Page 3098 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 17 November 1992
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ESTIMATES - SELECT COMMITTEE
Report on the Appropriation Bill 1992-93
Debate resumed.
MR CORNWELL: Draft reports sometimes arrive only 24 hours before a particular program is to be examined. I know that we have made a recommendation in the Estimates Committee report to try to avoid this in future. I commend that recommendation. It is rather irritating if you have already prepared a series of questions, you suddenly receive a draft report of several hundred pages and you have to go through and check out what you are proposing to ask. I end as I began. I found the process most instructive, and I hope that we can improve upon it at the estimates in 1993.
MRS GRASSBY (9.31): The Estimates Committee process is an important part of the Assembly's work, and we all know this. It allows members to scrutinise the work of the Government and to examine the budget in detail. We know how important the process is to the Federal Government. We saw quite a bit of it covered in the press, including one senator having a row with the chairman. At least we did not have to put up with that here. Members did, to a certain extent, behave themselves.
In the past most members of the Assembly have participated in the Estimates Committee hearings. However, fewer members participated this time. Mr Cornwell, Mrs Carnell, Mr Kaine and Mr Moore were present for most of the hearings. Unfortunately, other members were not. Labor Party members were present at the allotted times; but, unfortunately, the committee's report does not reflect that. Statements in the report made it difficult to recognise parts of the hearings for which I was present. The report says that Mr Berry responded to large numbers of questions with an answer to the effect:
We will consider the matter and then we will decide on a course of action. It is a matter for consideration.
But, in spite of the claim that there were large numbers of such responses, the report can quote only one example. The report cites 15 pages of transcript in support of its claims that the Minister would not answer questions. In those 15 pages there is only one example of the Minister refusing to answer a question. I would like you to go back and read the report, Mr Humphries. That refusal related to the Minister insisting that he be allowed to receive legal advice confidentially. That example was not in any way related to the budget.
It is interesting to note from reading the transcript cited in the report that the Minister was often unable to answer questions directed to him because certain members of the Liberal Party on the committee interjected continuously. As shown at page 220 of the transcript, during interjections by Mrs Carnell, the chair had to remind her that the Minister was trying to answer the question above all the noise that was coming from the Opposition. The trouble was that he could not get a word in edgeways.
It is also interesting that the committee cites as examples of the Minister's supposed reluctance to answer questions pages 221 and 222 of the transcript. On those pages the Minister said no fewer than nine times that the budget was premised on the same activity levels as last year. This was used as an example of his reluctance to answer questions. It is incredible, Madam Speaker. I found it incredible when I read it. I was there. That is not exactly how I saw it.
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