Page 417 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 27 June 1989
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priorities. I think perhaps that that was the matter that Mr Collaery was alluding to when he ran through the various elements of it and made some points about how he saw the budget developing.
I think it is important, first of all, as we move from one year to the next and from one budget through the Supply Bill, on to the forward estimates, on to the next year's budget, that they be documents that we can set down and relate one to the other. If I cannot understand them, then I guess there would be very few members of the public who would. As I said before, in terms of the community understanding of what the Government is trying to signal in its budgetary intentions, the document has no value at all. It might be great for the public servants who can now say, "Well, beauty, I had a hundred million last year and I am going to get another hundred million this year". If that is what it is about, stability and assurance for ACT public servants that they can continue the same expenditure programs and at the same rate that they have done in the past, that is fine, but I do not believe that that is what this document ought to be about.
I would plead with the Government to produce a set of documents that can be related one to the other, that are understandable, that are comprehensible to the people out there who want to know, "Are we going to be funded for our operations in this coming year?". This document tells them nothing about whether they are going to be funded or not and I do not think that that is satisfactory or acceptable.
However, what I am waiting for, Mr Speaker, is the budget because then we will know what the Government's intentions are and we will be able to see how the Government is applying its priorities to expenditure for the coming year. I only hope that by the time the budget is brought down the ACT Administration that is now going to be spending this money has not taken the bit between its teeth and committed the $615m that this document is making available to it. Commitment is different from spending; once it is committed it must be spent, and once it is committed it cannot be taken back.
I think the Government is putting itself in a potentially difficult situation where the Administration elements and units that are going to be spending this money could commit it. By the time the budget is brought down it will leave the Government absolutely no flexibility in changing its priorities as compared to what they were last year - and they were not the Government's priorities last year; they were the Commonwealth Government's priorities. Perhaps bringing down a Supply Bill that runs for so long and allocates $615m removes in some measure the Government's flexibility to implement some of the programs that it would like to implement, and perhaps it will eliminate some of the flexibility that we in opposition might have in influencing the Government to implement those projects that we would like to see implemented. I will conclude on that
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