Page 4005 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 23 November 1993
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are here to answer questions that the public raise on budget matters. If people raise a matter with me by telephone and I cannot answer that question, I will certainly try to raise it on the floor of a body such as the Estimates Committee or this Assembly.
Perhaps with a better lead time some of the simpler questions might be answered in other ways, while the Estimates Committee will be able to go about addressing more detailed matters. For this reason, I am a strong supporter of bringing forward the budget, handing it down much earlier, and providing the Estimates Committee with time to scrutinise the budget in more detail. I think the Chief Minister had something to say about that earlier today. We all agree that we are hardly at our most effective in scrutinising the budget at midnight on a day when we have started at 9.00 am and that more time in which to hold sittings would be a valuable step in enabling better scrutiny.
Madam Speaker, there are a number of particular matters I want to address in my comments today. First, I want to refer to one of the poorest decisions I have ever seen on the part of any government, and that is the choice to use a Sydney based, Japanese owned travel agency, Japan Travel Bureau, to organise the Chief Minister's Japan delegation. Madam Speaker, Canberra has over 60 licensed travel agents which employ over 500 locally based staff, yet the Government channelled its business through a firm employing travel consultants in Sydney and providing dividends to its owners, the Japanese Government. It is bemusing to me, even some months after finding out that this was the case, that local businesses did not even get a look in for this business. Were no ACT firms good enough for Ms Follett? Why was there the need to start searching interstate for a firm to organise the travel?
Madam Speaker, it is no surprise to learn that the ACT Government Service entered into a service contract with Australian Airlines, now Qantas Australian, to provide travel arrangements some time ago. Qantas employs well over 150 staff here in Canberra. Many of them depend on revenue from Canberra customers to sustain their positions. Simply, if the business leaves town, there is nothing to keep the staff employed. Qantas have five major offices in Japan, all earning millions of dollars in exports for Australia and all in their own way promoting Canberra. It is nothing short of silly, it seems to me, to argue that Qantas could not have provided excellent ground arrangements for the delegation once it had arrived in Japan.
The president of the ACT chapter of the Australian Federation of Travel Agents, Mr Jonathan Howse, commented that his members might even have been able to offer a cheaper priced itinerary than that provided by Japan Travel Bureau. We will never know. Madam Speaker, I hope that the Government accepts the recommendation made by the Estimates Committee to use Canberra firms wherever possible for the business of Government travel arrangements, even overseas.
Another area of extreme concern to me was the attitude taken by the Attorney-General on crime statistics. There was some considerable discussion about the rate of increase in major crimes which have occurred in recent years in the ACT. Detailed figures from the Australian Institute of Criminology were tabled by the Minister. They demonstrated very clearly that Canberra has a problem with sharply rising crime in a number of important areas. Mr Connolly's explanation was that rates of crime are lower in the ACT than elsewhere in Australia.
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