Page 4283 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 20 November 1990
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MR CONNOLLY (8.18): Mr Speaker, at the outset I would fully endorse Mr Jensen,s vote of thanks in effect to the committee staff - Ms Malmberg and other members of staff who assisted the committee. The Estimates Committee sat long and arduous hours and had a very short time frame for deliberation and report, and the efforts of the committee in preparing this report in that extremely compressed time period, and often after working late hours, are most commendable.
The Estimates Committee performs, as Mr Jensen noted, a very important function of government. It provides the only opportunity for this Assembly to effectively scrutinise the operations of government in a detailed fashion. Question time is, of course, important in the Westminster tradition. It provides an opportunity for members of the Assembly to ask Ministers of the Executive Government questions relating to the administration of their portfolios, but the nature of politics and the nature of this Assembly is such that in question time you can deal with only a few issues on a day, and there is not the opportunity for detailed follow-up.
At the Estimates Committee hearings, once a year, Ministers are subjected to that detailed scrutiny - full and complete examination of their portfolios by members of the committee and, in effect, cross-examination, which may go on for some period of time, by those members of the committee interested in pursuing a line of questioning. It is the only opportunity for members not in the Government to obtain this information, and it performs an important role in ensuring honesty and straightforwardness in administration - and I am not suggesting that there was not that, but it is an important function.
Some criticisms were reported in the media at the outset of this committee,s inquiries. We heard reports that Treasury officers were quoted as themselves conducting an inquiry into the inquiry. There were reports that an inquiry would be held into the cost of the Estimates Committee report. At an early stage the committee asked the Chief Minister whether there was any substance to these reports and whether the Government was, in fact, pursuing its own inquiry into the inquiry. The Chief Minister, fairly promptly, advised the committee that that was not the case, and I was very pleased to hear that. It would be appalling if the Executive Government were to embark on some form of media campaign to discredit the Estimates Committee because it felt the Estimates Committee was taking too much time.
The Estimates Committee did take a long time over its inquiry but, as is noted in the report, that was principally because of the inadequate manner in which information was put to the committee. There was some controversy on the very opening day of the committee deliberations when the committee, in effect, refused to sit. Perhaps it could be said that it withdrew its labour; the committee went on strike. The reason for that was that
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