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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (19 November) . . Page.. 3784 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

intellectual property rights brought into that discussion, in a desperate attempt to defend this lack of an open process. I think that issue will probably be brought up many times. I wonder what the ACCC would think about the level of competition involved in this whole process.

Getting to the bottom of the mental health budget proved almost impossible. I have spoken at length on this already today. Workers compensation was also an interesting debate. An unsatisfactory response from the Minister, in my view, on his knowledge of which companies were actually using appropriate preventive measures for occupational health and safety and the lack of information on this were disturbing, to say the least. There were many issues that the committee pursued which are not even in the committee report.

Of course, the Greens were concerned about changes to the funding and structure of the environment department and what this will mean for protection of the ACT environment. It was also interesting to learn about the lack of comprehensive records kept by the ACT Government on the energy and resources it uses and its lack of comprehensive waste recycling facilities across government departments.

I would like to conclude by expressing my frustration at the difficulty the committee often faced in getting straight information out of people appearing before the committee - and that goes for bureaucrats as well as for Ministers. I guess that it is a blinkered approach that prevents real participation in the budget process from non-Executive members. The estimates process is, unfortunately, too much about covering up as much as possible, and ducking and weaving on questions. The Government's response to Estimates Committee recommendations is also often part of this art of denial and cover-up. How can we ever have a council-style government, a more multipartisan approach to issues, or whatever you like to call it, if the government of the day goes out of its way to avoid transparency?

Similarly, committee recommendations are also not often taken seriously. The standard approach is either to say, "We are doing that already", or to defend the status quo. It would be refreshing if the Government responded by saying, "Yes, you are right. We should do this", and set about doing it. I acknowledge that there are times when there is a very positive response; but I think there is a lot of room for improvement on this front, too.

MR MOORE (8.24): Mr Speaker, I appreciate having the opportunity to rise and speak on the report of the Select Committee on Estimates. The estimates process this year was quite different in many ways from that of previous years. As a person who has been involved in the Estimates Committee since the beginning of self-government, I found it particularly interesting to deal with the accrual accounting. At the same time, I think the committee was working in very difficult circumstances indeed. When we recommended, as part of the Public Accounts Committee, that we should change to accrual accounting, we knew that there would be one year at least when accountability would be weaker than in most years. Nevertheless, I think the committee has worked well to come out with a report that can be useful for members and for the Government, provided that the Government does not simply prepare answers to the recommendations without reading the text.

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