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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 4 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 1022 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

I am sorry that ACTCOSS found the process severely compromised. They have not discussed the matter with me, but I would be very happy to indicate to them that the issue they raised in respect of that matter, as I recall the report of one of the committees, is that they were not sure how much offsets were taking place within departments to fund new programs. They seemed to be unsure about what was being cut, changed or done away with in order to provide for the new initiatives which appear in the draft budget. If they had asked me, I would have told them that, in fact, all of the initiatives announced and presented to the committees were new initiatives, they were things that were done on top of the existing base of activities the government undertakes, unless otherwise indicated. That was fairly clear from the documents that were published. So we did not have to stop doing a particular activity in order to fund a new activity that was referred to in the budget; they were all, in that sense, new activities.

Members will recall that I supplied information to the Assembly in two lots, however, and indicated specifically that the second range of issues which we were putting before the committees were issues which could be described as not being new or as an extension of existing proposals. I am struggling to think of an example of one of those at the moment, Mr Speaker. I think one of them was an extension of a program in schools for funding IT hardware. That was not characterised in the budget initiatives as a new initiative because, in fact, it had been done before and it was separately treated in order to make that clear to the committees. So, with that distinction in mind, the things that were presented in the first lot of documents that portrayed new government initiatives are all new government initiatives; they are not recycled and they are not in substitution for something else that was being done before, unless expressly indicated. I think that anything that was funded from Commonwealth money appeared in the second round of documents, not the first. So the answer to the questions is that they were all genuinely new initiatives.

MR KAINE: I ask a supplementary question. Since clearly, according to ACTCOSS, the draft budget was like the curate's egg-well done in parts-I repeat my question to the Chief Minister. Since he has failed to clarify the issue now, will he do so in writing before the Assembly debates the draft budget in the near future?

MR HUMPHRIES: First of all, I think I have clarified the matter quite comprehensively. I have given you a fairly categorical answer to that question. I know that you had written down a supplementary question and you did not want to change it, but the fact is that I have given a pretty comprehensive answer to that question. I do not know what I can add to what I have already said.

If members are prepared to acknowledge that the draft budget is well done in parts, that would be a major concession. What I am hearing from most people is that they do not like any of it, and they think the whole thing is unacceptable. I agree with the assessment that it is well done. I would not say in all parts, but I think it is reasonably well done. I do not pretend for one minute that we will not have to continue to improve this process. We have to come forward with improvements in this exercise. It is not a fait accompli. It is not an end but rather a beginning.

As I have said before in this place, I have no doubt that in coming decades governments will not get away with the very elitist, very secretive approach which says that you prepare your budget behind closed doors, only the cabinet gets the privilege of seeing

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