Page 5332 - Week 17 - Thursday, 13 December 1990
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In presenting this report I would first of all like to express my thanks and those of all of the committee members to the secretariat, which is headed up by Karin Malmberg. We have the research assistant, Judy Starcevich, and the keyboard and administrative person is Kim Blackburn. They have done a wonderful job and have the thanks of all of the committee.
The Public Accounts Committee made a unanimous decision to take on this inquiry into the Priorities Review Board. It is pleasing to me that the report that we are presenting tonight is also a unanimous report. The fact that it is a unanimous report would indicate to the Assembly that there has been a bit of give and take on the substance of that report in the Public Accounts Committee.
The terms of reference that we took on in relation to the Priorities Review Board concentrated on the mechanics of the PRB. I would expect members of this Assembly to be more than familiar with my views on the recommendations of the PRB. The Public Accounts Committee has not examined those recommendations because, as I say, we were more concerned with the conduct and the processes of the review, the costs and, particularly, the use of consultants.
In approaching the task of looking at the PRB from that perspective, we came across a couple of constraints very early on; the first of which was that the Priorities Review Board itself was not actually available to come and see the Public Accounts Committee - it having been disbanded - although we did speak informally to a couple of members of the board. We also found that there were, in fact, very few formal records of the PRB's activities. That was a problem for us. In fact, it was in quite sharp contrast to the Else-Mitchell inquiry that went on at much the same time. The Else-Mitchell inquiry not only made a lot of their material available, but also placed all of their records and information centrally for public access at a later date.
Another constraint that we found was that, in relation to any number of questions that the committee asked concerning methods of hiring consultants and methods of taking a number of actions, the answer invariably seemed to be that the time constraints imposed on the PRB more or less short-circuited all kinds of methods. We have accepted that the time frame involved was, in fact, the Chief Minister's prerogative. I do believe that it has led to a number of problems and the recommendations contained in our report indicate what some of those problems were.
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