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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 1986 ..

MR CORBELL: I thank members for their indulgence and I will be brief. Mr Speaker, I want to address one matter which I was unable to address in my remarks earlier today. I refer to the dissenting reports presented by Mr Rugendyke and Mr Hird. Mr Hird's dissenting report, I must say, is perhaps a little less of a surprise than Mr Rugendyke's. Mr Hird's dissenting reports are well known in this place and he, of course, exercises his right to have those views expressed in that way.

However, I am a little concerned about a number of matters, having now read Mr Hird's dissent, which were not actually raised in the committee process. I find it extraordinary that a member of this place and a member of the Estimates Committee should stand up in this place and say that his views have been ignored when he did not raise them. I wish to make a point about page 1 of Mr Hird's dissent in relation to social capital. He did not raise his dissent on that matter.

He did not raise that in our deliberative hearings. He did not raise his dissent on the superannuation provision. In relation to the comments about Canberra becoming a private sector town, again he did not raise anything. In relation to SES packages and access to sports cars, did he raise that one either? No, he did not; he did not raise that one in the deliberative hearings of the committee. He did raise the other three matters.

I would have thought that a member who is genuine about participating in the process and the formulation of the Estimates Committee report would have raised these issues with his colleagues on the committee and said that he would like to have them included in the report before he wrote the dissent, but he did not; he just did not. Mr Speaker, for as long as that occurs, the only people in this place undermining the committee process will be those government members who do not actually participate fully in the deliberative hearings.

I come to the second point I wish to raise. It relates to the dissent of Mr Rugendyke. Again, Mr Rugendyke has strongly felt views about a number of issues-in particular, beat police and the funding of the safe injecting place. No-one says for a moment that Mr Rugendyke should not hold those views. Of course he should. He feels strongly about them, he is entitled to his views and he is entitled to express them in this place. But when I saw Mr Rugendyke's additional comments in his dissenting report in relation to the safe injecting place, I was extremely surprised.

I was extremely surprised because, again, Mr Rugendyke did not raise this matter with me or with any other member of the committee, as far as I am aware, in our deliberative hearings when we were considering the report. He could have quite simply said to us, "I would like some comment in this report about the safe injecting place." He did not do that. That is all he had to do, but he did not do it. He did not seek to have that matter-a matter which he says he feels so strongly about that he is prepared to vote against the budget-included in the report.

In his dissent, he does not even include any recommendations; he just makes some comments. At the very minimum, he could have suggested to his colleagues that those matters should have been incorporated in the report. I have to say that on those two issues in these dissenting reports it would have been far more preferable if the members, before they wrote their dissents, at least asked the committee whether they could include their comments in the bulk of the report.

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