Page 2378 - Week 11 - Thursday, 2 November 1989
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Estimates Committee and all matters connected with it are very carefully built into the whole time arrangement for the Assembly.
This year, many of us were already burdened - perhaps "challenged" would be a better word - by existing obligations. For me, in one case, these took most of one day during the sittings, and this must have been a difficulty for all of us. So I would like to make a proposal. It is not a recommendation from this committee, of course; it is something that arose from the Centre for Continuing Education at the ANU. Dr Caldwell suggested to me that it might be possible for some kind of impartial, non-party seminar to look at the first year of the workings of this Assembly, especially the nuts and bolts of it. It would look at the things that we can do well and do better, not in terms of party policy or anything of the sort, but just the way we operate.
I want to stress this: one day, I hope to write about this historic first year of the Legislative Assembly of the ACT, and I take extensive notes. I believe we are in extraordinary times in what we are doing, and I would like to think that out of this Estimates Committee experience we could learn a great deal.
So I would like to follow Dr Caldwell's suggestion of some kind of seminar, perhaps in January or after we have completed the year, under pleasant and friendly conditions, where we could look at the day-to-day workings and see what we can do to improve these matters.
MR HUMPHRIES (11.07): I want to make a few brief comments. I endorse the remarks made by the chairman with respect to the amount of information provided in the budget documents, which estimates are worked on. It made it very difficult to get into any proper scrutiny of some programs that were being examined. Certainly it was useful to have an outline of the objects of certain programs and to have information about what was envisaged as the main thrust of programs in the coming year.
In all those respects, I felt on many occasions that the amount of information was not sufficient to really reach a considered conclusion about what the Government was or was not doing properly. I think the testimony to that was the number of times that representatives appearing before the committee had to promise to refer further information to members.
There were reams of paper that arrived containing additional information which had to be discovered by public servants and brought back to the committee, and it has appeared a little bit more. That could not appear in the first place with estimates material supplied en masse to members. Naturally members are better placed to ask good questions if they have the information at their disposal before they arrive.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .