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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Thursday, 24 June 2004) . . Page.. 2724 ..

Mr Corbell or his office—to get on with the development and so put the matter to rest, but that matter is still not resolved.

I think this did illustrate a lack of respect for the Assembly, even though I defend the minister’s right to make the final decision. The motions of the Assembly are not binding. I respect the difference between the executive and the parliament and understand that it would be inappropriate for us to be forcing government to do anything. But there is obviously a lot of political weight in a majority motion of the Assembly. I think it is how Mr Corbell has responded on a couple of occasions to the majority will of the Assembly that has made people concerned about his attitude to the rest of the Assembly.

There seemed to be a change after that which was reflected in the fact that, after the Karralika issue blew up, the minister withdrew his promise to call in the development in the face of Assembly resistance, so discretion in that case proved the better part of valour. I think I would characterise the difficulties over all these issues and events as more reflective of a relationship problem than a legal problem. The question then is really about how bad the relationship is: if it is getting worse, if it can improve or if it is improving.

Another charge is that Mr Corbell has misled us on the question of scholarships for mental health nurses. Mr Smyth claims that Mr Corbell misled on this matter in a media release, in question time, and in estimates. The argument was that there was no mention of these scholarships in any of this government’s budget documents, yet Mr Corbell claimed to have funded them in the ACT government budget. As I understand it, the government has funded these scholarships and that funding has been made available since government changed hands.

While it may be that there is no line in the budget specifically identifying that program, it seems inescapable that the scholarships exist—indeed 21 nurses have completed these programs since 2002, and 13 are now enrolled in them. It may also be that the initiative was first developed under the previous government and that the scholarships were made available through the release of funds that may or may not have accrued from one year to the next.

I saw an email this afternoon that suggested that there was money for mental health scholarships in the previous government that was not properly authorised, and that there was some fairly concerning administrative failure in the previous government in respect of that arrangement. I do not see that that particularly compounds any charges against Mr Corbell; that is just rather concerning information about the last government. Similarly, the comment that the money was made available through the 2002 appropriation, where again there is no line identifying such expenditure specifically is, it seems to me, not necessarily untrue. Funds are allocated from a range of programs and it seems to be a moot point as to where any individual dollar comes from.

Clearly announced programs need to be conducted and expenditure commitments need to be met, but I do not see how the information put in front of us that the government had not flagged this specific expenditure in its budget breakdown demonstrates that we have been misled in any significant manner. If the government, which controls its expenditure through a budget process, makes $300,000 available for mental health nurse scholarships and nurses take them up, that is the main thing.

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