Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 6 Hansard (17 June) . . Page.. 1882 ..

MR SMYTH

come to the Assembly for consideration was the blatant attempt to subvert the way the Estimates Committee was being conducted.

Moving on, there are many other points in the report that I would refer members to. There is discussion of initiatives: when is an initiative an initiative and when isn't it? A definition of an initiative is "something new arising from one's own thoughts or efforts". Indeed, Mr Hargreaves made the point in the committee, which was adopted as a resolution, that previous budgets for the ACT had said when things were new and actual initiatives and when things were ongoing that had received bolstering or extra funding. That has been adopted by the committee to get a measure of what is new and what is ongoing.

There was a huge amount of interest in this estimates report, and a huge amount of questions were taken on notice by ministers and put on notice by members. I would like to thank in particular the departments of education and urban services for their swift responses to those questions on notice.

The committee is aware of the strain that estimates, in the first place, and then 300 or 400 extra questions place on departments, and we would like to thank them for their hard work in this area. However, it should be noted that ACT Health has a number of questions still outstanding, which go to the heart of the financial status of the department and their estimates, and we look forward to receiving the answers to those questions.

I need to make the point, and the committee agreed on it this morning, that some of those answers may have arrived in the crossover when the report was being written. If some questions have been answered, I apologise for saying they have not been. In the main, we tried to check as best we could in the time we had last night to make sure of the accuracy of the report.

The report goes on to talk about the acquisition in the Chief Minister's new human resource system and makes a recommendation that time lines for new projects in budgets be reasonable. It would appear, though, that there is some problem with getting the Office of Sustainability into the process, and it would appear that the draft cabinet submissions containing revenue measures and, presumably, all budget cabinet subs are not submitted to the Office of Sustainability or, possibly, to other offices, like the Office of Women. If the Office of Sustainability is to do its job properly, it needs greater strength, and there is a recommendation on that as well. We note the continuing lack of funding for indigenous dual diagnosis workers, so we would like to see that they are provided.

There is an interesting section in the budget called "enhanced whole-of-government communications". I, and the majority of the committee, found it hard to believe that the ACT public service, which currently has 211/2 permanent public relations officers, four contractors and the assistance of the ACT publishing services, needs any more PR people-particularly at a cost of over $1 million over the next four years. There is the suggestion that that could be better spent in areas of greater need.

There is a very large section on the health budget and some detailed analysis of the lack of sustainability in the budget. We seem to be spending more on health, getting fewer

services, with longer waiting lists. I won't go into the detail of that, but the five-year

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .