Page 2371 - Week 11 - Thursday, 2 November 1989
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Treasury has undertaken to consider this, and I refer to that important recommendation at the bottom of page 5, which I will leave members to read at their leisure.
Another area that we looked at was rent and superannuation. We noted that rent, for the majority of agencies, was included in program 23 rather than as part of the program costs. One particular area was the Tourism Development Bureau. That had its rental in this particular program and was not a charge against the operations of the Tourist Bureau. So I think that will be something that we will be looking at. We recommended that rent and associated costs be allocated to the relevant agency and, where possible, allocated to particular programs. In addition, we recommended that superannuation costs also be allocated to particular programs.
I have already made some comments on statutory authorities and the Departments of Education and Community Services and Health, so I will not reiterate my comments there. The committee also noted that the budget, as provided, did not allow for a clear indication of the total costs of the Assembly. Our concerns related to the inability to separate the Executive from the rest of the Assembly operations.
In fact, we were concerned that there was a brief mention in the description in program 3 of budget paper No. 5, but we considered it important that the budget fully show all costs of the establishment and operation of the ACT Legislative Assembly. A separate program should therefore be created with three subprograms: one for Secretariat support, one for non-Executive members of the Assembly, and a third for the Executive.
At this juncture, I think it is appropriate to correct a statement that I made earlier when I was referring to numbers. In fact, it was 11 non-Government members who participated and not 12, as I indicated before. Mr Speaker has reminded me that he was a witness at the proceedings and not a member of the committee.
The Treasurer's advance is another area that the committee considered. In there, we saw that there was a figure of some $10m allocated for the Treasurer's advance. The committee was keen to see that, when expenditure is made out of the Treasurer's advance, that information is provided to the Assembly. We recommend, Mr Speaker, that the Treasurer table on a monthly basis a statement outlining the use of the Treasurer's advance.
I think at this juncture, Mr Speaker, I will close with some comments on the staff support assistance. I wish to express gratitude to Ms Karin Malmberg, the committee secretary, who provided considerable support to me and other committee members. I do not think we can forget the efforts of Ms Malmberg and those of the whole committee staff, many of whom worked long hours preparing briefings
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