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

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 4 Hansard (29 March) . . Page.. 1190 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

if Treasury agreed, the committee did not receive a draft budget. The minister, in his letter of 21 March 2001, stated:

I provide the following comment in relation to the question on additional budget information. The information released in the draft 2001-02 budget process differs from that provided in the 2000-01 draft budget. This difference results from the two phase process used in 2001-02. The Government's intention of the two phase process was to allow the Assembly to focus on ... the current financial estimates ...

We know about their rhetoric on the first phase. We have just had a quick debate on that and, clearly, we are not happy with the first phase. We did not get nearly enough information in the first phase. Another point I should raise on the first phase being really unsatisfactory is that the committee had to comment within the parameters and principles set by this government and, clearly, there was room to challenge those parameters and principles. I certainly challenged the overall policy framework within which the Liberals make their decisions. It was quite a problem for the committee to be told that it was confined to working within the Liberals' parameters and principles as the committee thought it could have had the opportunity, if there had been more time and information, to do something constructive about informing the government of priorities in terms of spending.

The minister also stated as a reason for not providing additional budget material:

The Government's aim is to reduce the Portfolio Standing Committees' workload and minimise any duplication with the work undertaken by the Select Committee on the 2001-2002 Budget in Phase 1.

I thank the government for that, but we could manage the workload and we actually wanted the information. I can remember that coming up when we started to see the output classes in a full budget move from, say, 20 in one area to 10, 9 and then 8. The reason given there was that the government wanted to simplify the process. Sorry, it is about reducing the amount of information provided and we do not need or like that.

On the issues that we were able to look at, we did get some support from the community submissions, which we forwarded on to the government for perusal and to be taken into account. Overall, the community's feeling was that the initiatives were welcomed. The community's response to the initiatives indicated no disagreement with the proposed measures. In some areas, the community suggested an expansion. There was a comment that there were a few measures in the Education and Community Services draft budget initiatives that responded specifically to the reports of the ACT poverty task group. There was concern about the rather random way in which this government picked up the recommendations of the poverty task force's report

A key recommendation was that there be an implementation phase concerning the report of the poverty task force. That, of course, would require resourcing and government support, which does not appear to have happened. That was of grave concern to a number of groups which talked to us. Clearly, the people responsible for developing that report of the poverty task force believed that the implementation needed a lot of work to be done, including a systematic response and analysis. Unfortunately, this government, as is often the case, has picked up a few things, thrown them out as press releases and said that it cares about poverty, whereas it has failed to acknowledge some

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