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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (20 November) . . Page.. 3907 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

about the language once it goes to Cabinet. "A decision was taken" is the language that comes out from Cabinet. "I did not make it; none of us actually made it. It was just this decision that was taken", is the language. This is the concern that is coming out. So it would be well for you to address those - - -

Mr De Domenico: Have you dispelled that concern?

MS TUCKER: I listened to that meeting. Mr De Domenico does ask the most irritating questions. I do not know why I am bothering to answer it. I do not think I will. I think I will just let it go. That is the issue. I believe Mr Humphries is interested in what came out of that meeting, so I will continue. I will ignore Mr De Domenico's irrelevant interjections. I have dealt with the accountability question. If the Minister for Arts has no real say in the proposals any more, only as a member of the Cabinet, and it is up to the whole-of-government approach, but, of course, chaired by the Office of Financial Management, who are determinedly pursuing economic efficiencies across the board, the arts community are also concerned and wonder what the agenda actually is.

We have heard the Treasurer proudly talking about accrual accounting. As an example of one of the benefits of accrual accounting she pointed out the relative cost of arts grants and sports grants. Obviously, arts grants cost more than sports grants. They are totally different areas. She was not really telling anybody anything that they did not already know. When they see these statements and then they see a new layer suddenly imposed on arts administration which is chaired by the Office of Financial Management, I think you can understand why there might be some concern because it is a general direction of this Government. That is fine. It is their political view. That is how they go for it - squeeze every lemon. Mr Humphries says, "Squeeze every lemon"; but when that question was asked at the meeting - "How much money is going to be saved here by this process?" - the answer was, "Well, probably not much".

The other question that was asked was, "What is the cost of this added layer of bureaucracy?". I am asking that, too. Do we have an actual cost-benefit analysis?

Mr Humphries: It is a saving, not a cost.

MS TUCKER: It is a saving of money. Okay; so how much money has been saved and where is it going to be saved? Those are other issues that were raised last night that you can also talk about to the arts community. You were asking what is wrong with it. You were saying to Mr Wood that you could not work out what the concerns were or why he was raising this matter of public importance. You also said - I think it was a bit disappointing - that it is really not important enough for a matter of public importance; it does not have that value. The arts community would be very disappointed to hear you say that, because they do have very extreme concerns about this process. Even if they are

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