Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (19 November) . . Page.. 3792 ..

MR BERRY: Mr Speaker, a more expensive motor car than the most expensive Holden is not a cheap motor car. A more expensive motor car than the most expensive Holden Commodore is not a cheap motor car. It is $7,000 dearer than the most expensive Holden Commodore. You people are kidding yourselves if you think the people out there will swallow the suggestion that this is not waste. Mr Speaker, this is a situation where the Government has been caught out. It was clear that they knew that they were caught out, otherwise they would not have delayed the answer for so long.

MS REILLY (8.55): Mr Speaker, I want to talk about the Estimates Committee report as well. As many other members and other people within the community have said today, I too had trouble scrutinising this budget. I think it is rather sad, going from phone calls I had from people in the community, that they were not able to see what the detail of the budget was for the ACT in this coming year. Many people are interested in the budget process; but this one was made exceptionally difficult for people to understand, and I think that is a pity. It seems almost as if it was a secretive process. I did not realise that accrual accounting meant that you did not give out information. For the many times that it was said that it was similar to private enterprise accounts, I was surprised to find how hard it was to scrutinise it.

The other thing that was unfortunate was that there was no comparative data. That has also been raised by other people. Also, the annual reports in a number of cases failed to provide any information, or very little information, on the activities that were undertaken in 1995-96. You wonder: Maybe they did not do anything; or was it the fact that there were so many problems that they did not wish to report on what was going on in the Public Service in the ACT? I think that is unfortunate, because there are many worthwhile activities.

With the failure to provide comparative information, it was very hard to see what this budget was going to do for this year. There was actually no reason for it. In any system where you are changing from one type of accounting to another type of accounting it is accepted practice to provide information on both types of accounting. There is no need to use the excuse that we have a new system and we do not need to provide the information on what was happening previously. It is also usual practice to provide some information within your annual reports on the activities that have been undertaken in the previous year. I was very pleased to see that there was a recommendation within this Estimates Committee report that there be much better and much more open processes for reporting on activities in following years. The Commonwealth has managed to do this, in looking at activity reports for a number of years, in an open way. It will be good to see whether the ACT Government can follow suit.

Let us look at one program in particular - the Kick Start program. This was one that maybe they will regret in the future. They have been quite open in saying how this program will work. This has been an initiative that has been tied to the jobs for Canberra push of this budget. Even after three months, I would be curious to know how many jobs you can put down to this Kick Start program. It is good to see that we will be actually reviewing how it is going after six months. I am quite sure that a number of people are going to be very interested to see what the take-up rate is.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .