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

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 1 Hansard (18 February) . . Page.. 355 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

The "spin doctors" who put this motion together for you are great on words. They are expert in presenting the Chief Minister and Treasurer in a favourable light, this time with the clear intention of attempting to put all the non-Government Members of the Assembly on the defensive in some way. To quote the media's interpretation of your words, we are to "put up or shut up". Somehow you have got it wrong - it is you, as Treasurer, who has to put up or shut up.

If you sincerely want input to your Budgets from non-Government Members of the Assembly, then it must be an ongoing involvement, not simply a 15-minute opportunity only weeks before tabling your Budget. How can any non-Government Member, regardless of debating time limits, make a sensible input to such questions as, eg

. the level of operating loss which the 1999/2000 Budget should incur

. the level of debt, and any new borrowings, which the Territory should incur?

Such matters can only be intelligently debated when Members are in full possession of facts not generally disclosed even in Budgets, and when people are fully conversant with all budgetary and economic imperatives. Non-Executive Members clearly do not possess sufficient resources to become sufficiently well-informed as to be able to participate in useful debate. It is your duty to put such matters to the legislature, with full information and argument justifying your position - you have all the resources of the Office of Financial Management at your disposal to allow you to do that.

You rely on the Pettit Report -

the point that Mr Moore raised -

as justification for this bizarre proposal. Firstly, that report is still under consideration by an Assembly Select Committee and it is odd, to say the least, that that particular issue should be drawn upon by you in advance of the Committee's report. Secondly, the relevant Pettit recommendation refers to "wider and deeper" discussion of Budget matters. A debate with a 15-minute time limit on each Member hardly falls into that category. It will be neither wide nor deep.

Mr Humphries: Good. Support our motion then.

MR KAINE: They hate it, don't they. They hate it. Mr Speaker, my letter goes on:

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