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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Tuesday, 4 May 2004) . . Page.. 1707 ..

truthful and to not use this process for political point scoring. This did come across on a couple of occasions with ministers that we gave the benefit of the doubt to.

Mr Corbell: You would never do that, Mrs Cross!

MRS CROSS: You are the minister; I am not the minister.

Mr Corbell: You would never do that, Mrs Cross.

MR SPEAKER: Order! Mrs Cross has the floor.

MRS CROSS: Thank you, Mr Speaker. As the chair of this committee—and I know that all the members of the committee took their roles very responsibly—it was disappointing because, as I said in my opening remarks, I came into this with an open mind and I thought it would be a far simpler process. I thought, “The government has every right to put an appropriation through. It wants extra money; let us just look at why they need it. It will be fine.” But it was not as simple as that. The cynicism, arrogance, obstruction, hindering of the process, lack of cooperation and lack of evidence coming to us in its entirety was disturbing. You can continue to do that; you can continue to decide which questions you answer, Mr Corbell, which you seem to do better than everybody else in here. When there is an issue you do not want to answer, you just do not answer. This seems to be your pattern not only with members of this Assembly but also with members of the community who write letters to you. If you do not want to answer, you just do not answer.

The problem is that, at least for the next few months while you are still in a minority government, you will be accountable to the members of this Assembly. God forbid what will happen after October but until then you are accountable to the instruments of this Assembly. One of those instruments is the estimates committee process, whether you like it or not. Unless you would like to go out there in your campaign and say to the people of the ACT, “Do you know what? We are going to thumb our noses at the processes of this Assembly because, frankly, we don’t care what you say. We don’t give a proverbial about the committee process because we do not want to be accountable; we want to do what we want whenever we want to do it.”

This is about accountability, about your being up front and honest. Did you not go to the last election saying that you were going to be different from the former government because you were going to be transparent? Well, bugger me if I have seen a lot of transparency! Has there been a lot of transparency? I have not seen much. The concern is that I have felt hindrance in this committee process, and that should not be the case. I should not have to tell you that, Mr Corbell: you have been here twice as long as most of the new members. I withdraw the other word, Mr Speaker.

MR SPEAKER: Thank you, Mrs Cross.

MRS CROSS: Once again I would like to thank my committee members. I would like to thank Mr Brendan Smyth and Ms Karin MacDonald for giving me the opportunity to chair this committee—and Stephanie Mikac. I am disappointed that some of the ministers I held in high regard have let me, the Assembly and the people of the ACT

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