Page 2828 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 June 2010
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The ACT Government prepares its budget on an outputs basis. Data at that level is published in the Budget Papers …
Well, no, it is not.
Mr Smyth: It is not.
MR SESELJA: It is actually not. That is the point. A list of initiatives or programs that are run under each output is not published in the budget papers. In response to a simple question, we got the response:
Certain figures you request will be publicly available … Data is not available in the form in other questions and at the level of disaggregation requested in other questions without diversion of significant resources …
What a load of rubbish! What a load of absolute rubbish! Again, we are hearing from this government that they cannot tell us what is in this budget. They are saying again in relation to LAPS: “Pass this budget and trust us—trust us that the way we spend this money will be prudent and reasonable and that we will spend it on good things. But we cannot tell you what we are actually going to spend it on. We can only tell you in the broadest possible terms. We will fill it with hollow logs. We will have a situation where it is a discretionary decision of individual ministers and individual agencies as to how they are going to spend this money without any recourse to this Assembly.” They will not tell us.
They will not tell us what is in this budget and we fundamentally believe that this is basic information that should be provided to the Assembly prior to the passage of this budget. If the Greens genuinely believed in openness and accountability, they would be asking for exactly the same thing before they voted for this appropriation. But they do not have the guts. They do not stand up to the Labor Party. As it is, we will not get the kind of information that the community deserves so we know how our taxpayer dollars are being spent. (Time expired.)
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (10:30): I will start with talking about the property services arm of LAPS. First off, I will talk about the energy efficiency targets set by the property group, I am very pleased to see that property services are working on implementing their green leasing schedule and on achieving accommodation of 4.5 NABERS energy efficiency ratings for existing buildings and five star minimum for all newly built ones in the future.
This is vital if we are to reduce the government’s greenhouse gas emissions, and, of course, this will soon be a COAG requirement, through the national framework for energy efficiency, so it was going to happen anyway. My understanding is that this is one of the key drivers in the ACT government wanting to consolidate its department and agency buildings into one brand-new, hopefully efficient, building here in Civic, next to the Assembly.
I also note, in the context of energy, that the government’s renewable energy purchase is a fixed amount purchase, rather than a percentage of its use purchase. As a result,
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