Page 3018 - Week 08 - Thursday, 25 June 2009
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accountability, helping people. The estimates committee, appointed by this place, asked the Treasurer for a technical briefing on the document, particularly to assist the new members, and got turned down.
We have the bleating of the Treasurer, “Work with us, talk with us.” We spoke to her. It was not just the Liberal Party members on the committee; the Liberals, the Greens and the Labor member agreed that we write and ask for this briefing. We were simply turned down. Mr Harris provided some reports. They proved to be very useful and I think they gave a more detailed understanding of the complexity of the budget and assisted us to think through a number of the issues.
The Treasurer’s comments made in response to a dorothy dix question asked last week that the estimates committee apparently ignored Mr Harris’s reports are simply wrong. Once again, the Treasurer has raced into the chamber ill prepared. Let me dwell on Mr Harris’s reports for a moment.
It was not appropriate for us to quote slabs of advice provided by Mr Harris. Rather, his valuable advice was of great assistance to us as we deliberated on the complexities of the ACT’s annual budget. I believe that we made excellent use of Mr Harris’s expertise. And having access to a person with his knowledge and experience, I think has been a very worthwhile exercise on the part of the estimates committee this year.
As somebody who sat on estimates committees for some years, I think it is great and we should make sure that all estimates committees in the future have similar support. It will be interesting, when the discussion on the parliamentary budget officer comes back, where the Assembly goes with that.
The Treasurer seems to think that Mr Harris has endorsed her approach to the budget. Again, she is selectively quoting. How wrong she is. She clearly has not read all his reports. Mr Harris, for instance, criticised the Stanhope-Gallagher government for having the highest rate of payroll tax in Australia, for having the highest levels of service of any government, for budgeting for more than a modest increase in expenses in 2009-10, for not finding savings in 99.99 per cent of all spending for 2009-10, for failing to make savings in the 2009-10 financial year, for budgeting for accrual-based savings that will be insufficient to meet all expenses accrued during the year, including costs such as depreciation.
Ms Gallagher: Read all the positive stuff he said, Brendan.
MR SMYTH: I will leave that to you; you selectively pick. He criticised the government for having had an excessive number of different presentations from the government’s operating result.
There is a rather large increase in the rate of spending on education in 2009-10. The Treasurer does not quote what Mr Harris describes as a material variation, but you would not understand that language. There are generous increases in spending for primary and secondary education in 2009-10 and there may have been a use of inappropriate indicators by the Stanhope-Gallagher government.
Ms Gallagher: Where was that?
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