Page 2980 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 September 1994
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MR HUMPHRIES (11.23): I rise also to express some concern about this motion and to move the amendment which has been circulated in my name. I move:
Omit paragraphs (1) and (2), substitute the following paragraph:
"(1) The Standing Committee on Public Accounts examine and report on the performance outcomes of the ACT Government agencies for the 1993-94 year, having regard to information including agency financial statements and annual reports;".
Madam Speaker, first of all on the motion itself, the Government appears, as Mr De Domenico has correctly indicated, to wish to draw the teeth in this process and ensure that some of the criticism which flowed from this year's report and previous years' reports does not flow again, particularly, I assume, to a Government facing re-election in a few months' time.
That might suit the Government's purpose, and I can fully understand the Government taking that point of view. I find it very hard, though, to imagine why any non-Government members of this Assembly should cooperate in a process which seeks to reduce the capacity of the Assembly as a whole, through its excellent committee process, to scrutinise thoroughly the workings of government. That must be what this is all about. The point of this kind of committee, this so-called Estimates Committee mark 2, is to thoroughly examine government performance, and it is facilitated by having a full range of members of the Assembly on that committee, with their full range of portfolio experience. All of us, to varying degrees - whether we are Opposition frontbenchers, Government backbenchers, or Independent members - have that kind of experience available to apply to the work of the committee, not just in asking questions on the floor of the committee but in formulating the report of the committee, which is also a very important part of the process.
I want to address this fallacious argument put forward by the Chief Minister that, somehow, having a committee with smaller membership will mean that we will have less - and I think her words were - political grandstanding going on in the report of the committee. Could I draw to the Chief Minister's attention that the Liberal Party did not have the numbers, did not have a majority of members on this year's Estimates Committee. There were, in fact, 10 members of the committee; there were five Liberals and five others. We could not have succeeded in passing a single thing through that committee had it not been for our capacity to persuade at least some other members of that committee to support our point of view, which we did.
As Ms Szuty, as former chair of that committee, will indicate, everything that that committee came down with was a majority recommendation which, in fact, had the support, if my recollection is correct, of both Independents who sat on that committee. It obviously could not have been otherwise, unless we happened to have Government support for what we said, which, of course, is unlikely.
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