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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 1979 ..
MR KAINE (continuing):
Mr Hird referred to a couple of specific issues on which I believe I have to take issue with his dissension. In connection with the superannuation provision, he attacks the committee for stating in its report that the payment in the budget for 2000-01 will be the first payment towards the historical superannuation costs since the Carnell government's election. If you read a bit further down in his own comments you will see that he says:
The committee also selectively ignored the government's eight-year plan to fully fund the superannuation liability.
His next sentence is an interesting one. It says:
The plan begins with payments of $5 million in this budget ...
That is next year. The government's eight-year plan starts next year. How, then, can he criticise the Estimates Committee for saying this payment of $5 million is the first payment towards the historical superannuation costs since the Carnell government was elected? That is a statement of fact. The earlier provisions have not come out of budgets; they have been by allocation of dividends from places such as ACTEW. Mr Hird does not seem to understand the contradiction in his own dissenting report. But that is not unusual, of course.
In connection with growth needs funding for health, Mr Hird has expressed a unique view, an innovative view, saying:
The purpose of outputs-based budgeting is that ministers and their agencies are funded to achieve specified results and should not be required in advance of the event to be tied into micro detail of expenditure.
His concluding comment on that matter is:
I would remind members of the Assembly of the need to be flexible in order to meet the community's changing needs most effectively. This is a basic tenet of the Financial Management Act.
Mr Hird seems to be saying that we only need about six line items in the budget. We give the Minister for Education his share, one lump sum, we give the Attorney-General his, we give the Chief Minister hers and we give the Minister for Health and Community Care his and we do not need any amplifying detail whatsoever of what those ministers intend to spend their money on. That is the logical outcome of Mr Hird's assertion that you provide no detail up front. I think Mr Hird is trying to say that we should require every minister to provide detail up front except the health minister. I do not agree with that and I do not agree with the general assertion that a budget should be simply five or six line items allocating millions of dollars to each minister to spend as they choose.
This matter is one way in which this year's budget differs from all previous budgets in that the government seemed intent on providing the minister for health alone with $8.8 million this year to spend as he sees fit and a total of, I think, $64 million over a five-year period. (Extension of time granted.) That is a concept that I will not subscribe to and I think that Mr Hird's assertion that we should be prepared to do that is, to say the least, naive.
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