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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 4 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 976 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

the Government as to how much attention they focus on, and to what extent they are prepared to change their budget to accommodate, issues such as support for micro-business, public housing, youth services, a green-waste bin trial, a range of social and community issues, the environment, health and education. All of those matters were presented to the committee.

Our job, basically speaking, was to look at the budget of the Treasurer and the Chief Minister. Because of the broad-ranging responsibilities of the Finance and Public Administration Committee, we were approached and had submissions made to us by people across the whole spectrum of government activity, so there may well be some duplication of what other committee reports contain. We felt that the best thing we could do was summarise what the community had said to us, pass it on to the Government and see whether or not they could make something of it in the public interest. We made 11 recommendations. There is some material in them for the Government to consider, but I will be waiting to see how much of it is reflected in the final budget when it is brought down by the Government in a few weeks' time.

Mr Speaker, in summary, the Finance and Public Administration Committee has done its part in an attempt to make the experiment work, despite the reservations that some of us had. What we need after this is an evaluation, preferably an independent one, of just what this process has contributed to the development of the budget, having regard to the fact that it has diverted the committees away from other things that perhaps we could and should have been doing more thoroughly than we might have done at the end of the day, to see whether or not the attempt to involve the standing committees of the Assembly in the budgetary process at this stage of the budget was a good thing to do or a bad thing to do. I suspect that if a proper evaluation is done - I did signal before that I did not think this would be repeated next year - of how effective it has been, we might well conclude that it was not worth the effort.

As the chair did, I commend the report to the Assembly and to the Government. I will wait with interest to see in what way, if at all, this report changes the budget in its final form.

MR HUMPHRIES (Treasurer, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Community Safety) (4.20): As I indicated before, the Government will bring down a formal response to the reports of all the committees, but I want to make a few comments now. I have to express again some disappointment in the thrust of the report of the Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration. In doing so, I suppose I agree with much of what Mr Kaine has had to say. Looking over the report, I suppose I have to concede that there is not a great deal the Government is going to be able to take out of it which is going to be useful to it in refining its budget in May. There are no recommendations, pursuant to the flavour of what the Assembly commended the committees to do, which was to provide a basis for the Government to say, "Here is how we are going to improve our budget as a result of community consultation and committee consideration".

Where I part company with Mr Kaine is on who is responsible for how that has come about. As I have said before, I reject the assertion that there was not the capacity either in time or in resources to be able to deal with the issues which the Assembly put before

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