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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 2852 ..

know its consultation timeframe in relation to that. In the brief time I have had the government’s response I have yet to find that.

I am glad to see that the Auditor-General will be an important part of the development of new performance reporting in relation to environmental auditing and looking at triple bottom line reporting. I think that this is a very important step for the government to make. I am, as always, disappointed that it has taken this long, but I am glad to see that Auditor-General is moving forward as part of that and that we are expecting some very important changes to come out of the discussion put forward in the supplementary budget paper.

MR QUINLAN (Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development, Business and Tourism, Minister for Sport, Racing and Gaming, and Acting Minister for Planning) (11.22): Just a very brief comment, seeing as Ms Dundas touched on budget paper No 5. So far the government is extremely disappointed with the response to that within the assembly, just turning it back into a question and saying the government has started a consultation process. The government has started the consultation process. We have put the paper together. It is before the members of the assembly, and we hope and expect that there will be positive input from members.

Proposed expenditure agreed to.

Proposed expenditure—Part 1.4—Chief Minister, $76,209,000 (net cost of outputs), $27,856,000 (capital injection) and $590,000 (payments on behalf of the territory), totalling $104,655,000.

MR STEFANIAK (11.23): In looking at the Chief Minister’s Department there is possibly a potential note of caution in relation to how some of the administrative structures seem to be developing. The Chief Minister’s office has a number of areas where various other ministers are responsible. A new area for child protection—which Ms Gallagher is responsible for—has gone in now under the umbrella of this department too. There is probably something there for virtually every minister except possibly Mr Wood and certainly Mr Corbell. Mr Wood might have some responsibilities in there as well, but certainly Mr Quinlan has in economic development, and sport and recreation, and Ms Gallagher has, as well as the Chief Minister.

Some significant problems can arise from that. I think back to the time when in one of the previous governments we had a department called BASAT. I thought we should have added regional development to that to make it something quite different. It had business, art, sport and tourism. Basically there were four ministers and the cabinet, and the poor Chief Executive of that department had to see each minister and was responsible for each one. There was a subsequent change, which I think rationalised that a lot more sensibly. I note that as a word of caution because it does seem that now we have at least three ministers responsible for various areas under this particular department. I will watch with interest to see if any problems develop from that. There can be, and previous experience does urge caution there.

In relation to sport and recreation I make a number of points. During the course of estimates I was somewhat concerned about the Academy of Sport. I was concerned to see the potential for a number of programs there being cut. The academy does an

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