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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (2 December) . . Page.. 4375 ..

Mr Whitecross: You can come and ask for an appropriation.

MRS CARNELL: Alternatively, we could come to the Assembly for an appropriation. That is true. That is possible. But is that not silly? That is a stupid way to go. In this way an SPP can come in from the Commonwealth, can be spent for the purpose for which it was meant to be spent, will be tabled in this Assembly in three days and will not have to go through the Treasurer's Advance, which is not what the Treasurer's Advance was meant to be for.

I cannot understand what those opposite are complaining about. It is all transparent. It is all out there. SPPs from the Commonwealth are not secret. The Commonwealth is usually very loud when they give the States or the Territories money. I have yet to find the Commonwealth giving secret money to the States or to the Territories. I think everyone can be quite confident that they are going to know all about these sorts of transactions.

MR WHITECROSS (10.12): Mr Speaker, I am disappointed at your sternness in dealing with us when we were only encouraging the Chief Minister in her learning exercise. To use the Chief Minister's example, suppose she came by $5m of Commonwealth money for some special purpose like disability services. Mrs Carnell would rush into parliament with a little Bill which would probably be about two pages long - probably one page front and back, but let us call it two pages for the sake of the argument - and say, "Good news! We have got $5m from the Commonwealth for disability services. We need you to agree to this appropriation". How hard is that going to be? How many weeks are we going to tie that up for in the Assembly?

The proposition the Chief Minister is putting, that there is something complicated about this, is just a nonsense. When Mr Humphries went away to the Police Ministers meeting and came back with an agreement on guns, he rushed into parliament a Bill about guns that was much more complex than a single-line appropriation of $5m for disability services. That Bill, which dealt with a very important social issue that was the subject of Commonwealth-State agreement, was passed by this Assembly in a very timely way. If a Commonwealth-State agreement results in our being given a substantial amount of money outside the normal budget process, then I am fully confident that this Assembly will be able to deal with it. This Assembly has plenty of capacity to deal with these sorts of things.

It is interesting to note that Mrs Carnell has yet to take up Mr Berry's invitation to give some examples of when we have got bountiful largess from the Commonwealth outside the budget process which has made such deep inroads into the Treasurer's Advance that she has been unable to manage her budget.

Mr Berry: For a specific purpose that has never been mentioned before.

MR WHITECROSS: Yes, that is right. It seems to me that, on the face of it, it is a much less serious problem than the Chief Minister is making out.

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