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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 1980 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

I notice that Mr Rugendyke has also submitted a dissenting report. I know that he feels very strongly about the two issues that he has mentioned there and I think that he has exercised his right to dissent to the extent that his beliefs do not coincide with those of the committee. But I think that by and large, as I have said before, the Estimates Committee process has been a good one. I think that in no way has it been significantly different from the processes of previous years and that those of us who choose to look at budgets with open eyes will see benefit in some of the comment, if not all of it, that is made in this report. I commend the report to members of the Assembly in anticipation of the debate on the budget later this week.

MR QUINLAN (11.50): Mr Speaker, as a member of the Estimates Committee, I wish to say a few words on some of the matters within the report. I certainly recommend and endorse again publicly recommendation 1, which is about a government actually taking responsibility for a budget. We have had that debate in this place a number of times. I thought the draft budget process was an appalling exercise in political cynicism, with weeks and weeks of pre-draft budget leaks. Are they draft leaks for draft budgets? The situation got to the crazy stage where this process became a vehicle for using up what was otherwise a quiet news time. I think that that does, in fact, demean the government process and the responsibility that a government ought to take for its primary political document each year.

I go on to endorse part 2 of that recommendation, which says that there should be sufficient time for a full Estimates Committee process. The draft budget process quite deliberately compacted the estimates process because it is the bit that the government does not like. By replacing a hard time in front of the Estimates Committee with a January of good news and fairy dust, the government has done quite well for itself; but I do believe that that does lessen the standing of this place as a parliament.

I believe that it is the government's responsibility to make itself available for community consultation. We had during the draft budget process an attempt initially to flick pass to the various standing committees of this Assembly all of that irksome process of talking to the people in order to absolve the government and the Treasurer from actually talking to those people who have particular problems and want to make a particular input to the budget.

Recommendation 3 mirrors a recommendation that was made by the Estimates Committee of last year. We have not come a long way in terms of presenting information on capital works. We have not come a long way in terms of having a system that records when previously promised or scheduled capital works drop out of the system. You have to find them by taking a backward look as opposed to being advised that previously budgeted items are now no longer in the budget. We also need a system that allows a government to announce an initiative only once, not two or three times. Just because they did not do it in the year they promised the first time round, they can make quite a fuss of doing it the next year. I think the capital works budget should be a closed system. I promise that I will be pushing for that through the Finance and Public Administration Committee.

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