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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 1 Hansard (15 February) . . Page.. 229 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

As we often say in this place, when you make recommendations to us we take them very seriously. Sometimes we do not agree with them. Mr Hargreaves and Mr Quinlan said that committees are very limited in what they can recommend, because they have to work within the parameter of maintaining a balanced budget. Who set that parameter? An Assembly committee did. For reasons that seem obvious to me, of course we should live within a balanced budget.

Mr Quinlan: Over the long term.

MR MOORE: That is an Assembly decision as well, and it is consistent with the government's position. We do not see it appropriate to borrow.

There is one other issue that it is important to understand. It is the issue of time. Why do we not give you more time? The cabinet wrestled for some time with how we could give you more time. We drew up a Ghant chart. Most of us are familiar with a Ghant chart. It sets out activities running in parallel as you work towards your goal. Our goal is to deliver a budget at the beginning of May. You are talking about the publication of about 1,000 pages of extraordinary detail. Getting the figures right and making sure everything is absolutely accurate takes a significant amount of time.

We set the parameters for the budget, then we put our budget together within what I have found a very difficult timetable, because we are doing other things, as the Assembly committees are. We then say to the Assembly committees, "This is what it is" and we give you as much time as we can find. I do not disagree that five weeks is a tight timeframe, especially when there are two weeks of sitting in that period.

This happens with almost every single project you undertake. With every single project I have undertaken since I became a minister, I have said, "When are we going to achieve this? What are the timeframes?" I am renowned for asking for a Ghant chart showing how we are going to achieve the goal within time. I look at it and I often say, "I think we can double up here. I think we can tighten our timeframes here and manage in a shorter timeframe." Or I might say, "We need extra time, because we will not be able to achieve this part of the program as quickly as we thought."

We understand your argument about timeframes, but we deliver a budget every year. If you are going to change those timeframes, then the option is to say, "Do you we want to go to two-year budgets?" There could be some arguments for doing that. I would not disagree with them.

Whilst we have some sympathy with the timeframe, we cannot see how we can extend that timeframe and still be able to deliver an appropriate budget. The question then is: is it better to still put it out and seek comment within a fairly tight timeframe, or is it better just to say it is too bad? It seems to me that we are all working within relatively tight timeframes.

Mr Hargreaves mentioned priorities. He said, "All you are asking us to do is prioritise one thing over another." Yes, that is correct. Why are we doing that? Because that is what a budget process is. Ms Tucker, for example, would give a higher priority to some things than I would. Mr Rugendyke would probably give a higher priority to policing

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