Introduction

UnitingCare Australia welcomes the opportunity to respond to the Productivity Commission’s Inquiry into Delivering Quality Care More Efficiently. We commend the Productivity Commission for initiating this important process, and its commitment to exploring innovative approaches that can enhance care quality while improving sector sustainability.

While the Productivity Commission’s proposals under consideration—including reforming quality and safety regulations, embedding collaborative commissioning and establishing a national framework for prevention—each offer potential to create more efficiency, our submission challenges the assumption that human services productivity can be measured using conventional metrics. We advocate instead for a ‘human-centred productivity’ approach, urging a reframing of discussions to reflect the sector’s true complexity.

Our key argument is that traditional approaches to productivity—focused on maximising outputs per unit of input—fail to adequately account for the relational, individualised and complex nature of care work. Human services are built on time, trust and meaningful interactions, making cost-cutting or throughput-driven efficiency models inadequate and, in many cases, counterproductive. Rather, a human-centred approach to productivity enables a much more nuanced and holistic perspective—one that recognises that ‘value’ is derived not from delivering services faster or cheaper, but from achieving better short, medium and long-term outcomes, improved wellbeing, strengthened community participation and more effective care models.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t seek operational and structural efficiencies where they genuinely exist—this remains an imperative for government and all stakeholders to ensure strong stewardship of limited resources, safeguarding their effective use.

Our position is rather that productivity in the Care and Support Sector should be the natural outcome of well-designed, high-quality services—not the primary goal.

We do support the notion that, when care is delivered effectively through thoughtful regulation, integrated service models and a strong focus on prevention, then efficiency likely follows—but prioritising productivity as an end in itself risks undermining the very principles that define quality care.

Furthermore, we note that the terms of this Productivity Commission Inquiry primarily focus on improving government administrative efficiencies within the care and support sector—a valuable objective in itself. However, this differs from the broader goal of assessing sector-wide productivity and exploring ways to measure and enhance it more effectively.

Noting these caveats, UnitingCare Australia presents the following insights on the specific proposals put forward by the Productivity Commission, ensuring that reform efforts align with a sustainable, human-centred vision for care and support service delivery into the future.

About UnitingCare Australia

UnitingCare Australia is the national body for the Uniting Church’s community services network and an agency of the Assembly of the Uniting Church in Australia.

We give voice to the Uniting Church’s commitment to social justice through advocacy and by strengthening community service provision.

We are the largest network of social service providers in Australia, with over 55,000 staff and 17,000 volunteers, delivering 5.8 million interactions annually across 1,600 service locations in urban, rural and remote communities.

We focus on articulating, and meeting, the needs of people at all stages of life, and particularly those most vulnerable.