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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 1971 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

finally, looking for the substance of an integrated fiscal approach which really does deliver better outcomes for the ACT. Unfortunately, if you look behind the slogan, the substance is hard to find. The so-called social capital budget is one which the Estimates Committee has found wanting.

The Estimates Committee process this year worked very effectively, I believe. It has closely examined the government's proposed expenditure and policy priorities. It has been, as I said, an effective process and it has revealed that there remains with this government a lack of accountability, a lack of openness and the lack of an effective social justice agenda.

The Estimates Committee has made 41 recommendations across government. The key recommendations cover the areas of the budget process itself, including the need for a formal and transparent review of the Canberra Hospital's financial performance to determine any areas for additional funding; a requirement for the minister for health formally to detail to the Assembly where his discretionary funding will be spent; the need for a full accounting of the expenditure associated with the V8 supercar race; the need to consider supplementation for wage increases for nurses in the ACT; and a recommendation dealing with an immediate analysis of the need for youth, drug and detoxification services in the ACT.

The committee has recommended that funding be improved for support services for young indigenous offenders in the ACT and has called for a more rigorous and more detailed justification of the government's proposed beat police program before it is implemented. It has also called for better resourcing of planning services in the territory and for the provision of detailed information on the efficacy of increased road funding, compared with investment in public transport, along with the need to develop a strategy for public transport priority measures. The committee also details its belief that there is a need for further information on the government's superannuation liability arrangements and for evidence that there has been a substantial shift from the public sector to the private sector in the ACT as a measure of state final demand.

Those are some of the key recommendations of the Estimates Committee report. They deal with a range of issues across government. I would now like to deal with a number of them in a little more detail. Before I do that, Mr Speaker, I should say that I believe that it needs to be put on the record here and now that this Estimates Committee process has effectively addressed the government's budget papers and has effectively addressed the ownership agreements and other associated documents.

The committee has done so despite the continued lambasting that the committee process gets from those opposite who do not believe that it provides anything worth while. I would say to those opposite that an example of what I believe makes the whole process worthwhile is the revelation which was made through the Estimates Committee process that this government has an agenda to sell Canberra's public ovals. That is an issue which has attracted substantial public comment and it has occurred only because of the efforts of the Estimates Committee in properly analysing the budget documents that the government presented to it. That, if nothing else, indicates the worth of having appropriate scrutiny through the Estimates Committee process. But I would say that it is far more than simply that instance which justifies this process and demonstrates this approach is worth while.

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