the examination of their annual reports. These reports should actually provide more useful information about departments and KPIs to use in assessing performance. I'd move to better define the role of ministers for the purposes of ministerial responsibility. At the moment, the media is prepared to hold ministers in many portfolios responsible for anything that crops up. In practical terms this cannot work. It creates confusion, public dissatisfaction, the removal of any real sanctions for poor performance and exhaustion for ministers over time as they cope with immense and impossible pressures. Finally, at the state level, service delivery has got to be well and truly devolved to new style governance arrangements of the sort you see in Victoria and elsewhere for hospitals, schools, vocational education and training under modern purchaser-provider arrangements. This supports more competition between providers where possible and thus more innovation. Competition between public sector providers and entities in the private sector can deliver good results for citizens and enables public sector people to demonstrate the quality and efficiency of which they are capable. But in order for that to happen, as we see with the Gonski recommendations for schools , you have to actually put money into the system to enable public sector providers and others wishing it to address disadvantage effectively. John Alford : Of course we know the public sector is beset with a whole pile of investigative and indeed inquisitorial agencies that can be construed as making life difficult for public servants and their