Page 2771 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 June 2010
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Mr Linke further noted:
I would prefer to have core funding and have some certainty around the funding. It allows me then to put in place a strategic plan for our staff and gives my staff certainty.
I think that that is a legitimate call for an organisation like the RSPCA. I would like to put on record just how much respect we have for the RSPCA and the work that Michael Linke and his team do in the community. They sometimes cop criticism from others who claim to be interested in animal welfare. I think that no-one could question legitimately Mr Michael Linke and the RSPCA’s commitment to looking after animals in the territory. Indeed, this is the case with the RSPCA right around Australia.
I would like to put on record our support for the work that they do. I think it is important that in an ongoing way we see some certainty there. That is a legitimate and a reasonable thing for Mr Linke to call for. It is certainly something that we would support. That is reflected in our dissenting report. I will just finish on that note in relation to the RSPCA. We look forward to seeing the RSPCA flourish and grow in the very important work that it does in years to come.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Proposed expenditure—Part 1.5—Department of Territory and Municipal Services—$306,193,000 (net cost of outputs), $261,101,000 (capital injection), and $685,000 (payments on behalf of the territory), totalling $567,979,000.
MR COE (Ginninderra) (5:43): As has already clearly been articulated by my colleagues, the Canberra Liberals will not be supporting this budget. We have questions about how fiscally responsible it is, about its accuracy, about its transparency, about the high levels of waste and about the high level of taxation. Of course, all these contribute to it being an anti-family budget and one that we in opposition cannot be supportive of. It is interesting that, in spite of all the reasons articulated by my colleagues, the Greens have blindly signed up to this budget, as they did on day one when they signed the agreement. It is bitterly disappointing that the people of Canberra are not getting the scrutiny they expect from their elected members of the Assembly when it comes to the budget process.
To put into context where we are at with the financial year that we are entering and the financial year that has just been, in August last year the government reluctantly tabled the Ernst & Young report which looked into the Department of Territory and Municipal Services in their strategic budget review. EY, it must be said, gave a scathing assessment of the Department of Territory and Municipal Services. The document I have here documents a lack of financial transparency, a lack of control by managers and an excess of political influence. The document reveals a lack of financial discipline. It says that management has “limited visibility of the activities
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