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Government supports Harper’s 'diverse providers' reform including co-ops
THE role of co-operatives and mutuals in the delivery of human services was today endorsed in the Federal governments’ response to the Competition Policy Review and support for a new set of competition principles to include ”choice and diversity of providers in human services.”
Mutuals peak body, the Business Council of Co-operatives and Mutuals (BCCM) welcomes the government’s response to the Competition Policy Review and its support for the choice and competition principles in the domain of human services delivery (Recommendation 2).
In the final report, the Harper Review recognised co-operatives and mutuals could play a greater role in delivering human services, meeting productivity and efficiency objectives whilst safeguarding the principles of consumer directed care.
Reacting to the government’s response, BCCM CEO, Melina Morrison said the government’s decision to establish a Productivity Commission review to explore how the principles can be applied in practice to the human services sector was an opportunity to research reforms in different jurisdictions that incorporate principles of choice, competition and contestability including multi stakeholder and consumer owned co-operatives and staff led mutuals.
“Co-operatives and mutuals already make enormous social and economic contribution to this country, particularly in regional areas that tend to be under-serviced compared to cities. We see important lessons to be learned from examples of privatisation on one hand, and over involvement in provision of services by government on the other and we see great opportunity for mutual organisations to play a larger role in delivering services to communities in a way that promotes self-reliance and accountability.”
“An alternative approach to traditional privatisation could be to transfer particular services for example social housing and the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) infrastructure to a mutual structure where the assets become community assets deployed for the benefit of the relevant community and are run on a mutual basis.
A mutual structure would facilitate governance for ongoing consumer benefit as opposed to shareholder benefit if services were privately sold”, added Ms Morrison.
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