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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (2 December) . . Page.. 4382 ..

Amendment agreed to.

Clause, as amended, agreed to.

Proposed new clause 4A

MR BERRY (Leader of the Opposition) (10.40): Mr Speaker, the next amendment relates to the timing of the first Appropriation Bill for the financial year. This matter arose from the decision of the Assembly to conduct elections in October after the forthcoming election, to ensure that a Labor government will have a long term in office after it wins the next election. We thank members for their generosity in that regard. It will give us a little more time to implement our platform and make sure that we put a nice shine on it for the first October election. But the real problem that we did not deal with in the context of establishing that October election is the issue of the budget.

I am just reminded, Mr Speaker, that because amendment No. 4 which has been circulated in my name proposes some amendments to the Bill that are beyond the scope of the Bill, I should seek leave of the Assembly to move the amendment, and I therefore do so.

Leave granted.

MR BERRY: I move:

Page 2, line 28, insert the following new clause:

"Timing of first Appropriation Bill for financial year

4A. Section 5 of the Principal Act is amended by omitting `3 months after' and substituting `the day before' ".

The amendment sets out to ensure that the budget is dealt with the day before the end of the financial year, rather than as late as September in the following financial year. I explained earlier that there are some difficulties which would not be acceptable to the community in relation to bringing the budget down later than that date, because we could end up in a situation where the budget was not brought down until 30 September in an election year. Clearly, that would have the potential to put the Assembly in an untenable position. We could be faced with the situation where the Assembly would not have time prior to an election to consider properly a budget which should have been the subject of intense deliberation.

Mr Speaker, this is a sensible amendment. It ensures that budgets will be brought down at an appropriate time before October elections in future. In its current form the budget is being dealt with by the end of September. With February elections, it is something that the Assembly has been able to cope with. But applying the same rules in relation to October elections would be unacceptable and, indeed, untenable, and the situation should be adjusted. Mr Speaker, this is what I was talking about when the arrangements for the

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