Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee, , 50:59 to 54:47
Discussion on how cost recovery revenue supports departmental staffing and FTE positions. The department details its rolling program of activity-based costing pilots designed to ensure efficient pricing and correct effort allocation.
Topics: Public service staffing, Export cost recovery
Speakers: Matthew Geysen, Senator Ross Cadell, Unknown Speaker
>> Fair enough. Um at the May hearing, secretary said the grow growing cost recovery revenue let DAFF employ more staff. How many positions have been funded by revenue of the expenses?
Don't know whether I'll have a breakdown senator of the actual exact staffing because our corporate staff are attributed. So you'll have direct directly allocated staff that are performing the regular
>> FTE and stuff like that
>> and then you'll have an attribution of the corporate. So I might not have
>> I have an FDA equivalent. I have another that's fine. What
>> um I might have to take on notice unless I might have to take that on notice, Senator, just because of the attribution of those corporate staff to give you the right amount that are supported by the cost recovery revenue funded by
I'm just going through all these questions and ruling out the ones I you mentioned about the revenue growth has been through growth and and in content number and and sheer size. Do you have an example? Not an example. I don't want you to pick them. A is there a basket case that you publish on like what's the TEU of certain things cost over the last three years? Are we looking at year-on-year growth? What's what's the year-on-year growth that you've given for each last three years on standard import things, standard
>> That might be adjusting. >> Yeah, I think so. I I think that might be we might have to get some assistance from our bio security colleagues on the actual the specific breakdowns of the volumes and where that growth is happening.
>> Yeah, just just to confirm that the the prices aren't going up by the same percentage is it is the volumes that you spoke about that would be good. >> Um you mentioned that and the ANO says monthly cost reports now go to the executive board in part of the cost what are they saying for this 3 months of uh this financial year? Are we still over is it still over recovery or what are we doing there?
>> Uh Senator, I'd say we're broadly in a break even position noting that in the in the bio security space. Um we are going through our midyear budget review process at the moment to make sure we continue um to ensure that we budget for a break even position and have the funds correctly allocated. Um and in the export space uh we do have a deficit position but that is where the funding has been provided by government to to supplement or offset that deficit.
>> Um since 24 you've have you tried different models since the withdrawal? I'm here you've tried three different sorry reviewed its charging model three times since 24 and then ran a costing pilot. Is that true?
>> It is Senator. So those just for for clarity those reviews were for um they built on each other. So they were looking at for example we one of the reviews focused on PEQ or post entry quarantine um down in Miklham and how we attribute the costs across the different um animals uh and activities that are supported through PEQ. We're now going through a process where we where you reference the pilot which is an activity based costing process. So that's a rolling program where we lean into a certain process costed in detail reflect back and say is the price being charged right is the effort being allocated correctly and that is going to be an ongoing program of work and that's where the secretary referenced before around business process level or tracking at that next level. That's where we're going into that additional effort to say do we think we're efficient? Are we charging the right