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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 2067 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

year by an estimates committee examining a second appropriation bill. The committee actually forget to produce a report until it was too late. It was a second appropriation bill with respect to increased public transport costs, and the committee forget to do its report.

Mr Corbell: It did not forget.

MR HUMPHRIES: Well, that is true; it did not forget. You remembered at the last minute and produced five paragraphs on an appropriation bill.

Mr Corbell: Gary, you are pathetic.

MR HUMPHRIES: Well, it is nice of you to enter the debate in that constructive way, Mr Corbell. It is true that you brought down your report. It was a job done overnight because you had forgotten to do a report before.

Mr Corbell: And you were there, so you would know.

MR HUMPHRIES: Well, am I wrong? Did that not happen, Mr Corbell?

Mr Corbell: No, it did not happen.

MR HUMPHRIES: That is not what other members of the committee tell me. Mr Berry talked about a time when the Liberal Party had a majority of members on an estimates committee. The Liberal Party has never had a majority of members on any estimates committee at any stage in this place.

Mr Berry praises the Williamsdale quarry and says what a wonderful investment it has been for the ACT. He says the government was dreadfully negligent in giving part of it away. You might almost say, Mr Speaker, that Mr Berry regards the Williamsdale quarry as money for jam.

Mr Berry also decries the loss of jobs that have been engineered by the government. I will say two things about that. First of all, the $17 million which Labor put into redundancies while it was in office in one year alone indicates what they think about job losses in the public service, and how does Mr Berry imagine that we have eliminated Labor's $344 million operating loss except by reducing the number of people employed on the ACT government payroll?

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.

Proposed expenditure agreed to.

Proposed expenditure-part 3-Chief Minister's Department, $63,820,000 (net cost of outputs), $18,126,000 (capital injection) and $8,905,000 (payments on behalf of the territory), totalling $90,851,000.

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