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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 4 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 944 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

are virtually recommending that you give us an interim report before that budget on just how the GST affects it so that we can at least digest that with a view to reading and understanding that further budget, using the knowledge and the understanding that we have gained by being involved in this particular process.

When looking at the budget itself, the committee sees that there are positives in that within the improving financial situation. The easing of payroll tax seems to be a very positive move. The committee would like to think that the Assembly has some measure of the effect of that. It might report back to the Assembly on the impacts of that particular relaxation so that we understand what impact it did have and, when we look at it in future, we have some frame of reference. You probably have heard already in this debate, and you will hear again, no doubt, that people were concerned about the amount of information they had and the limited timeframe in which to do the job that this Assembly gave them to do.

Obviously we applaud the research and development grant scheme that has come forward. We know that Canberra's future lies in the development of a knowledge-based economy. I only have to refer you to my policy speech to the ALP conference of last year in relation to that. We would give a tick to the capital works, particularly in the development of Gungahlin. People who have spent considerable amounts of money to develop their houses and to settle in Gungahlin deserve to receive at the earliest possible moment the basic services you would expect in a planned city like Canberra.

A matter of concern is the tardiness that is evident in the construction of capital works. For the last year that we have any report on, 1998-99, we only started 50 per cent of the projects that were promised in money terms. It is pretty easy to budget for a capital works program full of promise if you do not really intend to fill that promise. The committee has had an episodic battle - I guess you would call it that - with Treasury officials in terms of getting a capital works budget process that is a closed system. If something goes in, it does not fall off, or get forgotten, or get reannounced the next year as an initiative even though it has been promised for one or two years beforehand. We will, no doubt, return to that battle again.

Within the budget there are some initiatives which we hardly see as initiatives. We think it is a bit spurious to be making claims such as health and community care funding going up when it hardly keeps pace with financial indexation. We think that making announcements like spending $4.5m on Australian Federal Police, on which you have no choice, hardly rates as an initiative. Topping up funding for ACTION because the system that you have implemented has caused a drop in patronage hardly seems an initiative. Abiding by requirements of an intergovernmental agreement on the first home owner scheme hardly seems an initiative as well. Then there is a whole list of what essentially must be routine maintenance that has also been given the spurious title of initiatives.

I want to mention undesirable budget provisions. The reduction in hospital and acute care funding, $25m over four years, in the pursuit of national averages is scary stuff. We are rather concerned about that. When we hear all the reports from across the States of

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