Chairperson and hon members, this reminds me of a saying that, I hope, you don't ask our department to adopt, which is, "I only use one hand."
Chairperson, a number of comments have been made by hon members. I want to thank them for the contributions they made and, more importantly, the wide support they have given to the budget. I recognise that in Parliament opposition parties have to show why government should be replaced at the next election, but I hear subtext that there is support for the budget. We hope we can work hard in the next 12 months to spend the money in the budget wisely and to make a big difference in the lives of South Africans, working with other government departments.
I've also had a number of pieces of advice, advice on policy, advice in terms of focus and implementation, and advice on specific sectors that we should focus on. We have taken careful note of that. Certainly, in the discussions on the growth path, these would be substantially addressed, I hope. Thank you again for that. I won't comment on each of the individual suggestions.
A few speakers raised the issue of mandates. I trust that both the budget speech today and the strategic plan have helped to clarify the particular areas this department will focus on. This also makes the point that we can only achieve government's mandate if, in fact, we work together. That would be a very big theme of the work of this department. [Applause.]
A set of turf battles was eagerly awaited and constantly predicted. They haven't taken place. The unspectacular story of Ministers working with each other and departments co-operating doesn't make headlines, but that is the reality of government inside the Cabinet system. It's the interministerial committees, the clusters where we work together and formulate proposals that go to Cabinet. To those members who asked who makes policy, the answer is: Cabinet makes policy. From where does Cabinet draw its inspiration and its ideas? From the cluster system, where we work together.
The issues of development and finance came up in a number of contributions. They varied, for example, from the hon Bhengu's comment that we needed to promote access for enterprises to finance, to the hon Ntuli's detailed comments and quite useful insights on the challenges facing development finance institutions, to the hon George's comments on retirement funds.
Let me briefly address the issue of retirement funds, since it's a theme that has been picked up on both by the hon George and the media. I was somewhat puzzled while listening to the hon George about what document he was reading.