Page 2608 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 24 August 1993
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MR KAINE (8.15): Madam Speaker, I can only endorse the comments of the committee chairman in their entirety. There are a couple of points that I would like to make, however, in amplification of that. I think that the recommendations of this committee, if read carefully by the Government, show the increasing requirement of the committees - not only the Planning Committee but also the other committees of this Assembly - to elicit more detailed information about what government is doing. It is part of the process that was dealt with in earlier debate in the house today about getting information from the Government about what their intentions are and where they are leading to.
There are three or four particular recommendations that I would like to refer to in that connection. The first is recommendation 3 of this committee. It asks that the capital works program contain information on the anticipated capital works expenditure of all government bodies, not only those that are on budget but also those that are off budget. We refer specifically to such activities as those of ACTEW and the ACT Housing Trust, because the committee has a great deal of difficulty, and has had in the past, in determining what the total capital works program of the Government is when the committee receives information about only those that are on budget. If we have information about what those government bodies that are off budget are doing, it gives us a better picture of the capital works program of the Government and it gives us a better understanding of how that fits in with such things as job creation within the Territory and the like. So we have asked that in future we be given a little more information about what those off-budget bodies are doing.
The second recommendation that I want to refer to is recommendation 7, which asks that the capital works program include a status report on those projects that have been carried over from previous years. What we receive now is a statement from the Treasury that says, "Here is this year's new capital works program - and oh, by the way, there are $200m worth of projects that have been carried forward from previous years". But it does not really tell you what the status of those projects is and how much is expected to be expended in connection with each of them in the current fiscal year. The committee has an incomplete picture, and I can only assume that, if the committee is not fully informed or if the committee does not feel that it is fully informed, then few other people outside the committee structure would be.
The third recommendation that I want to refer to also deals with additional information. It is recommendation 8, which states:
That the Capital Works Program include information updating the status of items that appeared in the previous year's forward design program ...
Ms Szuty, I have no doubt, will comment on this, because we noted - and it was Ms Szuty who brought it to our attention specifically - that last year's forward design program included all sorts of projects which one would assume would have appeared in this year's capital works program. Many of them did not. It raises the question of why they were in last year's forward design program. What priority did they have that put them into the forward design program last year if they then disappear and do not appear in this year's capital works program? The questions that arise from that are: Why did they disappear? What has changed that gives them a different order of priority? Are they going to appear next year or at some future time in the capital works program? Further information about those would be useful.
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