Page 2107 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 22 June 2010
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index, it was excellent. As a report, it was woeful. That is why none of the Labor and Greens members have been able to stand up in this place this morning and offer a single piece of scrutiny. There has been no scrutiny, and it is because they have not done the work. This is in fact a patsy report delivered by the financial patsy of the government.
You have to look at what we were asked to do and ask what the chair delivered. Remember that the chair gets paid for this. From February to today, the chair gets paid. The chair gets paid to deliver leadership, to deliver guidance, to show where we should be going, to critique what has been done and to work with the committee in that regard. But it was never done. That did not happen. What we got was a quick reference guide.
What did the chair do? The chair said, “I don’t think we should have broad inquiries.” What else is a budget? This was a broad inquiry into the expenditure for the year. It looks at every single piece of expenditure. In many cases, it compares it with last year, but it looks forward certainly at one year and in the main at three years. Its purpose is to critique the budget, but it did not happen. What did the chair do? The chair said, “I do not want to do that work.” She probably felt that she was incapable of doing that work; she certainly proved that she was incapable of doing the work. What did she offer? She offered a list of what was discussed. That is not analysis. Giving a quick reference guide is not the job.
The chair said, “I have wound it back. I have looked at what all the other jurisdictions do and we are going to do the same.” Isn’t that surprising? Eight out of nine other jurisdictions are run by Labor governments. Eight out of nine of the other jurisdictions I believe have government chairs of committees and eight out of nine of the other jurisdictions deliver a chronology or a list of what was discussed and then say, “Just pass the budget.” That is the failure.
Until this report came along, the ACT estimates committee had a long and honourable tradition from both sides of parliament. We were critiqued and criticised by Labor committees and we did the same to them. This time we abandoned that process because we had a chair who either was not up to the job or did not want to do the job.
That is the problem at the heart of this. That is the problem with this report. That is the problem with the process that the chair used. That is the problem that we were confronted with in the committee. You only have to read volume 1 to see that that is true. And you only had to listen to the three speeches from the non-Liberal members in this place to know that there is no criticism, there is no critique. They could not raise a single point in this debate this morning.
Ms Hunter said that she did not want the report to get bigger. The report is going to get bigger. The budget gets bigger; the issues get bigger; the areas covered get bigger; the degree of complexity gets greater. To say that you are going to simplify it by giving us a run-through of what was talked about without going to the heart of the matter is an abrogation of your responsibility.
Mr Hargreaves started by saying, “Parliamentarians three, politicians two.” What about the people, Mr Hargreaves? What about the taxpayers who fund this budget and
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