Submission on the inquiry into performance reporting and public accountability
Environmental expenditure by government agencies attributed to enduring environmental outcomes for the year 2024/25.
The Commissioner has submitted a response to the Finance and Expenditure Committee’s inquiry into performance reporting and public accountability. He draws on several years of work examining environmental reporting, research, and scrutiny of environmental expenditure, including, the estimate of environmental expenditure, published annually by the Commissioner. The objective of the Commissioner’s work in this area is to help Parliament improve its scrutiny of, and the Government’s accountability for, environmental outcomes
The Commissioner commends the Committee’s analysis of the current system and its strengths and weaknesses. He notes that it matches well with what he has found when looking specifically at the environmental management system.
He recommends select committees need to be prepared to think about their scrutiny role a little differently. He also advocates for a sectoral approach to performance reporting, which would encourage collaboration across agencies and better align with how Parliament and Cabinet operate.
The submission supports embedding long-term outcomes in legislation, avoiding one-size-fits-all models, and incentivising evaluation as a learning approach. He also suggests continuing the environmental outcomes work as a pilot to test the Committee’s proposed reforms.