Page 2611 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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for public scrutiny. Given that this is taxpayers’ money the Stanhope government is spending, they have a responsibility to ensure that the funding is well-targeted to ensure that the community is really getting the services it needs.
We have often seen the Chief Minister standing up here and saying, “You are complaining about the amount of money being spent on these services. What would you cut?” We are not necessarily saying “cut”. We are saying that we want to see that money targeted. We want to see productivity increases in these functional areas. That is the point that is consistently missed by the Chief Minister when the opposition questions him on where this funding is going and why it is going to certain places.
It is not so much that we want to see funding cut. Yes, in some cases we want to see efficiencies, but primarily we want to see that funding targeted. Yes, you have increased expenditure to the Emergency Services Authority—well done—but we are concerned that you have wasted tens of millions of dollars of that increased funding. Perhaps I can use that as one example of the point I am making.
I will finish by raising the issue of Googong Dam and the management of the catchment area. In estimates I was not particularly happy that I was getting answers back about who runs the primary management of the catchment area. There are deep concerns that, for example, bushfire fuel reduction operations in the area are falling through the cracks, because the three, or possibly even four, agencies which have roles to play in the Googong catchment area are not being directed. Nobody is directing traffic.
If nobody is directing traffic, then fundamental tasks such as hazard reduction, which have a major impact on the quality of the catchment area, are falling through the cracks. Again we did not get any clear answer back on that. This government will certainly have to clarity the roles and responsibilities of various agencies in relation to each other, vis-a-vis overlapping responsibilities about how these things are managed. I am very concerned that, in this strategic area, we have had very little indication from the government on exactly how they are going to task their new organisational strengths to deliver the services this community needs.
MRS BURKE (Molonglo) (11.27): There are just a couple of things I would like to point out very briefly. The Chief Minister highlighted in this budget that instrumental changes will be made in relation to how the ACT government will take advice and in turn offer a democratically elected indigenous representative body, at a cost initially of almost $400,000 to the ACT taxpayer—that runs from 2007-08 to 2009-10—to be administered through the Department of Disability, Housing and Community Services. I will talk about that a little bit later. It seems to me that here one department is now answerable, as clarified to me in the estimates committee, to three different ministers.
This may well be a body the ACT indigenous community wishes to have implemented in order to elevate areas of concern to the ACT government and to maintain a representative voice at a level that is placed higher than the current indigenous representative councils. I must point out, however, that the Chief Minister casually asserted to the Assembly that he felt the decision taken to fund the proposed elected indigenous body did not really require the assent or agreement of the cabinet. Some may say that it is not a significant amount of money that is proposed to establish the elected
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