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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 3 Hansard (8 April) . . Page.. 715 ..

MS McRAE (continuing):

last time, which was absolutely outrageous, where we were getting answers to questions on notice after the report went in. Tell me what is so good about that. What government would hold its head up proudly and say, "This is fantastic. We are an open government, open to scrutiny. We have nothing to hide. But we will give you the answers after the Estimates Committee report is in."? Is that what is going on? Is that what we are going to see now? We have two weeks of sitting in May. We have two weeks of sitting in June. We have to rush the things in - - -

Mrs Carnell: You are making a fool of yourself.

MS McRAE: Mrs Carnell, of course, would know whether I am or am not making a fool of myself, because she makes one of herself all the time. You have a standard by which to judge, Mrs Carnell.

I am voicing the concerns of my fellow estimates travellers with whom I have worked for two years now and for whom the process has been a very rushed and unpleasant process. We have here an opportunity to take our time. We have here an opportunity to do the job properly. I will be listening with great seriousness and concern to find out just what this secret reason is that this thing has to happen in five or six weeks. We will have less than three weeks of scrutiny time. We will all be focused on the next sitting. We have two weeks of sitting in June for which we will have other matters to consider. For the life of me, I have absolutely no understanding of why we cannot just get on with the estimates process through July, when we are not worrying about sittings, when we are not worrying about deadlines, when we are not worrying about other legislation, when we are not worrying about other issues, when we have time collectively to look at the issues that are before us, and when we have time collectively to understand what is being put in front of us.

I think it is absolutely appalling that people who were going to be on the Estimates Committee were not consulted in the first place. Nobody spoke to me about any timetables, or to anybody else that was likely to be on the committee. Nobody took seriously other recommendations of previous estimates committees, all of which have asked for more time. No-one took seriously the experience of the previous Estimates Committee and was ashamed that replies to questions on notice came in after the report came through. The actual response of the Government to the report has been rushed. No-one has taken that seriously.

What we are seeing from this Government is a contempt for Assembly processes; a wish to rush things through and hide important material from the scrutiny of Assembly members and the general public. I think it is to be condemned. I wish that people would present some sort of serious argument as to why we have to rush through between May and June, to hurry through a report, when supply does not run out until December; when there is absolutely no reason to hurry this whole business through; when we have to contend with the Federal budget in the middle of it all, to try to come to grips with both sets of numbers and the implications for Canberra; and when we collectively have an Assembly that wishes to look seriously and thoroughly at the numbers that are before us and are getting sidelined with some stupid argument about, "What about the annual reports?".

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