Page 2190 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 15 August 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
I do not want to go into it because there is a member who is probably, I hope, very regretful of his behaviour. As a result of that, the meeting ended in disarray and we were left wondering what was going to happen. I think Mr Smyth has covered the shenanigans of the weekend very well, and I will just refer to the recommendation. Finally when we had our meeting at 1.30, no doubt to accommodate aeroplane timetables to at least some extent, I put the recommendation for the end of that report and it was rejected.
To me the heart of this matter is the functional review. We have been told that everything that is in this budget comes out of that functional review. I have people in the community saying, “What has happened to this government? What is going on?” They want to see the functional review, too. I am saying, “You don’t have to show us the whole thing. Just show us what you can.” I say to Mr Stanhope, his ministers and the rest of the government that this would help people a lot. ACT people are intelligent people. Most of them are numerate and they would like to know what is going on. If you do, they might be with you and they might not be quite so confused about what has happened to a government that made a social plan and that is so committed to public education.
MR PRATT (Brindabella) (5.43): I rise to speak to the committee report today, and the Liberal members’ dissenting report on the 2006-07 budget. Before I start, I would like to echo the words of Dr Foskey and Mr Smyth about the shenanigans that occurred late last week. I do not need to go over the hoary detail of what occurred; I just echo and express my disgust at the way this matter was handled.
In the end, sadly, reflecting on Mr Hargreaves’s intervention in this particular issue, he sits there and says, “You guys are a bunch of hypocrites and we can do whatever we like.” We reflect sadly on Mr Hargreaves and what we see is the arrogance of his government, which is: do not allow a committee to scrutinise in a transparent fashion, and let us not have the fair rules of how we might undertake scrutiny and debate, just do as we, the majority government, say. I think the theatre of late last week, through the weekend and on Monday morning, reflects sadly on this government and that attitude.
Before I get into the detail of the discussion, I want to acknowledge the significant efforts made by my fellow MLAs, the committee secretary, Sandra Lilburn, in particular and the parliamentary staff throughout as we put together this onerous budget scrutiny process.
I also wish to acknowledge the contribution made by all those who made submissions to the estimates committee and all those who appeared before the committee to give evidence. It has been an intensive but necessary process. My heart goes out to the many school bodies and committees who turned up, often with very little time to present quite onerous stories of how they have been dudded by the government.
This year this government has produced one of the most diabolical territory budgets we have seen for four years. At the heart of it lies the failure of the government to come clean on the Costello review. A lot has been said about that here this afternoon.
I was privileged enough to be part of the estimates committee and able to more closely scrutinise the budget than I have been in previous years. In fact, it has only served to deepen my fears that this government is driving the territory’s finances deeper and deeper into the ground. We discern from the 2006-07 budget estimates process that the
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .