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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 2 Hansard (27 February) . . Page.. 585 ..

MS McRAE (continuing):

We heard, for instance, that Weston Creek would very much like not a municipal pool but a very small pool in their area. For the moment there is absolutely no money that could go that way; but, if there were a five-year plan, perhaps that sort of thing could be foreseen for some time in the future.

Point four of my plan is how the information on the draft capital works could be effectively disseminated. This comes to the guts of a whole lot of issues in terms of community consultation and discussion, and I do not know anybody who has ever found the answer. I think it would be very fair within a discussion paper to at least explore some further options or evaluate what has been done already, so that people could have fair access to this information. We hear repeatedly that it troubles people that they cannot get the information. We have, in a recommendation, suggested the Internet, Austouch and all the obvious outlets, but I do not think it would hurt to have a further and deeper look at this whole question.

Point No. 5 is the nature of public discussion and scrutiny of the draft budget by the P and E Committee and the general public. For the moment we have hit upon a formula where we have a look at it, the public servants debate it openly and publicly by way of public hearing, we then advise the communities involved, and then it is forwarded on to government. It would be very helpful in a draft discussion paper on possible future options to have a look at this, to examine this process and see whether there are other ways where we could better involve the public. For instance, if we end up with the municipal electorate allocation, maybe electorate-based discussion groups would be better than an all-in public inquiry. I think it would be good to evaluate our experience thus far and put it forward in this discussion paper, just to look at how best it could be scrutinised.

Finally, there is the process that could be followed by government in response to the P and E Committee report. For the time being, of course, the Government just responds to it and incorporates it in the budget; but maybe, if we have longer-term commitments, if we have other things that are flagged by the community and so on that come through the type of thing that I am talking about, the Government could perhaps not only tick off the first year but also give an indication of which of the priorities are likely to be looked at in what years in the way that it is now being built into the capital works papers that we do get. With the feasibility studies and the forward design work that is being done, it already lends itself to this, and I think further explication of this would be very useful. I throw that in by way of some lateral thinking that was not, as I say, part of the committee's report but was something that we were very conscious of. Given that this is our last opportunity in this Assembly to have a look at this process, it may be something the Government may consider taking on board on behalf of the Assembly and then perhaps ending up with something useful for the next Assembly.

Some of the concerns raised in the process of inquiry were very instructive, and they were raised by members of the general public. In many cases they echoed anxieties raised by committee members during the course of discussions with the responsible public servants. The thrust of these mutual concerns related to the justification for quite high levels of expenditure on projects such as the never-ending story of the Canberra Hospital refurbishment and redevelopment. It seems that every time we finish spending $100m another $100m pops up for expenditure, and people are very concerned about that. Quite large sums similarly are being spent on Calvary and Bruce Stadium.

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