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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (24 May) . . Page.. 1639 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

issue. Has any other member of this place? So, what is the process? How is it to be conducted? Who is to oversight it, other than this advisory committee?

In terms of this whole process, in my view the credentials of the evaluators at the end of the day have to be impeccable and in my view no proponents of this trial should be allowed anywhere near the evaluation, because they cannot look at it objectively. For the same reason, strong opponents should be excluded, because they would not look at it objectively, either. Whoever is going to do this evaluation had better be totally disinterested. The minister needs to listen to that point very carefully.

Finally, the timely submission to the Assembly of the evaluation conclusions must be guaranteed. I do not want the conclusions a year after the trial has finished. If the minister sets this trial up properly on a scientific basis, if he has his baseline data established and he collects data during the trial, he should be able to produce an evaluation result within about one month of the conclusion of the trial. If it takes longer than that, the minister will have to explain to me why.

I understood that the trial was to be for one year. Obviously, that is not so now, because the budget includes financial provision into the third budget year from now. When was a two-year plus trial agreed upon? When was it enunciated by this government? It has never been enunciated, to my knowledge. It always talked, in the early days, about a one-year trial; but now, of course, it is to be a two-year trial, possibly two years plus. If it is a one-year trial, the results should be known 13 months after the starting date. If it is a two-year trial, they should be known 25 months after the starting date. I would not suggest that we should allow more time than that.

If the data collection and analysis mechanisms are put in place first, the public will want to know whether their public money has been spent to some good purpose, and they are entitled to know without delay.(Extension of time granted.) I was going to say that the evaluation must be completed and in the public arena before the next election in October 2001. Clearly, that is not going to happen now because the period of the trial has been extended; so the electorate will not be given an opportunity to express a view about this trial in October of next year. The electorate will have to wait for another four years before they get to express a view. I wonder whether that is coincidental.

The minister and other proponents of this trial will have to convince a very large part of the ACT community that this trial is being properly conducted, that the expenditure of public money is warranted and that the results are clearly and unequivocally demonstrable and supported by objective data. A soft evaluation, based on some subjective opinion, simply will not do and I will not support it.

Responsibility for all of these matters rests with the minister and the government. The minister has already pulled one trick by saying that it is not his problem, that the advisory committee decided. The advisory committee is just that; it is an advisory committee. Decision-making and the responsibility that goes with that decision-making fall to the minister and the government. It is their project. This project would never have got off the ground if it had not been government sponsored. I do not accept that anybody other than the minister and the government should be held accountable for the way it is conducted and for the outcomes of it. I will not for one moment tolerate the minister or the

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