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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 6 Hansard (17 June) . . Page.. 1888 ..
MR HARGREAVES
(continuing):I do wish to pay particular credit to the committee secretary, Derek Abbott, who worked under the most extreme circumstances. I can give you examples of but a few. Firstly, we had 90 hours of hearings and he sat through all of them-not bits of them, as we could, and go and have a cup of tea or something; he sat through the lot. Almost immediately after that, we went into nine or 10 hours of actual deliberation-a hell of a lot-and he sat through that before putting together the report which we are debating today. It says something about the process that we had to cram all this up, which is something about which I will be critical, but I can only be full of praise for Mr Abbott.
On another issue that we had, I have to attest to his absolute strength of character. Towards the three-quarter mark of the deliberative session, when eyeballs were being placed gently on the table, there were four bottles of whisky sitting on the table. As we were looking across the table at each other, I did not get a really good look at what had happened, but the poor secretary had a really good look at it and he did nothing. As a matter of fact, at the end of the day, after we had all finished, he got up and, with the grace his office demands, walked straight past them.
Three hours later he was still hard at it and he has produced this report, which will be provided to members later. It was a brilliant effort. I definitely know that I could not possibly do that and my hat and, I am sure, that of the committee goes off to Mr Abbott. He was setting a fine example, as the head of committees, in doing that, and I offer hearty congratulations to him.
Mr Speaker, there are elements of the report which are constructive and there are elements of it which are political and with which I will have absolutely nothing to do, but I do commend the bits of the report which are tendered as constructive criticism and urge the government to chuck the rest out.
MRS DUNNE
(11.54): Mr Speaker, there is much in this Estimates Committee report, which I do not have a copy of as it has not come to us yet. Before making comments about the report, I do want to pay testament to the staff of both the committee office, particularly Derek Abbott, and the departments. Considerable resources of departments go into the estimates process and, as somebody who has done estimates from just about every angle over the past 15 or 20 years-I have not actually sat at the minister's table yet; it is something to aspire to-I do know how much time and effort and how many resources of departments go into it and I do understand how seriously, for the most part, officers and departments take this process.The seriousness with which officers and ministers take estimates has been a hallmark over past years, but this year there has been an unprecedented departure from that and it bespeaks an alarming trend in government in the ACT which we need to halt right now. As far as I can tell, this is an unprecedented estimates committee report for this Assembly, because there are in it three matters of privilege which are being referred to this Assembly for consideration. In addition to that, there are two matters which are the subject of direct recommendation that the Auditor-General inquire into conduct.
There was a matter that I would have recommended also be referred to the Auditor-General for inquiry, except that the Treasurer has already done that. We ran the risk of having three recommendations to the Auditor-General for inquiry and report as well as
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