Page 2705 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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operating such advisory groups, but I would like to see a cost-benefit analysis of their removal in terms of social environment impacts, as well as the basic dollar figure.
It would seem that most of the staff cuts in environment, apart from ranger positions, will be from policy areas. So we will have a minister who does not know a lot, without advisory groups to offer any of the incredible expertise with which Canberra is blessed, with diminishing policy support from the department.
It is difficult to arrive at a rational decision as to whether the budgetary proposals concerning the environment and the Department of Territory and Municipal Services are sensible and responsible and deserve support because we do not know what they are. We still do not really know what staff cuts are planned. We do not know where the 100 full-time equivalent staff numbers are going to come from, or even where they are planned to come from. I will take my next 10 minutes, if I may, Mr Speaker.
MR SPEAKER: Doctor Foskey continuing on the question that the proposed expenditure be agreed to.
DR FOSKEY: We do not know whether we can be confident that the functions entrusted to the new department have been adequately accounted for. When it comes to TAMS, we do not even known what expenditure proposals we are actually being asked to approve. We do not even know whether there are plans to close Canberra’s public libraries. A review was mentioned, and I think pools are involved as well.
Is the government going to start its public consultation once it has made up its mind what it is going to do? Is it going to be a repeat of the schools closures fiasco? It does seem incredible that I am compelled to say this again, but here we go. Consultation does not mean telling someone what you are going to do and then listening to their reaction. There is a difference between a monologue and a dialogue. This is simple natural justice. An administrative decision is void if it can be shown to have been prejudged; that is, that it was made before consideration of the views of affected parties or without due regard to relevant considerations. The most basic rule of procedural fairness is to give an affected party the opportunity to give their side of the story before making a decision. I know that the government now has a majority in the Assembly, but it should not imagine that this means it is now omnipotent and the source of all wisdom.
Good governance requires good management information systems and good scrutiny to ensure sound policies and practices. The estimates committee is the body entrusted with the primary budget scrutiny role. It plays a similar role to that of an independent auditor. An independent auditor’s report is widely accepted as being necessary and appropriate in private businesses, and auditors are given wide-ranging access to all relevant documents in order to properly perform their roles. What sort of audit report do you think would emerge from a process where the senior manager folded his arms, thought everything he said was far more interesting than anything that anyone else said, withheld documents, refused to answer, restrained his officials from answering questions and then said he was incapable of giving any detail about the nature of his spending programs?
It is obvious that the auditor would not be able to complete a report, and that is what happened here. While the Greens have voted against the budget in this place in the past, the Liberal Party has not and has said that it would not. Now the opposition has said it
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