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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (24 May) . . Page.. 1668 ..

Budget-Health and Community Care

MR RUGENDYKE: My question is to the Minister for Health and Community Care. Minister, as you are aware, I have expressed my concerns about the provision of the $7.6 million in yesterday's budget to spend at your discretion. I believe that the budget process is about genuine appropriation, not blank cheque appropriation and that every dollar should be prioritised and itemised. Will you give the Assembly an undertaking to produce a supplementary appropriation that allocates and accounts for all of this money, in the same manner that each other minister has been able to do?

MR MOORE: Yes. It is called a purchase agreement.

MR RUGENDYKE: Minister, could you provide the Assembly with an overview of how you envisage the $7.6 million being allocated, and for how long do you intend to keep the money in your control before releasing it?

MR MOORE: The money is, of course, set out as growth needs funds, and that recognises there is going to be an increase in health needs in a whole area. They are not new initiatives; they are increasing needs across the community.

Mr Rugendyke would know of a number of instances where he and other people have brought cases of a special need in the community to my attention and he expected these cases of real need to be funded at the time. He may remember an example of some autistic children who were needing specific assistance at that time.

This is a normal part of the budgeting process. It is allocated for unmet need. It will be set out, as I just indicated, in the purchase agreement and will be dealt with in the normal and appropriate way. The funds that are available to me will be all expended within the context, as the Treasurer said, of Setting the Agenda-the policy direction that I set when I became minister. It was accepted by cabinet, it was tabled in this Assembly and noted by the Assembly.

Budget-CIT Funding

MR BERRY: My question is to the Minister for Education, Mr Stefaniak. I refer the minister, first of all, to budget 1999 and secondly to budget 2000, and draw his attention to where the money goes and what the money buys in those documents respectively. The tables show that CIT funding drops in 2000-2001 to $66.9 million from $75.7 million in the same paper last year, a cut of around $9 million. How does the minister reconcile this with his media release, which states the cut as $3.1 million, and what bizarre formula for building social capital does this fit into?

MR STEFANIAK: Mr Berry, thank you for the question. I thought that at the last estimates committee you got a lesson in accrual accounting; that is unique. You need to go back and revise whatever notes you took. Effectively, in layman's terms the second cut that you mentioned of $3.1 million is the one which most people go on.

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