Page 2421 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 22 August 2006
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Schedule 1—Appropriations
Proposed expenditure—Part 1.1—Legislative Assembly Secretariat, $5,339,000 (net cost of outputs), $200,000 (capital injection) and $4,495,000 (payments on behalf of the territory), totalling $10,034,000.
MR MULCAHY (Molonglo) (11.07): The appropriation in the 2006-07 budget for the Legislative Assembly Secretariat, in my view, still contains considerable scope for improvement in efficiencies and services provided. It is certainly acknowledged that the Secretariat serves an important function and needs to be sufficiently funded to ensure the smooth running of Legislative Assembly processes and to facilitate the proper handling of legislation and the needs of elected members in the Australian Capital Territory. But I respectfully suggest that some of the key functions of the Secretariat that are currently provided to Assembly members still have a way to go before they can be considered to bear the standard that is commensurate with the way legislative functions operate and government is administered at state and territory levels elsewhere.
It is all well and good to be handling the little things well. For instance, the estimates committee reveals that the Secretariat was well in control of the publishing of relevant foreign language pamphlets in line with current trends in most frequently used languages other than English among Assembly visitors. It is pleasing to know that our Vietnamese, Cantonese speaking Chinese and Arabic visitors will be well served with respect to learning about the Legislative Assembly’s functions in their mother tongues. I also hear that our Korean, Filipino, Serbian, Croatian, Spanish and Japanese guests will also soon be able to more easily access information related to our facility.
I suggest there are bigger fish to fry. Take, for example, the contentious DOA arrangements for members of this Assembly that again have been subject of recent reference in the Canberra Times—as recently as this weekend. Many of our colleagues would agree that arrangements currently in place are overly restrictive, they are not in any way effective and in no way do they acknowledge the pressures placed on members and their offices in managing their responsibilities to their electorates. The corporate manager himself readily conceded that when he said in evidence:
The DOA arrangements are much criticised, and I think the criticism from members of this place is often met in equal terms by the criticism of the people who have to administer what has become a bit of a ghastly process. We are not here to defend the beauty of the DOA arrangement.
He went on to say:
The DOA scheme was structured originally to provide a substantial sum of funds in the days when it was created, largely driven by an IT-based demand: members wanting laptop computers. I think initially we had eight members sign up for laptop computers and I think currently one or two are using them. So I think there is a clear indication of a fluctuating demand.
That goes to the heart of the problem. The reality is that members of this place have different needs and different methods of fulfilling their responsibilities to their electorates. The DOA arrangements provided by the Legislative Assembly need to
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