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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 4 Hansard (29 March) . . Page.. 1196 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

somewhat exaggerated. If one goes to the Internet, one will find that the Australian Photonics Cooperative Research Centre was established in 1992 and provides undergraduate, postgraduate, PhD and Masters education in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra. While the initiative might be worth while, it does not warrant the hyperbole in the government's documentation.

We noted that there is an initiative for the improvement of financial management. I do not think that this item warrants the title of an initiative, either. I am quite aware from other intelligence I have received that the government does have a real crisis in the administration of financial information. That is quite evident from the oscillating bottom line and the fact that the government could not produce a draft budget. It is quite clear that something needs to be done. But it is a bit rich to claim that as an initiative when you are repairing an area in the administration that has fallen apart largely through low morale and a few notable incidents involving the executive. The government should just get on with letting the executives of that area, particularly Treasury, fix the shop as soon as they can and catch up as quickly as they can.

I do not want to run over time in pointing to some of the recommendations that we have made. On the $442,000 that we have been allowed out of the extra money, we have recommended that the government invest it in information because, with the bottom line jumping all round the place and the signs out there in the economy, there is no guarantee that we are in a position now to make long-term commitments for recurrent expenditure that can be honoured. It is okay to make them in an irresponsible fashion in an election year, which I think has happened, if you happen to be a government that is trying to save its skin; but to make commitments that may not be able to be honoured because the level of revenues may not sustain themselves would be totally irresponsible.

We think that the responsible thing for the government to do is to invest that money in information which would aid governments in the future in addressing problems within the community. Prophetically, one of the areas that we thought the government should review is the operation of festivals within the city. Trust me: this report was written before the non-sacking of Domenic Mico, even before his outburst. It just happens to be that some things around town are quite obvious. There does need to be a review of how we run the multicultural festival, the Canberra festival and possibly a significant arts festival in this town. That needs to be looked at and we need to invest in that. We also need to invest in information in relation to community services.

We talked about unmet need, but we need to go that further mile with the mapping exercise that we recommended. (Extension of time granted.) If you read the report you will see that we have recommended that the government spend that money on forward intelligence to aid government in the future and not make specific ongoing recurrent commitments when the government obviously does not know what is the real position.

In relation to the $10 million that is floating around, although we were not specifically invited in the terms of reference to make a recommendation, we have said that we think that it should go towards the funding of the unmet superannuation liability. The Liberal government has made a lot of noise about what it is spending, how it has balanced its budget and how good it has performed without really being able to back it with substantial verifiable figures; but it has not, I do not think, since coming to power in this town, put one cent of operating funds towards the superannuation liability. All it has

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