Page 3331 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 12 October 1993
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I believe that that is very much a good thing. I think the more public information there is about budget matters, the more people understand about where the money comes from and how it is spent by governments, the better. I have no objection at all to the Estimates Committee pursuing a very rigorous process indeed. I do think, Madam Speaker, that the Estimates Committee, as it has existed in this Assembly, is perhaps unusual in the way that it operates. It certainly is unusual when compared to other parliaments. I think it is more committed to the seeking of information and the checking of detail and so on than it is to making enormous political mileage out of the Estimates Committee process.
I say that, Madam Speaker, because I know that members of the Liberal Party had the benefit of Senator Bronwyn Bishop's tutelage on Estimates Committee matters. I also know from first-hand experience that that tutelage led to absolutely nothing by way of Bishop-style lambasting in the Estimates Committee. Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate the Liberals on that. I am not an admirer of Senator Bishop's style. I think that her conduct in Estimates Committee hearings has nothing to recommend it. In fact, I do not believe that she has yet brought forward a major issue through her manner of conducting herself in Estimates Committee hearings. So, Madam Speaker, I am very pleased indeed that the Liberals did not take up Senator Bronwyn Bishop's coaching. Our own Estimates Committee, I felt, operated in a way that brought forward information and that encouraged debate, but without that strident and, I think, quite unnecessarily personal approach that, it seems to me, Senator Bishop has advocated, and to no avail. As I say, I do not believe that any major items of information have been brought forward as a result of her use of those tactics.
Madam Speaker, to conclude, I agree with Mr Kaine that if the Commonwealth brings forward its budget it is very much in the interests of our own community that we bring forward the ACT's budget as well. There are some practical issues that need to be addressed and I am currently addressing those. We need, first of all, to know the precise timing of the Commonwealth's budget and related activities before we can make hard decisions on our own budget, but as soon as those issues are known I will, of course, advise the Assembly.
MRS CARNELL (Leader of the Opposition) (4.25): I thank the Chief Minister for her support for this. I think she has made a couple of very good comments, and ones that were very much along the same lines as Mr Kaine's. It is true that by the time we get to the Premiers Conference the ACT Government usually knows fairly well what it is going to get from that source. I think also that the Chief Minister rightly says that specific purpose payments really do not vary an awful lot from year to year. Those two issues really are not, I think, major to a decision on whether we do go forward and have the budget brought down before the end of the financial year, or at least sooner than our current budget is brought down.
The issue that I would like to talk about is community organisations and organisations that rely on government funding for their ongoing viability. We know that the ACT Government gives grants to organisations in various areas, such as health, sport, art and community services. All of these
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