Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 5 Hansard (27 August) . . Page.. 1443 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

of public servants who are in the employ of the Government, especially those preparing the budget, spend most of their time preparing their budget in a way that it cannot be read. Now, that is not the way to prepare budget papers. This means that members have had to take on faith the claims of Government Ministers.

With the budget now fixed to be considered before the annual reports are tabled it is even more important that the information be set out consistently from year to year to allow consideration of the proposed budget in the light of previous years. It is also important for Assembly members to be able to find program changes in the budget papers. It is a stunning indictment of the papers presented that the major issues causing comment in the community, the discredited Feel the Power plane, the cuts to the Institute of the Arts, the proposal to charge for entry to Floriade, were absent from the papers. And what about the Woodies?

Another serious concern encountered by the committee was the significant number of discrepancies between the budget papers and the ownership and purchase agreements. Recommendation 5, that the budget papers be formatted to provide extensive financial detail that is fully transparent, fully comparable and consistent between ownership agreements-purchasing agreements and the budget papers, should never have been required and would not have been had the promises and claims of the Chief Minister been delivered. All we have heard is: "We provide more information than anybody else" - that has been the excuse - or "We have provided more information than ever before". It is not quantity that we are looking for, Chief Minister; it is quality. That has not been provided in all respects. In a nutshell it identifies the problems with the budget papers supplied to the committee.

The recommendations to include a measures statement as part of the budget papers and for the Estimates Committee to continue to take evidence after its initial report will ensure members are better equipped to monitor the budget and its impacts. In fact, a measures statement would have alleviated a lot of the problems encountered by committee members seeking to understand fully what initiatives had taken place and how they would affect the community. My proposal to invite the community to participate in the Estimates Committee was well received by my fellow committee members and also well received by the community. The community members who appeared were articulate, well prepared and offered further insight into the impact of the proposed budget on a wide range of individuals and groups. The community presentations went well, with one exception - an unfortunate confrontation which led me to investigate ways to prevent such an occurrence in the future. Mr Speaker, I have put forward a proposal to amend the standing orders to give the chairs of committees more power to deal with such unfortunate confrontations.

In a number of areas, most notably in relation to the Belconnen pool, the issue of national competition policy arose. It is clear that there are a wide range of views on what the policy should involve and how it should be implemented. At the weekend there were reports that New South Wales may not be penalised for its refusal to strictly apply competition policy in relation to rice growing and it is certainly clear in the ACT that a majority do not believe that competition policy should be used to prevent the building of a community pool. Surely the rice growing industry is a more significant industry than is the Belconnen pool. It seems to me ridiculous that the building of a community pool

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .