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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (29 June) . . Page.. 2225 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

made to her departmental budget or to her executive budget. It comes out of another fund altogether.

If we were to ask the Auditor-General to go through all the books and all of the activities of the government and tally up what it actually costs to maintain these five ministers and their executive suits, I wonder what the total sum would be. I wonder if the community would agree that this is an acceptable figure to pay for the services of these five people. I think this deserves to be reviewed. I am not suggesting that the Auditor-General should do it. Perhaps the Assembly or the executive itself ought to be looking at what it is costing. Or do they not care? You just put another $2 million or $3 million in the budget and nobody will notice and nobody cares.

The question of what these five people are costing us needs to be brought to the attention of the community. I pose the question again: are they worth that total amount of expenditure? And I suspect not.

MS CARNELL (Chief Minister) (12.05): It is unfortunate that Mr Kaine has misinterpreted the output relating to ministerial advice. It is important for the record that I run through what that advice encompasses.

The provision of policy advice to government represents far more than just providing advice to ministers on various things. It includes a range of other strategic policy areas-major policy projects such as the very fast train and Bishop Austrans? Negotiation of all agreements with the Commonwealth are in that bucket, as are the management and administration of over a hundred purchaser/provider contracts for Health and Community Care. Development and introduction of legislation is in there as well. Things like answering questions for those opposite-for Mr Kaine and others-is in there. Things like providing advice to committees-this is not to do with the executive at all-and the quite significant number of committee inquiries are in that bucket as well.

From an education perspective, as members would be aware, a review of the current Education Act and the Schools Authority Act will be conducted in 2000-2001. The cost of that review is in that particular bucket. And the list goes on. So advice to ministers directly is a very small part of this whole area. Members opposite and on the cross benches put questions-often complicated questions-on notice. It is very hard to work out why some of them are asked at all, but for all of that members have a right to do so. Where do those opposite think the resources come from? I have to say they come from the public service, and those resources are part of this particular line.

So you can see that the provision of policy advice to the government represents far more than providing advice on activities that are of an on-going nature. Specific advice is provided on strategic policy areas-things that I would have assumed were of great importance to this Assembly. In fact, in most cases this relates to areas in which this Assembly has asked for input and for work to be done.

Mr Kaine also made the point that he thought that this appropriation line of $2 million was just to support our offices. That is not the case. It also supports what we call the Civic Hospitality Fund, which is used for events such as welcoming delegations that come to Canberra and celebrations for teams such as the Brumbies and the Capitals when they win. Just recently we had a South African group in town. If these events are not in

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