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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 4 Hansard (29 March) . . Page.. 1197 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

done is sell down assets and put some money into the superannuation fund. A couple of years ago the government committed $200 million of funding towards the superannuation liability over four years-$50 million a year, you would reckon, or pretty close to it-but has not honoured that commitment. If the government has a spare $10 million, it should really pull back on this sort of election year spendfest and apply that money to the superannuation liability. I commend the report the Assembly.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Health, Housing and Community Care-Standing Committee

Report No 9

MR WOOD (4.41): Pursuant to order, I present the following report:

Health, Housing and Community Care-Standing Committee-Report No 9-Report on the Inquiry into the 2001/2002 Draft Budget, dated 21 March 2001, together with extracts of the minutes of proceedings.

I move:

That the report be noted.

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, the committee took a positive approach to this report. We believe that we did the best we could in the circumstances. We looked seriously at what we were offered and gave careful thought to it. We heard what the departmental officers had to say, receiving a good briefing from them, and we attended to the 17 submissions that we received. We await with interest the government's response to the report. I hope that it will be in the positive mode of our report. I hope that it will be a little more positive than the fairly negative government response tabled just a little while ago to the report of the select committee.

Mr Quinlan: You should live so long.

MR WOOD: I should live so long. I hope that the government's response will be as positive as I believe our report to be. We raised a fair point when we spoke about consultation in the first of our recommendations. Recommendation 1 reads:

The committee recommends that the Government inform the committee as to what community consultation it undertook in the planning of the budget and which groups it consulted.

That is a fair recommendation to make. The government's response to the select committee's report goes a little way to answering the question that we posed. I quote from page 3 of the government's response:

Indeed, the Treasurer has written to over 80 community groups in order to outline the Phase II budget consultation process and the avenues available through which they can provide input. Several groups have made well-considered and valuable submissions direct to the Government.

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