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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 1977 ..

MR HIRD (continuing):

absence of proposals on how these recommendations should be funded, I am not prepared to support them.

In relation to the beat police proposal, I am concerned that the call in recommendation 37 for a detailed, rigorous justification for the beat police proposal before implementation is only a ruse for delaying it. Indeed, the former Labor government implemented a trial program which was hugely successful in two areas, so I cannot understand why we need to revisit this matter, especially when we have the problems we do at the moment within our respective electorates concerning crime. The need has been demonstrated and the initiative has been carefully considered, so the proposal should be implemented as soon as possible. I join my colleague Mr Rugendyke on this matter.

As I stated when I began, there is no reason why any of these comments could not have been included in the body of the report. However, as the majority of members wanted a sanitised report, they have now ended up with a full dissent. I would like to join other members of the committee, including the chairman, in thanking the ministers and their staff as well as the organisations and associations that appeared before the committee. I would also like to thank the members of the committee. The timeframe given to us made things very awkward for us and the pressures of work on other committees made it very difficult for us to bring in a report in such time.

On that note, I think that the chairman's suggestion is a positive one and I am sure that the leader of the house will take it on board. I refer to the suggestion that at the beginning of a year when the sitting pattern is set down the estimates process should be accommodated in that pattern and time set aside for it so that other committee work does not overshadow the work of the Estimates Committee.

MR KAINE (11.39): Despite Mr Hird's apparent astonishment at the way that the Estimates Committee worked this year, I would have to say that there was nothing remarkable about the way in which the Estimates Committee went about its business. Perhaps the only thing that was remarkable about it was the limited amount of time that we had to deal with the estimates. I do not believe that there is anything in the Estimates Committee's report that would differ greatly from what has been in previous Estimates Committee reports. I think that the Estimates Committee report is the result of the usual shredding out that non-government members of this place give to the budget.

As I said, I found nothing remarkable about it. In fact, I believe that the Estimates Committee process, as it always has been, has been a successful one. For my part, the Estimates Committee process allowed me to resolve some questions that I had about the budget. There seems to be a good amount of money available this year, which is different. Until this year, governments of whatever flavour have always had to struggle with a shortage of revenue as opposed to the demands being made for expenditure of that money. This year, for the first time since self-government, the situation seems to have changed. The government appears to have had plenty of money.

I suppose my major criticism of the budget, having sat through the Estimates Committee, is that, given that there seems to have been plenty of money around, it is quite unadventurous. There are some good aspects of it. The expenditure on roads is long overdue. One might argue about whether the roads the government has identified for attention this year and in subsequent years are really the ones that should be dealt with.

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