Page 2384 - Week 11 - Thursday, 2 November 1989
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The recommendations cover what needs to be done in future estimate committees. One thing I would like to do is thank the public servants who worked hard in giving us information and gaining further information, which was a fairly common situation in the Estimates Committee. Also, I would like to thank the secretarial staff, who did a magnificent job and worked late into the day and night and weekend and morning to get an enormous amount of work done in a very condensed period of time.
I also make note of people who tend to be a little bit behind the scenes in estimates committees. The attendants do a wonderful job as a general situation in this Assembly. I think we are most fortunate to have people of such calibre.
It certainly was an interesting learning experience as an estimates committee. In future, I feel we absolutely need to be given more information at an earlier time. I know full well that, while the Chief Minister had what she called consultative processes running beforehand, not all parties were consulted, and information that was asked for was not necessarily given. That would have allowed a more effective estimates committee process to go on. It is unfortunate that that was not the case.
MRS NOLAN (11.26): I, too, would like to make a couple of brief comments. This has certainly been well spoken to today. I would like to thank the chairman for the enormous amount of work that he put into this over the days that it took place. All of us who have already spoken have acknowledged the enormous amount of work and time and effort that the committee staff put into it, also the Ministers and you, Mr Speaker, the government agency officials, and not to be forgotten, of course, the Hansard staff for the enormous number of hours that went into the preparation. The transcripts were quite large. Those of us who had to wade through them understand just how hard they had to work.
I certainly was not able to attend all of the sittings. Of course attended committee sessions that were part of my portfolio responsibilities. I do not want to address my comments today outside those areas. In fact, there are only a couple of ones that I particularly wanted to mention. One has already been mentioned by Mr Jensen, but I think it is very important, and that relates to the area of the Canberra Tourism Development Bureau.
A lot has been said over time, from both within industry and within the public sector, about the amount of money that is spent in the area of tourism and how and whether it is effective. But I think it is very important that all money that is spent in this particular area appears under that particular program. I would just like to read into Hansard the particular mention that is made in the report, under program 12, relating to the Canberra Tourism Development Bureau. It says:
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