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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 4063 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

wheels within wheels. She knows that some things that she wants to get through are not about supporting government. She knows that there are many ways in which things can be made much more difficult for a government than they have been. To take that kind of attitude to members of the Assembly is simply not acceptable.

Mr Speaker, generally I believe that the response to the Estimates Committee was very positive although marred by a few things. One of the reasons it is so positive is that the Estimates Committee was particularly careful to ensure that the recommendations it made were such that the Government would be able to respond in a careful way. We sat down for a long and difficult debate which I believe was chaired particularly well by Ms McRae, who allowed us to - - -

Ms McRae: Sometimes I am reasonable.

MR MOORE: Indeed, Ms McRae. I do not mind handing out negatives but I also do not mind giving positives when it is appropriate. That was a time when it was appropriate. The fact that we were able to come up with a positive report has been particularly worth while.

On the issue of InTACT, I still have a series of difficulties. I was pleased with the Government's response that it agreed in principle to what the committee was saying, but I think it was important for the Minister involved, Mr De Domenico, to read the whole text of what the committee was saying about this issue. It is one which I felt particularly nervous about. In the end the decision to allow this to proceed was an on-balance decision that I found quite difficult to make. That is my personal perspective, although the committee may well have taken a different perspective. I think that that is worth while. I would also like to raise the issue of Ngunnawal, but I will do that when we are considering another part in the Bill.

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (10.59): Mr Speaker, I think it is important to run through a few of the issues that have been raised already this evening. I think there is a tiny bit of misunderstanding about a few of them, particularly recommendation 1(i)(c), the one recommendation that we did not agree with. It certainly was not, as Mr Whitecross suggested, that we were not going to add rental or accommodation costs to our output costs; quite the opposite, in fact. Accommodation and rental costs certainly will be a factor in the cost of our outputs in next year's budget, as I think we made clear in the Estimates Committee. What we are saying is that those costs will not be in the budget. They certainly can be in the annual reports if that is what the Assembly would like. We are very happy to do that. But they would not be appropriate in the budget because they are an input.

Obviously, the budget will be put together on outputs. Similarly, wages as such will not be in the budget papers. They will be in the annual reports. What we are saying is that the inputs will be in the annual reports, as part of the reporting mechanism; the cost of outputs will be in the budget. In no way do we mean that we are not going to make that information available. It certainly will be available. But the budget papers, because of the way they are now put together, will not have that information in them. It was not meant as Mr Whitecross took it. I cannot imagine why he took it that it meant that we were not going to add accommodation or rental costs into our output costs.

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