Page 158 - Week 01 - Thursday, 9 April 1992
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The Government found that what we had thought and assumed would be the budget for the DPP's office - that was an assumption that was shared by us in a couple of weeks when we came to office and by the Alliance Government in the couple of years before that - simply was not the case. At the end of the day the Government had to provide additional funding to put the office of the DPP on an appropriately sound basis for the future.
We are making it our business, very carefully and with the cooperation of the administrative staff in the courts, to really go through and look at what it is that we will be inheriting as an institution on 1 July and ensure that we are able to put to the Commonwealth, through the form of the Grants Commission, a very detailed inventory of how that court building has been allowed to run down, of how the facility's infrastructure has been allowed to run down, in order to ensure that we are as appropriately compensated as possible.
The true financial arrangement is that to date the Grants Commission has provided grants to the ACT on the basis that we do not have responsibility for the courts, so we have been given a discount in our general purpose Commonwealth grants. That will change and we will be treated as having full responsibility for law and order, and thus the ordinary level of Commonwealth support for the court infrastructure; but we will be making it our business to seek additional support so that we should be given a court on the basis that it was in full working order on the date of transfer.
Anyone who has worked in the court, as Mr Humphries has, would know that the infrastructure has been allowed to run down over the years. Apart from the personnel of the court, the infrastructure of the court is run down; the library is run down; and there are a number of problems there. I want to make sure that the ACT gets the best deal that it possibly can. That is why it is important that we get the principles right now. We have a few months to go on the detailed negotiations. I am certainly going to brief Mr Humphries in the ordinary bilateral way. It may be that his Legal Affairs Committee may want to have some interest in the arrangements for the financing and ongoing financing of the Supreme Court as a matter of ACT responsibility.
I take his point; it is a valid point. The Assembly should be aware of these arrangements for the court's transfer. We will ensure that that happens. I thank Assembly members for facilitating the smooth transfer of the courts and unanimously endorsing what is an issue of important principle, although somewhat of a technical issue for people who are not used to wrapping their minds around constitutional complexities. It is an important principle and I thank the Assembly for its unanimous support.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Sitting suspended from 12.03 to 2.30 pm
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