matter where you sit in society which sector in a which set of interests your lobbying or representing if there are a few more scarce resources overall then I don't think anyone is going to is going to end up being in a better position in five or ten years time I am deadly serious when I say the federation in terms of its financial relations is approaching breaking point you know we we simply cannot fund the sort you know a labor if you like a labor social agenda of a liberal tax base you can't abolish carbon taxes mining taxes cut company tax cut personal tax and think that you can continue to run the sorts of social programs that this country does just cannot be done you can't fund it off budget cuts in other areas not unless you are going to savage health and education which consume you know more than half of state and territory budgets and are growing at a rapid rate and you know the observation I made about demographics is very clear as society ages we are consuming more and more of our available resources into the health field now it's everyone's number one priority everyone wants more money spent on health every opinion poll everywhere in the nation in every jurisdiction what's our community's number one priority is health followed by education so it's perhaps no surprise then that those two areas consume the bulk of our resources but it can't continue as it is forever something has to give I think it's it's a bit of an indictment on the Australian political system that the smallest jurisdiction in the country is the only one engaging in any meaningful tax reform to try and do something to ensure that we have the resources to deliver the services we know our community will need but most of you would have been in Canberra in 2012 and would have seen the campaign that was run how are your rates have they all tripled in the in the last 12 months but you know seriously there's no magic pudding if we want to deliver the services that I think people in this room agree the community needs it's got to be paid for and it can't be paid for just out of cuts in other areas of government expenditure I hope that answers the question so minister thank you for what's been a very candid assessment of a number of the risks and challenges faced by the sector both immediate and longer term and the structural things that are driving that locally as well as broader I think global trends that are challenging our binary notions of public and private but also I think in what I heard daring us to imagine a community sector that can be both focused on accountability for results engaging with those risks but perhaps going less where the money is and more driven by outcomes and able to set their strategies to do what they do best to deliver on that will you join me in thanking the minister