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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (13 June) . . Page.. 1570 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

the most outrageous of spin, misinformation and total bias in the budget, but heaven forbid that the document that scrutinises that budget should do the same. Those opposite say, "We are in government. Everybody should be nice."

I refer to recommendation 1. The original recommendation 1 was excluded from this report because members on the other side of the house got their act together for the part-time visit of Mr Hird to one of our deliberative meetings, the half a meeting he attended out of four deliberative meetings. There was a fifth deliberative meeting. The agenda was expressly issued. At the first deliberative meeting I said, "Here is the draft report, folks. Do you have issues to include? Do you have issues you want removed?" Answer from that side of the house: no. Mr Rugendyke had some changes he wanted to make, and I included what he wanted included in the report. From that lot over there, nothing. There was a specific meeting to address just issues, not to edit the report, which we would do later. Contribution: zero. I think I can quote Mr Hird at that stage as saying, "Forget it. I am going to dissent anyway."

Mr Hird: I did.

MR QUINLAN: You did, right. That is confirmation in Hansard. Talk about the "bias" of the chairman, when before the deliberative stage Mr Hird virtually said, "I am not participating, because I am going to dissent anyway." A bit of a mockery.

The first recommendation was to have related to the draft budget process. It was one of the most humorous yet frustrating periods in my time in this place when at the penultimate deliberative meeting I tried to work out, from at least a couple of people on the committee, whether they wanted a draft-that is, revenue, expenditure, bottom line-or whether they were happy with the system this year. Answer: "Yes, we want a draft budget. Yes, we are happy with the system this year."

Of course we did not get a draft budget this year. We got a list of initiatives. I did get one answer from an unnamed member who said there was a draft budget; that it was out there. We did not get a budget that said, "This is the total revenue; this is the total expenditure; this is the projected bottom line." We got a list of initiatives that were only a part of the final list of initiatives that were incorporated into the budget when it was brought down. So we got an indication of direction from the government. The government talked about innovation and some pretty high-sounding stuff, as you do in a budget, and then some of the initiatives. Then a whole lot of other initiatives appeared at a later stage.

We had the debate here. We talked about the draft budget. Claims had been made that the community thinks it is a good thing. The community likes the input. I thought, "Fair enough. How about we set up a system that allows the community input, allows the community to appear before committees, allows the government to make a general statement as to what they intend in the budget, and allows the committees to meet with all the stakeholders that want to be heard and put forward recommendations?" (Extension of time granted.) Then the government would decide, as it should because it is in power, which of those recommendations it should adopt and which it should not. To some extent, I was saying, "We will take out of the process the restrictive bits various committees have complained about, but we will keep the consultative process, which seems to have gained some support."

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