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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 5 Hansard (27 August) . . Page.. 1501 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

The estimates process goes to the heart of good government and to the effectiveness of budgets. It is all about how the Public Service is administered, how the money is spent and the way decisions are made. This report goes to a whole range of issues that are concerned with public administration, the decision-making process and due process. The report - this is, of course, why the Government is so sensitive about the report - goes to a whole raft of issues which highlight the lack of due process, the lack of good process, which ultimately always leads to a lack of good government. They certainly are a wide range of issues and they are issues of real embarrassment to this Government.

The Bruce Stadium fiasco is all about the expenditure of significant amounts of money. I cannot imagine that anybody could criticise the Estimates Committee for looking into and reporting on a blow-out of about 100 per cent in the budget on Bruce Stadium. If that is not what the Estimates Committee should be looking at, then what should they be looking at? Floriade is another debacle. This report is full of governmental and administrative debacles. That is why it is embarrassing to the Government. Floriade, an absolute disaster for the Government, was not mentioned in the budget, and that is a point in itself.

The Feel the Power campaign was rejected absolutely by the people of Canberra. The decision-making processes entered into by the Government in relation to the Feel the Power campaign deserve close scrutiny. It goes to the expenditure of public moneys; it goes to the waste of public moneys. The fact that the Minister for Urban Services felt the need to include a completely discredited slogan on numberplates, and expended ratepayers' money to effect an absolutely flawed policy, is a matter of legitimate interest to the Estimates Committee.

The Hall/Kinlyside issue is approaching the proportions of scandal. Yet there are serious suggestions being made by people in this place that it is not a subject worthy of consideration by the Estimates Committee. That is an absolute nonsense. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of ratepayers' money was wasted on a process that was completely non-existent. In response to some of the inane comments made by the Minister for Urban Services in relation to the conduct of the Estimates Committee, I have to say that 20 or so pages of the Hansard transcript that relate to the attempts by members of the committee to get an answer from Mr Rod Gilmour and Mr Lincoln Hawkins and the Minister on the state of their knowledge of dealings in relation to the preliminary agreement warrant further investigations. There are over 20 pages of transcript of repeated questioning from three or four members of the Estimates Committee, yet Mr Gilmour never did get around to answering a question on the extent of the knowledge of PALM about the arrangements. That is a matter that requires further investigation.

The list of issues goes on and on. They are all legitimate issues of interest to the Estimates Committee, to the Assembly and to the people of Canberra. I think the committee has done an excellent job. There are issues in the report that one hopes the Government will respond to in a meaningful way. For instance, I discovered through the estimates process that prisoners, including indigenous prisoners, at the Belconnen Remand Centre who suffer or present with substance abuse or addictions are required to wait up to seven weeks before they can go on the methadone program.

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