Page 2036 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 25 October 1989
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MR MOORE (11.17): Mr Speaker, in our previous debate Mr Berry referred to the use of consultants in terms of tax dodging and tax rort, and now the Deputy Chief Minister is using the same line. I think it is reprehensible that those Ministers should bring into question the good intentions of the consultants industry. To say that something is legal but contrary to the spirit of the law really indicates that the legislation is inadequate. If it is inadequate, then there is their own Labor Government in the Federal Parliament and it should be doing something about what they consider to be immoral or inappropriate.
They go on to talk about enjoying the privileges of consultants and rorting the system. What worries me more than anything is that there is a certain irony, nearly a certain hypocrisy, about the Government because when they put all these arguments forward they are, of course, in the process of employing consultants themselves. If those arguments apply to members of the Assembly, then they should apply equally to Ministers. That is the part that worries me most.
Let me state at this point that I have no intention at the moment of employing consultants, and should this matter come through in the LA(MS) Bill - at which point I agree with the Chief Minister that it should be appropriately debated - then under those circumstances I would like to see the Government make a choice: either we have consultants and consultants are acceptable or they are not acceptable. That is the choice that the Government will have to make, because if we have systems that are artificial shams - and we know that the Chief Minister has employed a consultant for a year, as she has informed the Assembly - if we are going to have what they are referring to as artificial shams or tax avoidance or in the spirit of tax avoidance, then I am quite happy, whichever way it goes, for them to either forgo their right to consultants or to extend that right. I would also point out that under the proposals that I see here the accountability question comes in as well. Staff of members of the Assembly who are not Ministers will be much more accountable to the Assembly than are consultants currently in the proposed Bill.
We have a situation where accountability for somebody like Mr Stevenson who wishes to employ a consultant will be quite clear and quite open, and the accountability will be to the Assembly, but the Government in employing its own consultants will not be so accountable. I think that is another question the Government will have to look at to see that that accountability, if it chooses to go for the consultant line, will go right across the spectrum.
It seems to me that current budgeting and program budgeting in the Federal Government involving government business enterprises is all about letting people choose how best to use their own funds. Letting the managers manage, I think is the current jargon. If that is the case, if the same funds are available and the managers - in this case the
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