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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 4 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 931 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

agreement of all members, in debate on this matter only a few weeks ago. The committees were told that the draft budget process was about attempting to build a better budget through taking comment and feedback from the community and helping to refine and distil elements of the budget, to improve the budget outcomes and to test the Government's allocation of priorities within the budget framework.

That, as I understand it, was what the draft budget process was all about. It was about putting the document itself, the budget, on the table in a draft form and saying, "Here is how the Government sees and reads the priorities and what it proposes to spend in the coming financial year. Tell us how we should change them, given that we have only a certain amount of money to spend. We do not wish to increase our borrowings. We want to spend as much as we have earned, given that we are projecting a balanced budget. Tell us how to reorganise this budget to achieve better priorities within that framework".

In those terms, the Standing Committee on Education, Community Services and Recreation has failed utterly to address those priorities. None of the recommendations relates in reality to the priorities outlined in the draft budget. They are all recommendations that relate, in effect, to what I would describe as estimates-type processes - processes about collecting information, government going off and doing further work, improving reporting requirements by providing more information in certain areas, et cetera, the sorts of recommendations that we usually see out of estimates committees.

That was not the task that was given to these committees. Each committee was not meant to be an estimates committee; it was meant to be a draft budget committee. The committees were meant to do the sort of work the Government does in developing its budget. It looks at what departments put forward by way of suggested priorities for the coming year and decides whether it agrees with them. None of that is in this report. That, I have to say, is a gravely disappointing state of affairs.

Mr Berry and Ms Tucker repeated their opposition to the draft budget process. Fair enough, we understand where they are coming from in this exercise. But it is a pity that they have let their personal views about this matter override the views that were clearly laid down and accepted by a majority in the Assembly about the way in which this budget process was to work. There is nothing in here that the Government can look at, I would suggest, that should change significantly the way in which the budget is brought forward, at least in terms of the recommendations of this report. There is nothing on which to go back to Cabinet and say, "They recommended that we change this priority in favour of that and we shift money from here to there in the budget. What do we think about that?". There is nothing at all, Mr Acting Speaker.

There are some comments which could be said to go to the question of budget allocation, but those comments do so without recognition of the basic parameter which this Assembly imposed on the committees, which was that they should do so in a budget neutral way. If they want to spend more money on something, they have to say, just as the Government has to say it, where they would find the money for it. We have been told that that was not possible because, firstly, there was not enough time and, secondly, there was not enough money or there were not enough resources to be able to do that.

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