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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (19 November) . . Page.. 3774 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

so that you can take the end-of-year reports for the year before and have a look at what the Government did last year, I think it is obvious to any reasonable person that you are taking on a function that is properly the responsibility of the Public Accounts Committee.

I can see no justification whatsoever for reconvening an estimates committee under those circumstances. It has been obscured a bit before because we have been able to do the two things simultaneously. We have been able to look at this year's budget and last year's performance because we have had the annual reports for last year and we have been able to do both. Now, the distinction is quite clear, where the estimates process is completed long before last year's annual reports are available. I think it does seriously raise the question of whether that is a proper function for the Estimates Committee or not. I merely draw it to the attention of members and ask them to think about whether we are not detracting from the responsibilities of the Public Accounts Committee in proposing to reconvene the Estimates Committee to look at the Government's financial performance in past years.

Mr Speaker, I think that the Estimates Committee report is a good one. I am sure that the Government will take the recommendations seriously. I look forward to a much better informed Estimates Committee dealing with the estimates in a more comprehensive way, and a different way, next year.

MR WOOD (5.21): Mr Speaker, I think Mr Kaine must have received one of his regular kicks on the shins for putting his signature to this unanimous report. It is, in fact, a report that is critical of the budget and of the way that it has been presented. The criticism is contained both in the text and in a large number of the recommendations that now go to the Government.

The budget that was examined by the Estimates Committee had its focus on jobs. That was the theme of the Chief Minister and Treasurer's approach, and it was a correct approach. It was an approach that ought to have been adopted; but, unfortunately and regrettably for the ACT, it has not been carried through successfully in this budget. Members know - we have all the information from the Australian Bureau of Statistics - that the situation in Canberra is very difficult. In the last year, employment is down from 161,600, on their figures, to 156,300. The labour force has contracted. It is lower. It is down from 172,100 in the last year to 169,500. In the last year, consequently, unemployment is up from 6.1 per cent to 7.8 per cent. That is the dismal, disgraceful record of this Government. Those details are set out, in slightly different statistics, in the budget. They are there in the detail of the budget. But, of course, in the Government's rhetoric - the Chief Minister's rhetoric - as great a gloss as possible has been put on it.

Since Mr Howard's election, the signs - indeed, the threats - have been clear that we were going to face very difficult circumstances in the ACT. It has been quite obvious, and it has been said by many, that positive measures have to be undertaken to overcome the negative effects of Mr Howard's administration on the ACT. But, in the time since the

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