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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 3 Hansard (8 April) . . Page.. 649 ..

Mrs Carnell: When can we pass the budget?

MR BERRY: Mrs Carnell interjects, "When can we pass the budget?". My understanding is that the Government is able to proceed until December on the basis of - - -

Mrs Carnell: What did we bring down an early budget for?

Mr Humphries: No; that is supply you are talking about, Wayne.

Mrs Carnell: You are talking about supply.

Mr Humphries: We can have supply until then, but we cannot put our measures into place until then.

MR BERRY: The budget can be dealt with in the sitting period a week after the reporting date which I have proposed in my amendment, and that is 19 August. In the following sitting week the Government can deal with its budget.

Mrs Carnell is involved here in a process to try to keep her budget under wraps and smothered by the Federal budget. There is no question about that. This is a public relations exercise to keep the tawdry document under wraps. What Labor is proposing is to ensure that there is proper scrutiny of the budget and that there is sufficient time to ensure that the community, as well as the relevant committee of this Assembly, can look at the budget in full. This provides an adequate period for consideration of a budget - not an open-and-shut case - as is being proposed by Mrs Carnell.

Mrs Carnell wants her budget out of the way quickly. She does not want people talking about it. We want to talk about it because we have a Territory that is in recession as a result of mismanagement of the Territory by Mrs Carnell. If she thinks that the Labor Opposition is going to go to sleep when her budget is being introduced just so that she can rush it through, it will not be so. We have never gone to sleep on budgets before and we are not going to start that sort of habit this year. I seek leave to move my two amendments together.

Leave granted.

MR BERRY: I move:

(1) Paragraph (1), add "and the Annual and Financial Reports for the financial year 1996-97".

(2) Paragraph (3), omit "17 June 1997", substitute "19 August 1997 in respect of the Appropriation Bill and by 27 October 1997 in respect of the Annual and Financial Reports for the 1996-97 financial year".

I commend them to the Assembly. They seek to improve the accountability of the Government, and I ask members for their support.

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