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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 4 Hansard (29 March) . . Page.. 1202 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, that is the sort of environment in which we were asked to deal with this budget. My chairman was spot on when he said we didn't have a draft budget to consider. We got a list of new initiatives. We got a bucket full of money with some Christmas paper wrapped around it and a note that said, "Your share is $555,000. Would you like to recommend something to do with it?" In other words, we were asked to be part of the executive arm of government and dish out some money.

Quite rightly, the committee rejected that response. We have made recommendations for the government to pick up or reject, as is their want. We will not be part of the executive arm of government. We are an arm of the Assembly, not this government. I wanted to record my views for the second time in a row on that issue.

It is interesting that in the draft budget process we had no formal submission from the government. We had no idea what the government wanted to do with the $555,000. We did not know whether there might have been elements of programs which could be shrunk, done away with or whatever, or which may have expanded that figure. No. We got no formal submission from the government regarding additional resource initiatives, nor compensating cost reduction initiatives. I think that is a sad reflection on the capabilities of the government or the regard with which they hold their senior bureaucrats, because I am sure that those gentlemen and ladies would be able to come up with a dozen or so proper initiatives. I know that such was the case when I was in the service.

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, we know, and it has been said by the other people commenting on other reports, that the lack of detail on the draft budget made this inquiry almost impossible. When I was a manager in the public service, if anybody had provided me with the sort of detail that was provided to these committees to make a decision upon, or even a recommendation, I would have sent them away to start the exercise, not fix it up, because clearly the government did not even get to the first base in this case.

It was interesting that the committee felt it necessary to comment on the lack of funding in the capital works program for the construction of a prison remand centre. We have to understand that it is either going to be built out of capital works money or it is going to be repaid from loan funds. Either the ACT government will be taking out a loan or the private sector will be taking out a loan and we will have to pay it back, plus the profit margin that goes on top of that. Neither of those provisions were in the new initiatives and none of those were in the documents.

At 5.00 pm, in accordance with standing order 34, the debate was interrupted. The motion for the adjournment of the Assembly having been put and negatived, the debate was resumed.

MR HARGREAVES: I was referring to no moneys being there. We need to make sure that the moneys are there to repay a loan that we take out in the private sector to build the thing or that it is provided in capital works, because, as sure as God made little eggs, that prison is going to have bricks and mortar before the end of the next financial year. I predict that we will have a piece of fencing around the Symonston site as early as July. Not one penny has been provided for this.

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