Attachment C - Commonwealth - State Roles and Responsibilities
Council of Australian Governments Communiqué
8-9 June 1993
A Working Group has been established to identity those functional areas which exhibit inefficiencies in existing inter-governmental arrangements and where there is scope for clarification of roles and responsibilities.
In identifying those areas that may be considered to merit priority attention, relevant issues include:
- problems of duplication and overlap;
- inefficiencies in delivery of services to clients;
- incentives to cost-shifting between governments; and
- lack of transparency and clear accountability and unnecessary duplication in program monitoring.
The Council will consider, at its next meeting, what further work should be undertaken. In areas where it is agreed that changes might be considered, the focus would be on the following objectives:
- delivering better outcomes for citizens;
- increasing the focus on client outcomes rather than program inputs;
- removing unnecessary duplication of effort and improving efficiency and effectiveness overall;
- clarifying the policy and program objectives of the different levels of government;
- achieving administrative arrangements that are cost effective and clearly setting out the different governmental roles and funding responsibilities;
- clarifying lines of accountability and increasing transparency of individual governmental roles in shared responsibility areas; and
- providing greater certainty in funding arrangements for the level of government delivering programs.
Return to COAG Communiqué - 8 - 9 June 1993
Last Updated: 1 September, 2008