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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (28 June) . . Page.. 2119 ..
MR HARGREAVES
(continuing):Additionally, on the one hand the government says that it should allocate funds to only one legal aid provider, then on the other hand it says that the Women's Legal Centre submission "did not establish that the grant would actually provide a scheme for the provision of legal aid". If the Women's Legal Centre is not about giving legal aid, what on earth do people think it is about?
The real issue for the Women's Legal Centre was the reinstatement of their previous level of funding, as recommended by the Law Society. Imagine their horror. They ask for an increase and they get the same, if they are lucky. No wonder they are upset. No Treasurer and/or minister for justice in his or her right mind would want such appalling logic out there in the public arena.
Many of the figures supplied by the government in the draft budget process were shoddy. Calculations for the community policing exercise were suspect, and proved to be so, in much the same way as the so-called cost benefit analysis for the prison, issued later, was shoddy-and I will have more to say on this later. The minister has been sprung offering a standing committee an amount of money to dispense when no other committee got anything. He had thus wrecked his own budget process. He knows it and we know it. It only remains for some duped members to realise it and admit it.
On top of this, the offer of $1 million from the low alcohol taxation changes was predicated on the government picking up one of three options. Two of these indicated there was no possibility of such a windfall anyway. Yet the government had not made its choice at the time of presentation to the standing committee. But, apart from the principle of budget distribution, with which I had huge difficulty, the promise was hollow and was exposed as such. No wonder the minister did not want the report to be available for scrutiny in the public arena.
What could be done to at least delay things? Kick up a lot of dust might be a good idea. Outrage may be the go. The minister's mock outrage that he had been defamed has an odd ring about it. A look at Hansard reveals, at best, how precious this minister is or, at worst, how he is Gary-ing me and this Assembly. I said in this chamber on 28 March last, as reported on page 110 of the uncorrected proof of Hansard:
I do not see for the life of me any reason for their reduction other than it is a personal vendetta from the minister across the chamber and others because these people disagreed with it.
Mr
Humphries: Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. My recollection is that the comments that Mr Hargreaves has just read out were subsequently withdrawn on the floor of the Assembly. Now Mr Hargreaves is repeating them on the floor of the Assembly.MR
SPEAKER: Did you withdraw them earlier, Mr Hargreaves?MR
HARGREAVES: Mr Speaker, I did and I am only repeating them. I am not imputing that they are true at this point.
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