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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2046 ..

MR HARGREAVES: I seek a short extension, Mr Speaker. If it was good enough for the Attorney-General, it is good enough for me.

Mr Humphries: I had two extensions. You have had-

MR HARGREAVES: Excuse me? I am having exactly the same number and no more. (Further extension of time granted.) Mr Speaker, if I could find out those two figures so quickly, he has not found them out because he does not want to find them out. He knows what would happen.

Mr Speaker, the Estimates Committee hearings exposed the fact that there was a huge poker machine win between the draft budget and the estimates process. Where did it go? It went on programs over a number of years. I do not have enormous difficulty with a lot of the places where they have done that. The difficulty, Mr Speaker, is that if that money is available it could have been applied to some of the recommendations that the Estimates Committee made. They were made in good faith. They were not made just to make this government look stupid. It does a good enough job all by itself.

Mr Speaker, the road works in the budget emerged miraculously between the draft budget process and the estimates process and involve an enormous amount of money. I believe they emanated as a result of the heat that the opposition, particularly Mr Wood and I, have been putting on the Minister for Urban Services, Mr Smyth, to start doing something about the roads around town. This poker machine win for the minister has given him the wherewithal to react positively to the miserable failings that he has been steward of in his own electorate for the 21/2 years that he has been here. He has just had this fortuitous windfall.

When it comes to the Women's Legal Service, Mr Speaker, the Attorney-General shows himself to be as shallow and as hollow as he really is. He knows full well, and he can see it on page 38, the actual time lines of when he did not approve the allocation of funds to the Women's Legal Service. We now see some redress, and I am glad to see the sum of that redress. But let us not use smoke and mirrors. Let us not use pontificating phraseology to try to bluff our way through. Mr Moore attempted to retract something that he thought he said today. I congratulate him for that attempt, although we will look into it again tomorrow. The Attorney-General ought to consider his position in relation to these legal services. He knows full well that Care has closed their doors. He knows that he has been sprung. It is as simple as that.

Mr Speaker, I will wind up now by reiterating the congratulations to the officials of the Department of Treasury and Infrastructure for presenting documents which were easy to read. The figures contained within them have a few problems. There are going to be amendments to them. However, for people like me who want to see what is happening out there in the world of the budget, it made it considerably easier than years gone by. In my former employment as part of the public service, it was my job to try to snow the politicians, and I did not do too bad a job even then. To all of those people now who are not trying to snow the politicians, I say thank you very much. I apologise to the politicians for doing it myself earlier on.

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