Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 4 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 984 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

assessment and no information about how decisions were reached. The Government did not provide that to the committee. How could the committee then take on that task itself? Now, this is not unique.

Mr Humphries seems to think we want to do things a whole new way, but I do not think governments in the past or other departments have any different view. I want to quote something, and I do this only as a matter of fact, not necessarily as a point of criticism. The Minister, Mr Moore, was asked, "How did you come to these decisions?", and I quote from what he said, as shown on page 12 of our report:

I do not dispute that. That is how the system seems to work. We might like to change it, and maybe over years it will be changed. But Mr Humphries, in his comments today, wants us, at the click of the fingers, to be able to do better than that. It is simply not possible. It cannot be done. The committee cannot second-guess the Minister. We do not have the resources that the Minister has. If the departments, with all their resources, have not provided this information, how could the committee? Mr Humphries thinks they can. He thinks it is not a problem. Perhaps Mr Humphries ought to start to pay attention to what is persistently coming through in these committee reports. He should pay attention to what is being said in each report. There is a very strong thread through all of them, so listen and do not merely accuse committees of being political. Maybe Mr Humphries wants to look at himself.

I do not think time was a problem but, with the resources the committee had, it was not reasonable to expect us to go back and do the job that the departments themselves do not do. Perhaps we have higher standards than the Treasurer, perhaps we require more information on decision-making than the Treasurer does, and perhaps we can see evidence of that in some of the rushed decisions that have been taken by the Government over the last year or two that have caused enormous trouble. Perhaps it is that we just have higher standards.

Let me move on now to the second aspect of our report, which is our reflection on what the needs of the community are as expressed by the community. This is a major point I now want to make on behalf of the committee. Our report says:

I repeat, "no higher priority". Members of this Assembly do not have to be on the committee or to be the Minister for Health to know that. I am sure they keep their ears to the ground. They know what the priorities out there are and they know the difficulties that people come to them with. When we hear the succession of accounts from this sector, its priority is inescapable.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .