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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 4 Hansard (9 April) . . Page.. 805 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

He listed a number of items which were, in his words, "mechanical", and then described other items as follows:

Presumably, that means at the time of the last budget, or the time of the election. The assertion that this bill is about clearing up some mess left by the previous government is not supported by any evidence put before the committee. I note that the political pitch involved in that comment when the bill was presented to this place has not been matched by the tone of the report.

When I spoke, for the first time, as opposition leader in this place, I said that estimates committees and other committees of the assembly needed to be less political processes, more to the advantage of the Assembly, by issues being properly with. I think the tone of this committee report is in significant contrast to that of previous committees. I invite members to make that comparison for themselves.

Nonetheless, there are some significant misgivings on the part of the committee about this process. One of the most severe of those misgivings was the late arrival of the so-called budget consultation document-a document entitled Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002-2003 Budget Consultation. This document was promised quite some weeks before the committee sought it. It was also promised to other committees of this place. I gather they may be commenting on that later today.

The document was eventually made available late on the Thursday before the Easter long weekend. That timing left this committee and, I dare say, other committees of this place with precious little opportunity to study it in detail. Certainly there was no opportunity to cross-examine the Treasurer or his officials on the meaning of the document. There are many questions about the content of this document which will need to be teased out.

The document, admittedly, is about the 2002-03 budget-at least that is what it purports to be about-but it says very little about the 2002-03 budget. In fact, it says much more about the 2001-02 budget. The view of many people who have looked at this document is that it is simply woeful-woeful in its lack of provision of appropriate detail about the government's intentions, woeful about what is happening in the budget process, and woeful for its lateness in the process. It was so late that it was useless to this committee.

I make only a couple of references to the document. As I have said, it was not examined in detail by the committee because of its late arrival. Firstly, there is the issue of the very significant changes in the bottom line of the territory over this and future financial years. Secondly, there is reference in the document to technical changes which amount to some $158 million over the next five years, which are completely unexplained in the document. Thirdly, there is the issue of how the community is meant to deal with this document.

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