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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Tuesday, 4 May 2004) . . Page.. 1709 ..

heart of the reason why the committee has said the appropriation bill should go through is to ensure that the few absolutely essential things on this wish list from the government go ahead—and child protection is clearly one of them.

The Minister for Education, Youth and Family Services told the committee that she herself wrote the speech she delivered here, so she cannot blame anyone else; she was not given a speech to read, as often happens with ministers. She said in this place on 12 February that the Treasurer’s Advance was being used because it was urgent. The urgency has now been shown to not be true. The department could have cash managed the extra need until at least May, if not June, this year. When the minister came back last week—she sought an additional meeting with the committee—she gave us further information that confirms that. So recommendation 3 asks that the minister at the first available opportunity explain to the Assembly why the Assembly was told that the Treasurer’s Advance was being used to fund additional surpluses when in fact it was not. We need to know that we can trust what ministers are saying ; that they get it right the first time; or, if a mistake is made, that people come back at the first available opportunity and correct the record.

Recommendation 4 talks about how the statistics are collected in relation to substitute care. When the minister came back we had some charts that showed us some three-year figures. They said it was not science, that it was more of an art. I suggest that a slightly longer study might give a pattern. With modern accounting software you can trend lines and predictions out rather than saying, “We don’t know.” In this case, in the fourth quarter for this year the department, through the minister, has said it will take the smaller number of days option but at the higher cost equalling an amount, It could not actually explain them. We take the point: It is not exact. This is not a criticism of those in the department but, if we are going to have confidence in the budget process, it is important that, where you have failings like that or the inability to predict, you work out a way of getting around it. The estimates are based on facts and estimations, not on guesstimates. So we have suggested in recommendation 4 that some attention be paid to that.

Recommendation 5 looks at the procurement processes of ACT Housing and suggests that the government might like to improve them. It also asks the government, when it appears before committees, to be better able to explain how the moneys appropriated will be expended. I refer back to the fire safety money. It is interesting that in June 2002 the government allocated $10 million for urgent fire upgrades using the Treasurer’s Advance, and it put that to this place, yet two years later some $7 million has still not been expended. Indeed, in the period from May to June 2002 no money was expended even though it was considered urgent, and in 2002-03, only $2 million was spent on fire safety works on the multi-unit public housing complexes. You have to question either the government’s commitment to carrying this out or the original premise that this work was urgent, because at the completion of the following financial year, only 20 per cent of that money had been expended.

In this financial year, 2003-04, only $947,000 has been spent. The remaining $7 million will not be fully expended this financial year “for the reasons set out below”. Another look will be taken at that because of the lobbying of Mrs Burke to stop the removal of the flyscreen doors. You would have expected the government to have done this work before it said it urgently needed $10 million. In two years it has managed to spend

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