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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 6 Hansard (21 May) . . Page.. 1557 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

We have had a process that was quite open, in terms of the tabling of this Appropriation Bill. It then went before an Estimates Committee. I must say, Mr Speaker, that halfway through that Estimates Committee - although I was not a member of the committee, I was present as a member of the Assembly and I was given leave by other members of that committee to attend and to ask questions - the way the questioning went, it was quite clear that the committee was going to come out with the style of report that it did. I must say that there were some surprises in it. Mr Speaker, I believe that the estimates committee process here ought to have followed the sort of process that we have followed with previous appropriations - to try to determine the exact details of how those overall views that the Chief Minister had given, with reference to how she had managed to overspend the budget by $14.2m and the way she had accounted for it, applied at each of the lower levels. I think that was something that was not explored well by the Estimates Committee.

Committees, by their very nature, are vital, living things, and they will operate differently. Having read the report, having looked at the conclusions, having looked at the dissenting opinion and having listened to the speeches today, if the Government chooses to do something in a particular way - when I do not see any huge negatives, but I do see reasonable outcomes in terms of the Assembly's ability to monitor, to check and to assess what has happened - then I am prepared to support the Government in doing it. Mr Speaker, that is why I will be supporting this Bill in principle. But I should also say that the Appropriation Bill has given us more of an opportunity than we have ever seen before for debating such issues. It would take only a review of Hansard, looking at the previous Government's moving of money when it had blow-outs, to see to what extent they were scrutinised. The reality is, Mr Speaker, that at no stage were any of those blow-outs - and there has been a range of them - scrutinised to the same extent as this one. So, if there were to be an argument about this, that does not make it any better. You would have to actually look and see the very extent of the debate.

Out of that process came the issue of having the money taken from capital works and moved to recurrent funds, with the issue of the number of jobs associated with that. We have heard a range of different figures. We have heard some interesting claims about it. But the reality is that what has come home, I think, to all of us - and the Chief Minister has accepted it - is that the report of the Planning and Environment Committee, recommending that we should ensure that our capital works budget is spent, has been adopted and reinforced. Indeed, it had already been adopted prior to this process, I must say, and the Government had already accepted it. But it has been reinforced by this process. All of us have recognised the significance, particularly in a time of economic downturn, of how important it is that capital works money is spent on capital works.

I would say, Mr Speaker, that this is probably the last time that we will see a blow-out being funded through the capital works budget. Therefore, I think that departments, and Ministers in particular, will be particularly careful of their budget. However, I also suspect that this will not be the last time that we see a budget blow-out. Of course, I would hope, and I suppose that all of us would hope, that it would be; but, in reality, sometimes things happen that ought not to happen. That is the reality of life.

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