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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 13 Hansard (9 December) . . Page.. 4072 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

The question is: Why are we doing it this way? It is a simple mechanism to make sure that the process does not break down. We know what is going to happen. We know that each committee is going to engage in a public consultation process which is not normally undertaken in this way with a draft budget on the table and with the community being able to see what is there in front of them. This is a revolutionary process, do not forget, that will expose this Government's budget to a level of scrutiny which no other government in Australia has been prepared to adopt. These things are going to be on the table. The community is going to come forward and organisations, lobby groups and so on, and individuals, probably, are going to argue for increased expenditure in particular areas. Each committee is going to get a very large number of requests for additional funding.

The fact is that the Government gets those sorts of requests all the time. Those opposite who have been in government know what this is all about. You have to balance those considerations against other pressures within a particular area. All we are asking the Assembly's committees to do is engage in this process on the basis already put forward in the Government's committee recommendations - that is, with the one discipline that it is not open to every committee to recommend that the appropriation in their area be increased, because that would be the product of the exercise. Every committee would come forward and say, "We need to spend much more in this area to cover all the unmet need". We would probably all agree, but then no-one takes responsibility for the fact that that total territory budget is only of a certain size. We only address the problem - - -

Mr Quinlan: You do. That is your job.

MR HUMPHRIES: Indeed. That is right. That is why we, as a government, have to assign a certain size to each slice of the pie. We say, "This is how much we have got to spend on justice and community safety; this is how much we have got to spend on urban services for the Territory; this is how much we have got to spend on health and so on" We take that step, we impose discipline on ourselves, and we simply ask the committees to share that discipline. That is not to say that it is not possible for others in the Assembly to contribute to a debate about whether we should be either enlarging the pie or distributing matters between different areas, such as, say, spending less on justice and more on health, or less on urban services and more on education or whatever it might be.

The role, as I see it, of the Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration is to provide an overview of the budget, and I see nothing in this process which should prevent committees, particularly committee chairs, from liaising with the Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration and saying, in the overview of the matter, that there ought to be some enlargement of the Territory's revenue, or an increase in borrowings by the Territory, or a transfer between one area of the Territory and another.

Mr Quinlan: We know what you are doing. Get on with it.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Quinlan immediately reacts to that. He obviously realises it is a terrible bind to be in. You are left in the position of having to recommend more revenue or transfer appropriations between different areas.

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