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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 6 Hansard (1 September) . . Page.. 1679 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

The estimates process, I think, was quite viable. It is a real pity that the Government's response to the report, rather than being proactive and positive and seeking to indicate the extent to which it could accept and take up the recommendations made by the committee, has sought to deride them, to belittle them and to completely undermine them.

I will go through some of the things that were revealed during the estimates process that show the extent to which this Government is completely impervious to the need for good process, the need for good process as a precursor to good government and the need for good process as a precursor to the delivery of a good, genuinely clever and caring budget. The issues go to Floriade - the Government's intransigence and the fact that it had no process in relation to Floriade - and the Government's dismissal of the processes put in place by this Assembly to deal effectively with national competition policy issues. The fact is that two years ago this Assembly directed the Government to establish the competition forum, but it never saw fit to utilise the enormous expertise that was available to it through the forum. As a result, this Government delivered a most spurious dismissal of its election commitment to build a pool in Belconnen. Because of this Government's dismissive attitude to the competition forum, the national competition issues delivered to this Assembly and to the people of Canberra, a report on the deregulation of the milk industry was simply ridiculed, trashed. The advice was simply not acceptable and did not advance the debate. Because of this Government's lack of commitment to process, its lack of commitment to good government, we were left with a non-useable report on the deregulation of the milk industry and an election promise that was trashed to fill some other hole.

The situation in relation to the Institute of the Arts is just another example of a complete lack of process of good government. Others include the Feel the Power campaign, the painted plane, the hiring of an office, an unserviced office in Sydney - things that really defy my imagination in terms of open, transparent processes - and, of course, the Hall/Kinlyside development. The Hall/Kinlyside development was dealt with at some length in the estimates process, a process that revealed nothing, a process that left us - - -

Ms Carnell: I agree with that. It revealed absolutely nothing - the whole of the estimates process.

MR STANHOPE: No, it revealed a lot. What the estimates process revealed, in relation to the Hall/Kinlyside development, was the extent to which this Government did not answer, and still has not answered, the challenges which this side of the house has made to it about the veracity of some of its responses in question time. There are still a whole range of unanswered questions in relation to some of the evidence given to the Estimates Committee by officials of the Chief Minister's Department. There are still unanswered questions in relation to some of the evidence given to the Estimates Committee by officials of the Department of Urban Services.

Ms Carnell: What unanswered questions? Send them to me.

MR STANHOPE: I will, Chief Minister. I propose to do that. In evidence which you and your officers from asset management provided, you undertook to give to us a copy of the three leases which were hand-delivered to Mr Lilley. We are still waiting for those three sets of documents.

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