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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 5 Hansard (14 May) . . Page.. 1182 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

I am surprised. As Health Minister I have made it clear that it is not acceptable for the Health Department to overrun its budget every year and simply expect to be bailed out. This year at least we have been able to achieve significant improvements in service, as reflected by increased patient numbers and a reduction in the surgical waiting list. We have also had to deal with what proved to be open-ended enterprise bargaining agreements from the past.

The estimates committee process gave members an opportunity to examine in detail the areas where overspending has occurred and to ask what the Government is doing about it. Estimates committees are never comfortable processes for the government of the day. I am absolutely amazed that those opposite should consider for one moment that an estimates committee approach, where a Minister and senior officials sit there at the discretion of the estimates committee, is somehow a method of keeping something secret. The one thing that I think we would all have to say about estimates committees is that they give an absolute open book to members of the Assembly to ask whatever questions, at whatever length, with as many supplementary questions as they want, to get to the bottom of whatever issues they want to get to the bottom of. I would suggest that to assume, even for one moment, that our estimates committee approach here in the ACT somehow keeps things secret is - - -

Mr Berry: Who made that suggestion?

MRS CARNELL: You, actually. Anybody in this Assembly who has ever been through that process knows that it is absolutely rubbish.

Mr Berry: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Mrs Carnell has just suggested that I had said that the Estimates Committee was keeping secrets. Mr Speaker, as you have ruled out, as an imputation, the word "secret", I would regard that as a serious imputation against me because I would never consider that the estimates committee process keeps secrets.

MRS CARNELL: Thank you. I will restate what I said. I said that Mr Berry said that the estimates committee process somehow kept things secret, that it kept things under wraps. That is, I think, exactly what he said in his speech. If he did not suggest that the estimates committee process was somehow keeping things under wraps, then it totally negates the committee's whole response. If the Estimates Committee is a method of openness and transparency, that vindicates the Government's whole position here.

We believe strongly that there is no more open process for this Assembly than the estimates committee approach. Those opposite possibly do not realise that our estimates committee approach is very different from that in other parliaments where members are kept to one supplementary question. They cannot continue a line of questioning, as is allowed here. We have a very open and very transparent estimates committee approach. Mr Berry indicated in his speech, and I think that Ms McRae also indicated it, that the estimates committee approach that we took somehow lacked transparency, and somehow produced secrecy. That is the last thing that our estimates committee approach could ever be said to do.

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