Page 856 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 16 June 1992
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At that stage I began to wonder what on earth it was that I was being asked by the Government to approve, and whether I should approve a Supply Bill of $620m. I then took the $78m over and above what I would normally have expected to have been asked to authorise. Calculate that out. It could be $187m if it is based on this year's budget, and if in fact this year's budget has blown out by $78m. Perhaps that is what the Treasurer was trying to tell us; that we are not taking five-twelfths of what we approved 12 months ago but are being asked to approve five-twelfths of what the Government has actually spent this year. A $78m budget blow-out? Is that why we are being asked to approve all of this?
So it raises some interesting questions, Madam Speaker, as to just what this $620m is supposed to represent. It certainly does not represent what it purports to, or what the Chief Minister and Treasurer said that it represented. I think it raises some very interesting questions. Has our budget blown out? Are we merely being asked to approve $78m more than normal, for some unexplained reason the Government is not prepared to tell us? Or, indeed, is next year's budget going to be nearly 17 per cent greater than this year's? They are interesting questions that I think the Assembly deserves to have explained before we vote this evening to approve the Government's Supply Bill to a value of $620m. I would be interested to hear what the Chief Minister and Treasurer has to say in answer to those questions, because, quite frankly, I cannot figure out what it is five-twelfths of. It is five-twelfths of some sort of very rubbery figure.
MR HUMPHRIES (8.38): Madam Speaker, the Supply Bill which comes before this Assembly traditionally gives us a chance to comment on the Government's economic program, and in particular its budget program, which it usually is a precursor for. As Mr Kaine has indicated, this Bill appropriates a sum of nearly $620m; a sum which is extraordinarily large, of course. It is one which is beyond the comprehension of most ordinary citizens of our Territory, and perhaps even beyond the comprehension of some of us in this place. I certainly think, Madam Speaker, that the questions that the Leader of the Opposition has raised about it need to be seriously addressed.
On a more general level, though, Madam Speaker, I would say that people expect that the people responsible for appropriating and spending sums of this size will exercise extraordinary caution and extraordinary diligence in the way in which that money is both appropriated and spent. The larger the appropriation the more difficult it is for any government or any bureaucratic overlay beneath a government to properly administer and monitor the use of those sums of money. It makes it imperative, therefore, that appropriate measures are put in place to make sure that that money, large as it is, is properly accounted for and properly monitored as it is being spent.
Especially, I think, Madam Speaker, those comments apply with a ministry such as ours in the ACT which has only four members. Reliance on public servants beneath those Ministers is extraordinarily great because of that very small ministry. As our budget in this Territory grows, as of course it will, so too must the analysis which the Government and the community put budgets to, and the analysis that must occur of the wisdom of specified expenditure. Those are general comments that apply to all governments; but naturally the ACT has specific pressures on its budget which I think, Madam Speaker, have been well outlined by the budget statement which the Chief Minister brought down earlier today. That statement made very clear that the ACT's position is extraordinarily difficult, even by comparison with other States in this Commonwealth.
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