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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Tuesday, 4 May 2004) . . Page.. 1712 ..

and at the conclusion of my remarks the Treasurer can adjourn the debate. I would like to start by saying that Mr Smyth has already alluded to the unnumbered recommendation on page 17. That means that we actually have 13 recommendations in the report; and presumably that also means that the recommendations have been renumbered.

I have to say that, because of the lateness of the hour at which the committee finished up last night, I did my best to try to get the numbering right in my dissenting report. I thought I had achieved that but, lo and behold, the numbering was out when I looked at the report this morning. On page 30 of the report I have referred in my dissenting report to paragraph 2.27, which should be paragraph 2.26. I then referred to paragraphs 2.32, 2.34, 2.36, 2.37 and 2.38, which should in fact be 2.31, 2.33, 2.35 and 2.36. Paragraph 2.38 remains the same. Then on page 31 I have referred to paragraphs 2.48 to 2.51. This should in fact be paragraphs 2.48 to 2.50. I have also referred to recommendation 8, 9, 10 and 11: these should actually be recommendations 9, 10, 12 and 13. While most of the numbering is self-explanatory, I would say that my references to recommendations 10 and 11 are not necessarily absolutely clear and presumably the new numbering is 12 and 13.

I think the fact that we have this renumbering issue points to the fact that the end process was fairly rushed. The committee received the first draft at 4 o’clock on Friday afternoon. While the report is not long and was not difficult to read through in the time that was available, generally these sorts of errors do not happen if more time is given to prepare such reports. So in writing my dissenting report yesterday afternoon it was difficult to have to number and renumber a few times, according to the changes that occurred over the day and then last night.

I think the dissenting report mostly speaks for itself. I would say that one part that I did not refer to, which I believe the Treasurer will probably wish to refer to in his response later this week, is the Wizard and AIMS database issue in recommendation 2. I did have a small amount of concern about that recommendation but I did not in a major way dissent in the committee process. So I will not refer to that any further.

This was an interesting process. I think there was a tendency to undermine and confuse some of the major funding that was going on, and I think that is unfortunate because there is no doubt that youth and family services need the money. The Minister for Education, Youth and Family Services repeated over and over again the need for extra funding to come through for the child protection area. The department is cash managing that area and it is quite clear that if the money is not forthcoming through either a Treasurer’s Advance or this third appropriation bill, the department will fall short before the end of the financial year.

Some members of the committee had an obsession with saying, “Well, you were given the approval for the Treasurer’s Advance. Why didn’t you use the Treasurer’s Advance? You have got this Treasurer’s Advance money and you haven’t used it.” That patently fails to understand the fact that the use of the Treasurer’s Advance had been approved: the Minister for Education, Youth and Family Services had spoken to the Treasurer and asked for the money and the Treasurer had approved the use of that money but then, very shortly subsequent to that, the Department of Treasury decided to have a third appropriation bill. So it was deemed more suitable for that money to be put in with the

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