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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (2 December) . . Page.. 4235 ..

MS McRAE (continuing):

As I said, I think it is quite clear from looking at the annual reports that all the departments and the Government are still in the process of transition to how best to deal with the requirements of accrual accounting and how best to marry accrual accounting with the overall objectives of the Government, Government policy and the management of policy. Accrual accounting offers a very clear indication of how money is spent and of accruing liability; but it offers very little in terms of ongoing Government plans, objectives, policies and their management and tracking how far we have moved towards achieving objectives on some of the more difficult issues rather than simply balancing the budget. We need to know why we are balancing the budget. We need to know why we are managing money in the way we do. We need to know why we have made decisions to spend money in one area rather than another. Annual reports should give us some flavour of that. As I said at the very beginning, some of them do and some of them do not.

In closing, I thank Bill Symington and Fiona Clapin, who assisted the committee in what was a very rigorous and time-consuming task. I also thank my fellow committee members for working through a long and arduous inquiry, which we managed to complete with very little acrimony or unpleasantness, and for their willingness to compromise and work together to put together a report which offers guidance and commentary rather than vitriolic criticism. I hope that the report will assist the workings of both this Government and those to come.

MR HIRD (10.48): Mr Speaker, at the outset I compliment the chair of the Estimates Committee. As deputy chair and coming from the Government side of this house, I compliment Ms McRae for her chairmanship and her stewardship in respect of this report. On behalf of my colleague Mrs Littlewood, I also congratulate the chair on the way that she brought about a report which was agreed to by the representatives of all parties on the committee.

As the chair said, it has been a long and arduous task to bring the committee's deliberations to the report which we have before us today. Hearings ran for 10 days from 30 October to 18 November. During that time the Chief Minister, other Ministers and you, Mr Speaker, as well as officials from the various departments, gave evidence to the committee. Because this year the budget was brought down earlier than in previous years, Estimates Committee hearings were held over two sessions - one at budget time and the later one to which this report relates.

I thank the committee staff, including the secretary, Mr Bill Symington, very much. They have put together an excellent report. It has not been easy, as the chair has said. Mr Speaker, consideration might be given by the next Assembly to changing the committee system to enable various standing committees, rather than a select committee, to investigate and report on the estimates for their respective areas of responsibility. There is a limited number of members within this chamber, and the Estimates Committee is made up of members who attend and work on standing committees and whose workloads are fairly heavy.

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