Page 1695 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 30 April 1991
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Moore is not here at the moment. He is probably listening upstairs. He took a great interest in this as well. We were quizzing the Chief Minister, at some length, over what degree, if any, of control and monitoring there was of ministerial travel. The simple answer at the Estimates Committee was that there was none. Although the appropriation line in the budget for Executive travel fell formally within his department, this is the view he took. He said, "My Ministers are not" - I think he said - "office boys; they make their own decisions". So it seems that there is no policy of restraint and discretion as to which trips are going - - -
Mr Kaine: Rubbish!
MR CONNOLLY: The Chief Minister says "Rubbish!". I would be very interested to hear or read a statement of the Government's policy on this issue. What are the guidelines, if any, that are applied to ministerial travel? What is the overriding government policy and why does it result in such remarkable differences in travel?
Mr Berry indicated when he was reading from that report that one of the largest areas in which inter-governmental conferences and meetings and so forth take place is the health and education portfolio. Yet, as we have said, in this Territory those two major areas of government administration, which are usually split into two major portfolios, are administered - we may say at times maladministered, but administered nevertheless - by one Minister, Mr Humphries. And we have repeatedly said that we make no criticism of Mr Humphries' travel budget. Mr Humphries seems to exercise a degree of restraint, as indeed does the Chief Minister. Why is it that a Minister, in an area which the Ernst and Young report points out is one of the biggest areas of inter-governmental travel, is able to turn in reasonable figures while Mr Duby and Mr Collaery seem to have extremely large travel budgets?
If indeed the Government is, as the Chief Minister says, undertaking that process of monitoring and careful analysis recommended in this fascinating material revealed by Mr Berry - I wonder whether the Government would have ever revealed it - let us have a look at their guidelines. Let us have a look at how the decisions are being made. I suspect that no such decisions are being made.
MR STEFANIAK (8.45): I really think the Opposition has completely missed one of the main points of a Bill such as this. Naturally, they have hied off onto an awful tangent in relation to Ministers going off on so-called junkets. But the fact of the matter - to quote one of Mr Berry's favourite phrases - is that we have a Cabinet of four in the ACT, and this is a very sensible Bill which simply provides for any two Ministers to act in concert to perform the duties of the Executive. It is quite conceivable that two Ministers in this Cabinet - or any Cabinet in this
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