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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Tuesday, 22 June 2004) . . Page.. 2278 ..

MS MacDONALD: No, not always. In conclusion, I thank the entire committee secretariat for the hard work that they put into getting the report done and sitting through the endless days of hearings. I know that the ministers get to escape on other than the limited number of days that they are before the committee and that the members of the committee have a bit of a break in between every so often, but the committee secretariat members do not have that luxury. They often have to listen to extremely tedious information. It as all very important, but it is often less than scintillating and edifying information that they are listening to. I do appreciate the efforts that the entire committee secretariat have put in and I commend the report to the Assembly.

MRS DUNNE (11.44): Mr Speaker, the Select Committee on Estimates for the Appropriation Bill 2004-2005 sat in hearings for 92 hours earlier this year.

Ms MacDonald: Didn’t you have anything better to do with your time than to add it up?

MRS DUNNE: I did do the calculation in a quiet moment, yes, because it pays testament, Mr Speaker, to the amount of work and the seriousness with which members take this process. It is an important process and it is a very arduous process for five people to scrutinise a whole budget. I do not think that there is any estimates process in another parliament where one committee gets to scrutinise an entire budget. There are pluses and minuses with that. It is a lot of work, Mr Speaker, but it also important work and we probably do it better than most places because we have a better overview of what is going on.

It is interesting that from time to time you end up with initiatives coming from a variety of departments that do much the same thing. This year the initiative was one relating to fitness and young people. Childhood obesity is an important issue, but from time to time members of the committee expressed concern about the department of health, the Bureau of Sport and Recreation through the Chief Minister’s Department, and the department of education all having activities in this area. Our concern, because we got to see the whole lot, was that there may be overlaps and we may not be getting the most bang for our buck. Although we did spend 92 hours in hearings and then extra time in deliberation and writing reports, I think it is a job well worth doing, but I have made a note for myself that I hope not to have to do it next year, having done it for three years in a row.

Mr Hargreaves: Hear, hear!

MRS DUNNE: Mr Hargreaves agrees. Do you mean that you do not want me to be on the estimates committee or that you do not want to be on the estimates committee?

Mr Speaker, there are a few issues that I need to draw to the attention of the Assembly. Mr Stefaniak touched on the willingness of ministers to appear before the committee. I commend those ministers who went out of their way to facilitate the proceedings of the committee. We had some upheaval in the middle of the process because of the calling of a special sitting. The day set aside for the special sitting was determined at the request of the government, which did mess up the estimates process somewhat. So it was somewhat disconcerting to find that the Chief Minister, as the Attorney-General, did make some ructions about coming back on what was previously scheduled as a recall day. We had

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