Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 1987 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (Treasurer, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Community Safety) (12.22): Mr Speaker, I want to make a few comments before we go to lunch. It may not be possible to finish them before lunch, but members might indulge me by allowing us to continue this debate after lunch. I have looked quickly at this report. Frankly, on my overview of this report, it represents a low point in the Assembly's committee process in the course of the last five years.

Mr Stanhope: You used that speech last time. It is the same speech as last year.

MR HUMPHRIES: I referred last time to there being problems with this process in describing it as a low point. Unfortunately, this report has gone even lower, so it is necessary to make the comment all over again.

Mr Speaker, in the course of this year at least we will have three overviews of the budget process, in effect. We have had committee consideration of the draft budget, we have had the Estimates Committee consideration of the budget and we will have the review of the annual reports at the end of the day. Committees of the Assembly are overviewing aspects of the budget a number of times. One thing that can be said about the process is that it is providing a considerable degree of overview and an assurance that the exercise is being done in a thorough and conscientious way. But what value is being added to the process with each of those runs over the target?

Let us look at this report, Mr Speaker. Mr Corbell described it as constructive criticism. What is constructive about it, Mr Speaker? It is a litany of recommendations reliving past battles in the media or in the Assembly about particular issues on which members have a particular bee in their bonnet, be it Care, discretionary funding for the Minister for Health and Community Care or beat policing. Whatever it is, it is a reliving of earlier battles on some other issue and it has been bought together in the Estimates Committee report to create a forum for further discussion of those matters.

The budget that I tabled in this place last month was a dramatic statement about where the territory is heading. It was a statement about our capacity to start to afford to fund new programs and new initiatives based on our surplus. It was a statement about extra spending in crucial areas where need is great in this community. It was a statement about how to engage the broader community in budget-making processes in a way which has not occurred in this territory-indeed, in any other part of Australia-before.

What do we have from the committee? We have either criticism of each of those things or ignoring of each of those things. Perhaps in my brief overview I have missed, it but where is the support for or constructive criticism of the government having attained a surplus for the first time in 11 years of self-government? Where is the comment in the Estimates Committee report to the Assembly on that subject? It does not exist.

Mr Speaker, this process has been incredibly sloppy. That is best indicated by the fact that this report was supposed to be about not only the 2000-01 budget, but also the Appropriation Bill 1999-2000 (No 3). Where is the detailed work on that issue? Did the committee forget? My attention has been drawn to a five-page document which has not been tabled yet, so I cannot refer to it in the course of this debate. Mr Hargreaves is holding up a page which says what the terms of reference and the resolution of

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .