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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (27 March) . . Page.. 724 ..

MR MOORE: When the Chief Minister stops interjecting I will get an opportunity to say that I will still keep an open mind on this; but I can tell you that I am singularly unimpressed by it. I think we should have mid-year budgets. That was something for which I congratulated the former Treasurer. She is the only person who has delivered that. It is the most sensible way to operate. In that way this Assembly, particularly through its Public Accounts Committee and its Estimates Committee, can keep an eye on what is going on within our departments and fulfil our responsibilities. This is a disappointment and I am sure that it is an issue that will be discussed between all members over the next little while.

MR WHITECROSS (Leader of the Opposition) (3.41): Mr Speaker, I have to agree with a lot of the remarks that Mr Moore just made in relation to this matter. I fully understand what Mrs Carnell was saying about it being difficult for her to operate in a situation where timings in relation to the budget have been changed by her Federal colleagues. That obviously has consequences for her own things. I fully understand that and I am sure that Mr Moore fully understands that.

What alarmed me in Mrs Carnell's remarks was her blithe assertion that the timing of the budget would mean that we would not have to rearrange any Assembly sittings and that everything else would go along just nicely. Mr Speaker, last year the Estimates Committee made specific comment about the tight timeframe in which we worked last year. Our timeframe was so tight that it bridged a sitting period. We were trying to scrutinise the budget while the sitting was going on, which was a most unsatisfactory arrangement. It effectively meant, in practice, as Estimates Committee members know, that we were curtailed in our ability to scrutinise the budget even though Mrs Carnell touted it as the budget for three years. I think the Estimates Committee was sceptical of that. Nevertheless, she touted it as a budget for three years; yet we were curtailed in our ability to scrutinise that budget because of the limited time we had available.

I do not think Mrs Carnell should take it for granted that the Assembly will just bow to her assertion that no changes are likely to occur in the sitting periods as a result of her change to the date of the budget. As Mr Moore rightly says, we will talk about this among ourselves and no doubt respond to it appropriately in the meantime.

Mrs Carnell: Why don't we bring down a budget before the Premiers Conference?

MR WHITECROSS: Mr Speaker, Mrs Carnell cannot help making her smart alec remarks about how you cannot bring down a budget when you do not know what money you are getting from the Commonwealth. As I have said before, and as Mr Moore would acknowledge, that is the case. We all understand that that is the case. What I am saying is that there are other things that are important as well, like scrutiny by this parliament of Mrs Carnell's budget. She cannot expect that the scrutiny of her budget is going to be curtailed because her parliamentary colleagues have moved their budget date and she has moved her budget date. We will be talking about those matters and I am sure that they will be the subject of further discussion in this place in due course.

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