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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 4 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 932 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

On the first question, I want to remind members about the issue of how time was allocated to the committees to conduct this exercise. Members will recall that I outlined to committees in December last year how the Government saw the draft budget process working. As a result of the Government's position, a letter was received by me from the chairman of the Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration saying that there was not enough time, that they would not have the time to properly assess all the issues that went into the development of the draft budget. I wrote back to the committee on, I think, 17 December last year, saying, "We have decided that we will take up the points that you have raised and extend the period that the standing committees have to consider the draft budget. We will do that by pushing out the date for the presentation of the budget itself from early May 2000 to 23 May 2000. The extra time created by that" - something like 10 weeks, as I recall - "allows the committees to have further time to consider the budget". I had no reply to that letter and I assumed that that was acceptable to the committees.

As I have said before in this place, the 10 weeks or so to consider the budget put forward in draft form is actually about the same timeframe as the Government has from when the budget is presented in the budget Cabinet to when it has to make a decision on what the budget should look like. If the time is long enough for us, I would submit that it is long enough for the standing committees.

The second issue is not having the resources to be able to formulate a draft budget. I wonder how many of the committees actually came forward to the Government and said, "We would like you to help us to identify areas where money can be found to meet budget priorities that we would like to identify in our report". I know that the Justice and Community Safety Committee did. They approached me and said, "How can we actually find more money to be able to meet what we see as emerging priorities?". I went back and I suggested some ways in which they could reorganise budget priorities and identify issues. The committee, I imagine - - -

Mr Hargreaves: You did not. You just suggested an amount of money.

MR HUMPHRIES: I am sorry, I had correspondence from the chair of your committee asking me for - - -

Mr Hargreaves: You did not suggest any alternative method. You just said, "Here's a bunch of dough".

MR HUMPHRIES: I had correspondence from the committee asking me to identify ways of being able to fund the priorities which the committee was proposing to recommend. I had correspondence with the committee and my officers had further discussions with it about how we might be able to achieve that exercise. Where was that attempt on the part of - - -

Mr Quinlan: It was a clever move by you and Ossie. It was a good move.

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