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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (14 May) . . Page.. 1387 ..

Liquor Trading Hours

MR MOORE: My question is directed to Mr Humphries as Attorney-General. Mr Humphries, when this Assembly passed legislation to extend the 4.00 am closing time beyond when it had originally been planned to end, in spite of the impact we knew it was having on small business, the argument was that this Government and this Assembly were awaiting the criminological report of the investigation into 4.00 am closing. Is it true, Minister, that you actually have the report? In fact, is it true that you have already had it for a couple of weeks and that this Assembly could have considered the report and, depending on what its recommendations are, we could have had legislation debated and perhaps given a chance to small business?

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I thank Mr Moore for the question. I have not seen any report at all. It is possible that it has arrived in my office and I have not seen it as yet. I had some indication of what would be in the report, but I have not seen the report and I have not looked at the report. I intend to make the report available, as I indicated to the Assembly, as soon as I have seen it.

Education - Recurrent Grants

MS McRAE: Mr Speaker, my question is to Mr Stefaniak, the Minister for Education. Minister, is it not the case that the Federal Government recurrent grants to government schooling appear to be about $1.9m below what you budgeted for and that the recurrent grants to non-government schools are about $860,000 more than what is in your budget? Minister, can you please explain this apparent miscalculation in your budget papers?

MR STEFANIAK: As Ms McRae will realise, with the Commonwealth funding for education, what the actual figures mean is worked out over the next few weeks, and that will be the case with this particular lot of funding. My department is looking at that at present and checking up with the Commonwealth what exactly these figures mean. It may well turn out that you are right; it may well turn out that you are wrong. But over the next few weeks we will work out exactly what their figures do mean to the ACT budget.

MS McRAE: I ask a supplementary question. I am not wrong, Mr Stefaniak. I am asking you to verify. It is your budget. What I would like to know is: What are the implications for education and for ACT schools of these figures and your budget? You had the papers last night. You wrote your own papers last week.

MR STEFANIAK: I have told you, Ms McRae, that, as they did last year, my department and the Federal department will be going through those over the next few weeks. Once we have ascertained exactly what those figures mean for ACT education, I will let you know.

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