Page 4308 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 20 November 1990
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MR SPEAKER: I call Mr Humphries.
Ms Follett: This is a farce.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Ms Follett! For goodness sake! It is the procedure of this house that we wait and make personal explanations at the end of the debate. We have done it every other time. Why is it now a farce because it applies to you?
Ms Follett: Mr Speaker, it is not because it applies to me but because Mr Moore was on his feet and moving a motion.
MR SPEAKER: No, he was moving the same motion, in relation to which I asked him to wait. He was quite happy to wait, until you stood. Please proceed, Mr Humphries.
MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts) (9.33): Mr Speaker, like the Chief Minister, I welcome the report of the Estimates Committee. I acknowledge that the committee does a very difficult job. Having sat on both sides of the table now, I appreciate that it is not easy to be either a witness before the committee or a member of the committee. The workload is very heavy. In the circumstances I think the committee deserves congratulations for its report.
I welcome particularly some aspects of the report. I think the suggestion of standard forms for supplementary information is excellent and obviates a problem from both sides of the fence, as it were, that information sought either might not be the information actually obtained or might not be clear in the mind of the person providing it. A standard form will greatly alleviate problems in delivering information in terms of the request made.
It is also obviously appropriate for the Assembly to examine the suggestion that the Estimates Committee be established earlier in the parliamentary year so that its recommendations can be examined in sufficient time for an adequate response to be prepared by the Government and for other things to occur. Many other aspects of the report deserve commendation, and they received it in the response tabled by the Chief Minister earlier tonight.
In my view, Mr Speaker, the emphasis placed by the committee - and indeed, I must say, by governments of both persuasions - on the achievement of certain performance indicators is both a good thing and a bad thing. I believe that it is appropriate for government departments, when setting targets for themselves, to have certain goals, and that is a desirable test that all spenders of public money ought to meet.
By the same token, I would sound just one note of caution in respect of that process. It is not always possible to make a very sound, qualitative judgment based purely on
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