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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 2 Hansard (9 March) . . Page.. 450 ..

MS TUCKER

little effect on the budget that is passed because its activities happen after the budget is developed. These problems point to the need for a mechanism to allow input from Assembly members to the budget before the formal budget papers and Appropriation Bill are tabled in the Assembly. The Greens believe that, rather than the Estimates Committee process, there could be an ongoing budget accountability committee, which would ensure a greater role for non-executive members in the early stages of budget preparation.

The committee would operate on an annual cycle, firstly in the development of next year's budget through discussion of budget priorities and reviewing draft budgets. The committee would publicly examine the budget that is tabled and then review the annual reports for the previous year. Even within this model, though, there are certain dangers, and great care has to be taken in exploring more inclusive processes for development of a budget so that it is not actually ending up as cooption. I believe that we have within the parliamentary processes here a very necessary role for non-government members, and that is ensuring accountability of the government of the day.

The Greens also believe that the Government should engage in meaningful pre-budget community consultation. At present, the Government just calls for submissions and gives community groups a couple of weeks to respond, and then the groups have no idea until budget day whether their ideas have been accepted or not. We believe that a better process would be to bring the various interest groups together in pre-budget community forums to debate and seek to find common ground on ACT budget priorities. That discussion would have to include revenue raising and expenditure.

To move on to what should actually be in the budget: The Greens have always been concerned that the budget should be regarded as a social and environmental planning document as well as a financial document. We believe that the budget should include details about the Government's social and environmental agenda as well as its financial plans. While the accrual accounting system provides greater information about the state of the ACT's assets, income, expenditure and liabilities, there is still no environmental and social accounting or auditing being undertaken.

We have all heard about the ACT's superannuation liability, but we have no idea what financial or social liabilities are accruing from air and water pollution, the destruction of remnant vegetation or the spread of weeds into the environment. We all know about the amount of money that departments are spending, but we have no idea of what physical resources they are consuming, how much waste they are producing, whether this is an efficient use of these resources and what environmental impacts may be accruing. Some members will recall that in the last Assembly there was a push from the Greens and through the Planning and Environment Committee for the development of environmental accounting mechanisms for the ACT. The Government put out a discussion paper on environmental accounting late in 1997; but, as far as we are aware, there has not been much work done since.

On the social side, it greatly concerns me that we have no idea what financial or social liabilities may be accruing from continuing cutbacks to funding of education and community services, in terms of what impacts poorly educated children, children at risk

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