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Australia recently introduced new accountability arrangements for all governments as part of a package of reforms to federal financial relations. This paper explains the new arrangements, beginning with an outline of the broader context — the Intergovernmental Agreement on Federal Financial Relations — in which they were introduced. The paper also identifies some of the lessons already learned from implementing the new arrangements. Some more details on the arrangements and the role of the COAG Reform Council may be found in O'Loughlin 2010.

The COAG Reform Council has played a critical role in tracking progress, nationally and on a state‐by‐state basis, against the COAG reform agenda. The council has analysed and publicly reported on governments' performance against outcomes, performance indicators and targets agreed by COAG. However, until 2013 gender analysis was not directly incorporated in the assessment of governments' performance. The council's first report on gender, Tracking equity: Comparing outcomes for women and girls across Australia, redressed this omission. This article explores how taking account of gender greatly enriches our understanding of governments' performance in critical areas, and enhances public accountability as a result. An understanding of gender differences also provides a better basis for government decision‐making on ways to improve outcomes.

Of the two major sources of income support for single parent families, social security transfers and earned income, there has been an increase in the proportion of families dependent on social security in the period 1974–1982, a period of recession and high unemployment. Over this period the value of income support for supporting parents has declined because of the non‐indexation of the child components of pensions and benefits. This article identifies disincentives to the parents' labour force participation: lack of post‐school qualifications, shortage of jobs, scarcity of affordable child care and the low income retention rates imposed upon the extra earnings of pensioners and beneficiaries.