Page 2716 - Week 09 - Thursday, 25 August 1994
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MR KAINE (3.36): The Chief Minister spoke at length, but she did not answer my question until the very end. She spent a great deal of time justifying why there ought to be another department. That is a debate in itself which has never been held - a debate as to whether or not, in achieving reductions in the cost of government, the creation of new departments contributes or whether it adds additional cost, and whether there is a need for it or whether it is useful and productive in the end anyway.
I note that in last year's budget there was a provision within the Department of Urban Services portfolio for government corporate services of $53m-odd which has disappeared. I presume that that is where the funding for the new department has come from, because it does not seem to have come from anywhere else. Presumably this new organ, this new department, is created upon the core of the old government corporate services organisation in the Department of Urban Services. That was the basis of my question. You just cannot create departments of state; they have to have some legal validity. The Chief Minister tells me that it has been gazetted, but I must admit that I have not seen the gazettal. If it has been gazetted, perhaps she can produce the evidence that it has been, because this department has been in place for some time - some months, in fact. I would be interested to know when the department was created, on the one hand, and when it was gazetted, on the other. I suspect that there has been a big gap in between. That was the question that I actually asked the Chief Minister.
MS FOLLETT (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (3.38): Mr Deputy Speaker, I table Special Gazette No. S139 of Friday, 1 July 1994, which establishes, amongst other things, the Department of Public Administration.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
ACT Treasury
Proposed expenditure - Division 50 - ACT Financial Management, $96,053,900 - agreed to.
Department of the Environment, Land and Planning
Proposed expenditure - Division 70 - Environment and Conservation, $33,096,300 - agreed to.
Proposed expenditure - Division 80 - Territory Planning, $4,802,100 - agreed to.
Proposed expenditure - Division 90 - Land, $19,142,400 - agreed to.
Proposed expenditure - Division 100 - Culture and Heritage, $13,543,200 - agreed to.
Bureau of Sport, Recreation and Racing
Proposed expenditure - Division 110 - Sport and Recreation, $13,568,800 - agreed to.
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