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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (25 May) . . Page.. 1773 ..
MR CORBELL (11.15): I move:
That the resolution of the Assembly of 11 May 2000, that established the Select Committee on Estimates 2000-01, be amended by omitting from paragraph (3) "by Friday 23 June 2000" and substituting "by 27 June 2000".
Mr Speaker, I have moved this motion this morning on behalf of the Select Committee on Estimates 2000-2001. As members will see, it is a straightforward motion. The committee has considered the timeframe it has available in which to prepare its report on the appropriation bills. We feel that the addition of three days to our reporting date will enable the committee, particularly the committee secretariat, to have a bit more time to prepare that report in what is already a very tight timeframe and have that report available to the Assembly on its next day of sitting. I commend the motion to members.
MR MOORE (Minister for Health and Community Care) (11.16): This motion extends the reporting date for the Estimates Committee to the Tuesday of the next sitting. This motion will cause the government considerable difficulty. The approach of the past has been to receive the report on the Friday before for ministers and their departments to work on the Estimates Committee's report over the weekend and prepare as best they can a careful response.
I understand that a tight timeframe was involved. If it is the will of the Assembly to extend the reporting date of the Estimates Committee, we will accept that; but it is important for us to put on record what the impact will be. It will mean that we will receive the report on, effectively, the Tuesday of the sitting week and the response from the government on it will be basically a political response. I would not be able to get the Department of Health and Community Care to do a thorough analysis of the committee's report and I think that it would be fair to say that other ministers would be in the same boat. Of course, the Treasury, which would take responsibility in this place for the overview, would be in an impossible position.
It is worth putting that on the record. Whilst I understand the need for the Estimates Committee to have as much time as it can to bring the report down, a timeframe for ministers to respond was built into the original motion. I would advocate the original motion as a better solution. We are prepared to accept this extension, if that is the will of the Assembly, but with the caveat that the response to the committee's report will not be of a kind that has had a thorough analysis by the departments. We will do our best-we will always do that-but it does have that ramification.
MR HUMPHRIES
(Treasurer, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Community Safety) (11.19): Mr Speaker, I wish to add very briefly to what Mr Moore has had to say. It is important to make the point that this motion does, effectively, devalue the recommendations of the Estimates Committee if the committee recommends certain things which it wants the government to take into account in the budget, which is what this process is about. It is about doing an estimates job on the budget, saying that it is or is not right to do something in the budget. If, at the end of the day, the committee recommends that we should do certain things with the budget-change this, improve that
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