The material on these pages is the responsibility of the COAG Reform Council and does not necessarily reflect the views of governments/COAG.
The COAG Reform Council (the council) has been established by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) as part of the arrangements for federal financial relations to assist COAG to drive its reform agenda. The council is independent of individual governments and reports directly to COAG.
The goals of the COAG reform agenda are to boost productivity, workforce participation and geographic mobility, and support wider objectives of better services for the community, social inclusion, closing the gap on Indigenous disadvantage and environmental sustainability.
The council aims to strengthen accountability for the achievement of results through independent and evidenced-based monitoring, assessment and reporting of the performance of all governments.
In summary, the council’s role is to:
- monitor, assess and publicly report on the performance of the Commonwealth and States and Territories in achieving the outcomes and performance benchmarks specified in the six National Agreements. The council provides annual reports to COAG which:
- publish the performance data and provide a comparative analysis of the performance of governments in meeting the agreement’s objectives, including highlighting relevant contextual differences between jurisdictions
- highlight examples of good practice and performance so that, over time, innovative reforms or methods of service delivery may be adopted by other jurisdictions (from second year of reporting)
- reflect the contribution of both levels of government to achieving performance benchmarks and to achieving continuous improvement against the outcomes, outputs and performance indicators (from second year of reporting).
- report to COAG on the performance of governments under various National Partnerships. There are two distinct tasks in relation to reporting on National Partnerships:
- for National Partnerships with reward payments, the council reports to COAG on an independent assessment of whether predetermined performance benchmarks have been achieved prior to reward payments being made
- as part of its reporting to COAG on National Agreements, the council undertakes ‘an analytical overview of performance information for each National Agreement, and National Partnership to the extent that it supports the objectives in a National Agreement ...’
- assess performance of the Commonwealth and the Basin States under five bilateral Water Management Partnerships as part of the Agreement on Murray-Darling Basin Reform.
- advise COAG on the aggregate pace of activity in progressing COAG’s agreed reform agenda
- advise COAG on options to improve COAG’s performance reporting framework for National Agreements and National Partnerships
- review the consistency of capital city strategic planning systems with the new national criteria during 2010 and 2011
- report on any other matters specifically referred unanimously by COAG.
Full details of the role of the council can be found within the COAG Communiqués and Intergovernmental Agreements (particularly the Intergovernmental Agreement on Federal Financial Relations and the Agreement on Murray-Darling Basin Reform).
The Secretariat
A secretariat, located in Sydney and jointly funded by the Commonwealth and the States and Territories, has been established to support the COAG Reform Council in its work. The secretariat assists the council in its assessment and monitoring role, including supporting the Chairman and members of the council through advice and analysis, the preparation of papers and ensuring the effective conduct of the council’s business. In doing its work, the secretariat is required to liaise with government agencies, ministerial councils and other bodies as appropriate.
The secretariat has been established as an administrative unit within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet for carriage of legal, employment and administrative matters only.