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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 1920 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

I said, "Wrong". The decisions are made by the Speaker. The Standing Committee on Administration and Procedure advises the Speaker. I must say that I am delighted that on most occasions the Speaker has taken that advice very seriously. In fact, it is not the case that the decision was made by the committee. The response also said - and this is the most fundamental point - that there is no logical connection - - -

Mrs Carnell: The Speaker told me it was you guys.

MR MOORE: Chief Minister, go and look at the Assembly's budget. This Assembly's budget is the cheapest budget of any legislative assembly in Australia, by miles. We started that way, and most members are very proud of that.

Mrs Carnell: The cheapest Executive by miles, too.

MR MOORE: I hear the interjection, "The cheapest Executive by miles". I will come back to that. I agree with that. But the reason there is a logical connection is that there is just nowhere else in the budget for us to move to accommodate this level of cutting. I think it was an extraordinarily silly thing for us to begin to cut, as an overall concept, the Legislative Assembly budget. It was different from every other section of government, in that when we got self-government every other section of government came over and then needed to be cut in a matching way with our cuts from Federal funds. I will come back to that. But what happened with the Legislative Assembly was that we were established to run on a shoestring, and we have been running on a shoestring compared to even the next cheapest assembly budget in any other jurisdiction. Remember that those other jurisdictions also do not have local council functions as well. In doing a comparison, it would be fair to actually take into account the cost of local councils.

That having been said, I think it is reasonable to say that, as far as I am concerned, the total budget of the Assembly has been contained. It has caused us some difficulties. I think the security arrangements are going to continue to cause some difficulties for this Assembly, until we can reach a point where we have the ability to employ security officers at this Assembly 24 hours a day, the same as every other parliament in Australia and most buildings in the ACT that contain government departments that have security measures installed.

MR BERRY (10.40): I rise to follow on from Mr Moore in relation to the issue of security. The issue of security was one that had to be dealt with by the Administration and Procedure Committee, for certain. As has been pointed out, it became necessary after the Government cut the Assembly budget. The Government has always been quick to criticise the Assembly security arrangements. When the Administration and Procedure Committee and the Speaker decided on certain security arrangements, both the Chief Minister and the now Deputy Chief Minister tended to be critical of the new security arrangements. Is it not amazing where the complaints first came from? Yes; that is a good question, because the first complaints came from Mr Humphries's office and from other Government members. They were the ones that complained about the lack of security arrangements. That is why the Administration and Procedure Committee acted to deal with problems facing staff.

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