Page 696 - Week 02 - Thursday, 10 March 2011
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requires some time to arrange prior to the committee starting its deliberations. I have found this independent advice and commentary on the ACT budget to be extremely valuable. I also trust that the independent expertise will again be engaged to provide the independent expert advice to the estimates committee on the 2011-12 budget. Clearly, we require the greatest amount of time in which to seek expressions of interest and to engage a suitable person or entity to provide this advice.
Mr Speaker, I now want to make some comments on the material which you circulated earlier this week on behalf of the Standing Committee on Administration and Procedure. This material has been provided in response to a recommendation from last year’s estimates committee. The material describes six models by which what I will call the “estimates process” could take place. I wish to make some brief comment on this material.
Of the six models outlined, referring the budget either to the public accounts committee or to an expanded public accounts committee will simply load onto that committee more work into an already over-full workload. The same could be said for referring relevant parts of the budget to existing standing committees, as is done with annual reports. But, again, this imposes an increased workload on an already busy committee or committees.
Establishing two select committees has the potential to be a nightmare with scheduling arrangements when there are so many overlapping responsibilities within the ministry and ACT government agencies. There was the suggestion of establishing a dedicated standing committee. I think that has some merit but I suggest that, given the size of the parliament, it is probably not practical.
So by a process of deduction and analysis of the way in which we currently function, I am led to the position of favouring our current arrangements. I believe it achieves the optimum balance between scrutinising the annual budget, giving members an opportunity to participate in the scrutiny process and using our limited resources as effectively as possible. Hence I move my motion in the form in which you have before you as the best means by which our parliament can perform its role of scrutinising the budget that will be brought down by the government of the day and to hold the government to account for its forecasts, for its decisions and for the outcomes of those decisions.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Convenor, ACT Greens) (10.17): There is a balance to be struck between consistency and innovation and we must always be mindful of the need to be adaptive and responsive to new ideas and ways of doing things. Traditionalism does have its place, but it should never be used as an excuse not to be open to new ways. If we look at the way we have done things, they may have more or less worked and may well fulfil the basic requirements, but it does not mean that we should not be open to new options if there is one available and one that can do everything the current mechanism does and more.
That is why this year the ACT Greens are proposing that we change the way we inquire into the proposed budget expenditure to ensure that we have the most effective analysis of the budget available to us in determining whether or not we should support
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