Ten years of untouched community service inquiries expose cycle of government unaccountability

Working on reform policy will always require some degree of patience between political, government, industry, community and other stakeholders, but a new review of an entire decade’s worth inquiries into the community services sector suggests a seemingly futile cycle of evidence-based, largely-untouched calls for action.

Commissioned by the Community Services Industry Alliance (CSIA), the Centre for Social Impact UNSW (CSI) report ‘Moving the conversation forward: A decade of reform recommendations for the community services sector asks the question: how does the sector move forward in calling for change?’ examines 92 commonwealth-level inquiries, including by the Productivity Commission, royal commissions, ombudsman and senate, and finds largely identical recommendations emerge across four key themes:

• Joined-up and integrated working
• Competition and contestability
• Government as steward
• Workforce reform

That third theme forms something of an exceptions to the claim these recommendations span a full decade; uniquely, inquiries were not calling for government stewardship until 2015, when the marketisation of social services apparently required it.