Page 142 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 9 December 2008
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This appropriation bill does little to improve the prospects of the ACT budget and that—(Time expired.)
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Convenor, ACT Greens) (6.37): It is never a good process to pass legislation without scrutinising it carefully. Our key concern here is that the appropriation bill is a mechanism to deliver time-critical spending, including the promised pre-Christmas support for emergency community services, which, in terms of effective delivery, is already down to the wire.
This appropriation also puts in place some of the key mechanisms that we need to have operating for the start of next year so that the ACT government and community can start to deal with the economic crisis and climate change challenge that everyone knows we face. That includes the funding for the new department and resources for the new committee that will scrutinise it.
For the community organisations looking to this appropriation bill to provide the promised funds, an extra week’s delay from 12 December to 19 December is too much. On the other hand, any inquiry into this bill shorter than a week would, in my mind, be meaningless, given the need to contact people to appear and to establish meeting times, the Hansard turnover times, the need to draft and then discuss a report inside the committee and to make thoughtful and considered recommendations. I believe the best scrutiny that we can offer in the short term will be here in the Assembly. An earlier sitting week might have given us more space to better manage the process, but that is not the situation we are in.
I would like to note that I do not intend to allow this truncated process to be used as a precedent in future appropriations. I also believe that if there are ongoing concerns with elements of this appropriation then the public accounts committee could consider an inquiry after the event. I appreciate that that is not desirable but it would nonetheless be one way of providing a closer look at these funded activities and the rationale for bringing them on in this time frame. Therefore, we will not be supporting Mr Smyth’s motion.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Treasurer, Minister for Health, Minister for Community Services and Minister for Women) (6.39): I welcome the opportunity to speak briefly to this motion. I am more than happy over the next few days to make available all officers that I need to make available to brief members of the opposition and the Greens on any aspect of this appropriation bill to any extent that they want, within the tests of reasonableness.
This appropriation, as Mr Smyth points out, does include some things that are in addition to the election promises, and he has named a couple of them. In fact, they have been included in this because they would have been candidates for a Treasurer’s advance, but because we were putting an appropriation together, they must go into the bill, as you would be aware. So it is not a matter of me grabbing a whole range of things and wanting to add them in on top of election commitments. They are things that we are required to do, Mr Smyth. And you would be the first to squeal if you later found out that I had approved a Treasurer’s advance for something that did not go in through the proper processes. So there are elements of that as well.
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