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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 1981 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

Recommendation 4 is self-evident. The lock-up facility should allow the staffers out of the lock-up at the same time as the budget is made available to the offices of non-government members.

To pick up on Mr Hird's defence of the public-private sector division or split within the economy of the ACT in relation to recommendation 6, I think it is wise for the ACT to realise the difference between government services being outsourced but still depending upon the public teat versus genuine local industry. I do not think we should try to delude ourselves that the town has changed significantly. Arising out of the outsourcing of some government facilities, there have been some industries built up in the ACT which have found that they can export their product and sell it wider. That is on the plus side. The downside, of course, is that a lot of the outsourced services that the Commonwealth is buying are not being bought from local firms and they are not providing, effectively, the same level of local jobs.

If you look at the core finance statistics, you will find that we are about the same in terms of the private-public split as we ever were. There has not been a great change in that. I would like to see a change in it, but let us not kid ourselves and use figures inappropriately to make false claims in that regard. I am very happy to see ACT unemployment down, but I would like to record that ACT unemployment has always been lower than the national level. This is no overnight miracle or change. In fact, the differential between the ACT and Australia is marginally less than it was in the good old days.

Obviously, I am not going to talk about most of the recommendations, but I would like to touch on the financial case for the prison. We have had that discussion in this chamber and I think the Treasurer has stood up and said, "I have no prejudices; it could be a publicly financed or privately financed prison," referring to the public sector outside of the territory bidding for it. What we are really talking about is that a separate case needs to be made, as opposed to the operational propositions, which are separate questions, that this government, with its AAA rating, could not provide a prison at the same cost or less than the private sector with its extra interest margin on the risk element that is associated with any private investment.

That case needs to come to this Assembly. If this Assembly does not receive that case, I do not think the Assembly is in a position to make an objective, full decision in relation to how we finance the construction of the prison. We can isolate that from how we would operate the prison and eventually who owns the prison. The reversion process must be taken into account as well. That, I think, is a report that is overdue in this place, given the apparent position that the government has taken.

In recommendation 37 we talk about the beat police proposal. I do believe that we still need some justification for that. I understand that it is a recommendation of the Justice and Community Safety Committee. I am happy to see the Estimates Committee make some specific recommendations into the funding of an organisation because it is quite discrete-recommendations about Care, library services or whatever-but when it comes to something like policing, I would like to see the ex-ante involvement of the management of our police force in these decisions.

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