Parliamentary Sitting Program

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD (15:21): My question is to the Treasurer. Members were today advised of a change of the parliamentary sitting program. My question is: will the Treasurer outline the reasons for the change?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (15:22): I thank the honourable member for the opportunity to outline the reasons for the change. At the outset, I do apologise to members and to staff for any inconvenience that the decision might have caused them and their families and staff. The point was made in discussions, as I understand it, in another place that the amount of time originally allocated for discussion of the budget, or the Appropriation Bill in particular, was not long enough to allow reasonable or extensive consideration of the Appropriation Bill, particularly as this was a new reformist government with a comprehensive reform program, which I am sure will be outlined in the Appropriation Bill debate.

As a result of that, the government accepted that additional time should be made available to the House of Assembly to allow further debate on the Appropriation Bill prior to it going into the estimates committee process, which we understand. As a result of that, the estimates committees, which of course use both chambers—the House of Assembly and the Legislative Council—will be sitting from, I think, 21 September to 27 September. Of course, two of those days were projected sitting days for the Legislative Council.

Clearly, if the estimates committees are sitting in this chamber, we would be unable to have a Legislative Council sitting on those particular days. The option open, then, to those of us in this chamber in terms of our willingness to serve the people, was either to have two less sitting days or to replace those two sitting days with two alternative sitting days. I have made the judgement that all members, in their willingness to serve the people of South Australia, wouldn't want to be sitting any less. Therefore, the previous week was a little bit of a strange week for us as we were only intending to sit on Tuesday the 18^th because estimates committees were commencing immediately thereafter. Rather than just being a one-day sitting week, it will now be a normal sitting week: the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th.

So they are the reasons. I thank the honourable member for the opportunity, through his question, to put the reasons behind it. Again, I apologise on behalf of government members—I should say on behalf of myself, because I need to apologise to my own government members as well—to staff and other members as well for any inconvenience that might have been caused as a result of that decision.

The PRESIDENT: And the President.