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

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (31 August) . . Page.. 2759 ..

Mr Quinlan: The information we had on the progress for the year had nothing to do with the final result.

MR HUMPHRIES: The chance of that information-

Mr Quinlan: Why didn't your interim figures indicate how well we were doing? Because you didn't know.

MR SPEAKER: Order! You will have the chance to respond, Mr Quinlan.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Quinlan's interjection reveals that he believes the only way of funding new programs is through an addition to the bottom line through an improvement in the territory's budgetary position. What he overlooks is the fact that there is another way of being able to fund priorities in government, and that is by re-ordering the priorities you are already meeting. That was the point of the draft budget. That is the point of the continual criticism that the government gets every year about the way in which it is spending the public's money.

Mr Quinlan did not have guts to face up to that challenge and say, "Okay, you allocate funds in this way, we will give funds in a different way." That is not my fault, Mr Speaker. He had the chance and he did not have the bottle to carry through the challenge that that chance entailed.

As I was saying, the committee failed to mention how its recommended increases in expenditure should be funded. This failure typifies the attitude of the committee-that there was no sense of responsibility for implementing its recommendations. The committee, I believe, therefore failed to do its job of helping the territory as a whole-the territory community-improve on the way in which budgets are put together and the way in which they meet community expectations.

The committee had tabled a separate report on Appropriation Bill (No 3) 1999-2000, and I say "a separate report" in the kindest possible way. You do need to be very generous to regard the three paragraph effort as a report. The report essentially acknowledged that the committee had not considered the additional appropriation, and that it would be scrutinised by the respective portfolio committees in consideration of the annual reports. Apparently the committee forgot to examine the bill. This demonstrates the sloppiness in its approach to these matters and is a cipher for the way in which it did its work across the board. Given that there were no recommendations, for the sake of the record the government response also includes a response to the committee's report on Appropriation Bill (No 3) 1999-2000.

Mr Speaker, I commend the government's response to the Assembly and hope that members on all sides of the chamber have learnt valuable lessons about the way in which genuine, meaningful consultation needs to occur on budgets in the future. I hope a better effort will be made in this financial year to find a way of genuinely reflecting and picking up issues that the community might have to offer with respect to budgetary processes.

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