Page 5028 - Week 17 - Tuesday, 11 December 1990
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they feel like it, rather than report and have it before the Assembly within 15 sitting days?
What we really need to do with our reports, right across the whole of the ACT Administration, is clean up the Acts and get these reports to us within six months of the end of the year. I think all those reports should appear in as short a time as possible. It would be quite reasonable for us to expect that of our Assembly, so that we can actually see what is going on and have those annual reports, as, in fact, we did from the Office of Industry Development. Once again, I congratulate them on the excellent report that they did. It provided for a situation in the Estimates Committee where, as the Chief Minister will remember, the questioning of that particular section of his department was a far less onerous task because the sort of information that we would otherwise be seeking was there available to us in that annual report.
I think that that could well be the case in future and that we should be demanding a much more respectable way of dealing with these things. It is appropriate for this Assembly, as a whole, to ensure that reports from sections of the departments, or from our public servants, do come to the Assembly and are dealt with as quickly as possible, and at an appropriate time, so that they are meaningful.
Once you take a report past six months it becomes less and less meaningful. We could come to a situation where we have one that was 18 months or two years old and which provides very little relevant information. We have a situation here where, because it is an interim planning Bill - because it is one that should last a relatively short time - it is even more critical for us to see the annual report as quickly as possible. In fact, instead of loosening up this provision, what we should have seen was a far, far tighter provision than what we see here.
I am sure that Mr Duby agrees with me because I know that he seeks efficiency from his department. I can see that just by the comfortable smile on his face. I also see Mr Humphries joining in the jocularity with a smile. I am sure that what we will see each of these Ministers demanding, when they get to their annual reports, is that they get to them as quickly as possible. It is a very poor precedent that we are setting here when we ease the demands on that situation.
Clause agreed to.
Clauses 33 to 35, by leave, taken together, and agreed to.
Clauses 36 to 51, by leave, taken together, and agreed to.
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