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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 2 Hansard (29 February) . . Page.. 457 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

I remember that in the good old days there used to be an establishment of equipment that every school had. It covered all of the things that were then deemed to be necessary to provide an education to the students that attended that school. That philosophy seems to have gone by the board. It is not only photocopiers, but all kinds of other equipment. We, as members of this Assembly, would be surprised if this equipment was not in our office. We say that we cannot function in our office without these things that have become essential, such as photocopiers, faxes and the like, and exotic telephone systems - sometimes I do not even begin to understand how they work, but they seem to be necessary. Yet you go into a school and you discover that the schools do not have these basic pieces of equipment that everybody else in the world accepts as being necessary to perform their normal functions.

There is much in this report that I found disturbing. It suggests, as I said before, that maybe, when we are putting our budgets together - this particular report focuses on the field of education, but the situation may be endemic when we put our budgets together - we really have not yet learnt to analyse the proposals that are put to us, to deduce which is more important than the rest, to make sure that those more important things are the things that are budgeted for first and that the less desirable and less essential things are budgeted for second, instead of the other way round. I am not firing arrows at this Government or this Minister, as I think this Minister is doing a fine job; but perhaps the whole system by which budgets are put together needs a reappraisal and we, at the political level where the decisions are made, perhaps should be a little more analytical when considering that which comes before us. Maybe our Estimates Committee system and the like are not really doing the job that they were set up to do.

I would urge the Minister and the Government to take this report seriously. It was put together seriously. It is the result of some very serious submissions and some very serious discussions by a large body of concerned people, and it warrants very serious attention from the Government.

MR MOORE (11.00): Mr Speaker, this is indeed a substantive report from the Public Accounts Committee, and one that will have far-reaching impacts. While I listened to that very thoughtful speech by Mr Kaine, my mind was drawn to a saying, for which I do not know the source, along the line that we will know we have our priorities right when cake stalls are run by the armed services, trying to purchase an F111 or a Hornet, rather than a school P and C.

Ms McRae: Amnesty International.

MR MOORE: Ms McRae interjects the source, Amnesty International. It is interesting that I should bring that up, following Mr Kaine, who spent a goodly part of his life in the Air Force. He provided us with a very thoughtful speech about our priorities, right across the system. I think that is what is highlighted in this report. It is not just a question of voluntary contributions. It comes right down to how we are providing fundamental support, right across all our departments within the ACT. Why is it that there is such great inequity in the way we provide things? Are we getting it right?

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