Page 4226 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 29 November 1994
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Madam Speaker, I am intrigued by the comments that Ms Szuty made, when she introduced the report, about the reason why she put this sort of a report together. She felt that it was better to have a report which was - I forget the language that she used, but her import was mild - not barbed to the Government, in the hope that it would react to that report and deal with the report's contents, rather than a report that was tough and hard-hitting and contained the sharp edges that might make the Government recoil and not want to handle it. The interesting thing about that comment is that Ms Szuty was the chair of the estimates committees for the last three years. She presented the reports in 1992, 1993 and 1994, and, to the best of my knowledge, she was always quite happy with the reports that we came down with. I do not recall Ms Szuty ever dissenting from any aspect of the reports or ever saying, even on the floor of the committee, that she did not agree with any aspect of the reports in any of those three years. Ms Szuty and Mr Moore actually held the balance of power on this year's committee and in June had the capacity to dismiss the report or dismiss comments in the report which might be considered to be political or damaging to the Government or unlikely to get the Government's support in implementing the recommendations. There was a hard-hitting report in June this year, and Ms Szuty was part of the majority that adopted that report.
Why is it now - when we could support recommendations about the need to change the Comcare arrangements in this Territory, which are costing us an arm and a leg to this day because they are basically inadequate for our purposes; when we could support recommendations on reviewing the clear problems with the diesel fuel exemption scheme in this Territory, which cry out for some action by this Government and which has not happened; when we could support recommendations in a vigorous report this year, last year and the year before changing the operations of the motor vehicle testing stations - with a few months to go before an election, we now feel that we have to tone it down to make it acceptable to the Government? That, Madam Speaker, is a great indictment of the way in which we have handled this report. I was satisfied with the outcome of the previous processes. I was even prepared to wear the difficult recommendations that came out of the earlier Estimates Committee's report when we were in government, because I know that that is part of the process of being accountable to the Assembly. It is a pity that we have seen fit to cast aside that rigorous process in favour of something that is milder.
Thank goodness for Mrs Carnell's preparedness to say that the report was a joke, because I very much doubt that the report would have been commented on at all in our media if that comment had not been made. I wonder what the journalists would have said if they had run this report without Mrs Carnell's comments. I wonder what they would have said on these recommendations in the report:
The Committee recommends that the Government place a greater emphasis on ... performance indicators ...
The Committee recommends that ... agencies ... report ... within the required time ...
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