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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 4 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 973 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

The report discusses ACTBIS. There is fairly public debate about it. The committee recommends that the Government, wherever possible, avoid cash grants. We have been assured previously that the Government intended to do this. Furthermore, the committee recommends that once a package is granted, after the deal is done, details be immediately supplied to this place, and that those details give us the milestones that are included as well as just the amount of money.

There are a couple of other recommendations in relation to some of the people who came to see us. Home-based business seems to be missing out on government support just because they cannot afford to send people to courses and seminars. (Further extension of time granted) The Government offered special rates if you could send two people. When a business is two or three people, they usually cannot send one. We made some recommendations in relation to some on-line access and support for home-based business and the micro-businesses that have spawned some of the good small businesses we have in this town.

It is probably on the edge of our responsibility, but there is a recommendation in relation to green-waste bins and their impact on small businesses. Trash pack businesses in the ACT will definitely be affected by the introduction of green-waste bins. We must give further thought to what process we go through if those green-waste bins are to be introduced in households and to how we protect people who have mortgaged their homes to buy trucks, frames and other things that support their business. The possibility is that this would take them below the break-even point and gradually send them to the wall.

One of our members - the Speaker, Mr Cornwell - confirms the difficulty we had with time. It is simplistic to say that the committees have had so many weeks. As we know, all members are very busy on other issues, on other committee matters, on such small items as ACTEW debates and now the Impulse Airlines proposals. Those sorts of things take up time as well. It behoves the Government to accept with a certain degree of goodwill the reports that they have received from all of the committees in relation to the draft budget.

Of course, there are political dimensions contained within these reports, but at the same time quite obviously a lot of work has gone into this preparation. If this turns out to be a stunt that was put on as a oncer, as a vehicle to provide for a stream of announcements at the end of a very poor year for a government and as a process that was only intended to have a shelf life of a few months, I will be very disappointed and I think this house as a whole would take a very jaundiced view of that approach.

I commend the report, as amended on my feet today, to the house.

MR KAINE (4.08): Mr Speaker, I believe that today we have come to the end of one phase of an experiment in budget development. The process is yet incomplete. We will not see the budget for some time yet. We now have to see what the Government, and the Treasurer in particular, will do with the products of this phase that has just ended - that is, the committee reports.

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