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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 4 Hansard (29 March) . . Page.. 1194 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

SS also said:

The timing of the draft budget process has also presented a number of problems ...

I will enter a further quote from their submission into Hansard:

The process for the draft budget consultation has changed this year. These changes have not been well communicated by the Government and have resulted in confusion within the community and lower levels of engagement with the draft budget process than would otherwise be expected.

That was said by ACTCOSS which, looking at its submission, had probably consulted with the government already. I may return to that point a little later. We noted that the government had put out some initiatives but not a draft budget. We noted that in March the Treasurer had said that an additional $4.6 million was expected to be received through the Commonwealth Grants Commission. We do not know what that $4.6 million was on top of because we have not been given the up-to-date figures. That would have been contained in a draft budget which, as I said, did not materialise.

Nevertheless, we received a letter from the Chief Minister and Treasurer allocating $444,000 for which we might make recommendation. We do address that question to some extent in this report. Further, we noted that in February the Treasurer made a media announcement that an extra $10 million had been found in these moving times and that it was available for revenue return to Canberrans. I think he said that he might refer that to the committees. He did not; nevertheless, we have made a comment on that, as we thought we should. I point to that $10 million just to underscore what a movable feast this particular draft budget process is. We have made recommendations in relation to the time allowed for draft budgets, as one should, having made the point, again, that the process has been compacted and compacted further by the select committee which worked assiduously to produce the report that the government refused to accept today.

Referring to some of the initiatives as opposed to the draft budget which, if I have not mentioned before, does not exist, we could take as a small example money allocated for the Centenary of Federation. This is an example of the muddle that is the draft budget process. The Treasurer said that there would be an extra $100,000 for continued support of the national capital education tourism project. Nowhere can one find, even in Budget 2000, a specific amount for this initiative, so we do not know to what this $100,000 is being added. Nevertheless, we were asked somehow to evaluate it.

On the expansion of multicultural grants, we have been told that a $50,000 grant represented a 100 per cent increase. If that 100 per cent had not been mentioned, we would not have known what base we were adding it to because the forward estimates for last year are not precise enough to give us a figure and, if I have not mentioned it, there is no draft budget.

The sum of $2.6 million was allocated to bridging the digital divide. It has not been explained to the community precisely what is being undertaken in that exercise, but quite large lumps of money are being thrown at it and we think that more specific information ought to be provided if you are going to allocate or commit over $2.5 million.

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