Standing Committee on Estimates and Financial Operations — Seventy-first Report — “2017 – 18 Budget Estimates Hearings”

Resumed from 23 August.

Motion

Hon ALANNA CLOHESY : I move —

That the report be noted.

[speeches and comments of various members]

Hon ALISON XAMON : I feel confident that perhaps when she gets the call, the chair of the committee will be able to assuage some concerns about this issue, so I will be quite clear about my concerns. I am also one of those members who use the estimates process quite vigorously. It is an important part of how I get information; in fact, it is one of the key ways I can find information about what is happening in areas of concern to me. I have 20 shadow portfolios, so I can assure members that I will pay very close attention to a lot of areas of the budget. I have also seen in previous estimates processes that some members have been flippant with some lines of questioning. It can happen on both sides. I will not be asking a whole bunch of questions about how many pencils each department has, if we want to use an example of a question that is not particularly useful. Having said that, I am very concerned about the number of questions that are able to be asked being constrained by a number of pages. I can think of key shadow portfolios that I have, for example, when it would not be uncommon for me to put in at least 15 pages’ worth of quite detailed questions. These are questions I want to know the answers to and want some detail on. I hope that the chair of the committee will now get the call and answer those questions directly, so this can be a storm in a teacup and no-one needs to be concerned about anything.

[speeches and comments of various members]

Question put and passed.

 

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