Page 1697 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 30 April 1991
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tenanted properties in the Territory. Of course, the last sport meeting was a very vexed one that dealt with rights concerning tobacco advertising and the rest.
I have been, I think, to one other meeting, or two other meetings, since I have been a Minister that were not formal ministerial meetings. I attended the National Crime Authority meetings. I am not going to talk about those. They are held in places. I attended a seminar dealing with criminal law matters in Brisbane a couple of weeks ago, and I paid the costs of travel myself. I was the only Minister attending who bore the costs of their own travel. The other meeting I attended, with the Chief Magistrate, was in Melbourne and it dealt with court restructuring.
It is scandalous that the Opposition can put about these matters about our Government. I well realise that they will run the same campaign as they ran in Brisbane, on our travel costs. I can predict now that you will see that type of disinformation.
MR BERRY (8.50): The last round of speakers has demonstrated how sensitive the Government is about this, but not one of them has pointed to the issue of addressing the matters that were raised in the report which I referred to. That was a report to the Chief Minister's Department. The Chief Minister himself made no reference to what he was doing about the recommendations in that report which was, of course, sent to the Office of Public Sector Management in his department.
All that was required from the Government was an acknowledgment that the facilitation for junketing, which is provided for in the Bill, would be addressed in a way whereby the expenditure of public money is completely justified. The recommendations of this report make it clear that it needs to be addressed, but not one of the Ministers - nor Mr Stefaniak - has attempted to indicate in any way that the Government has any intention of looking at the problems.
Mr Collaery: It does not relate to ministerial travel. It is about public servants.
MR BERRY: Mr Collaery says that it does not relate to ministerial travel. I will read it to you again:
There are, for example, over 30 inter-governmental Ministerial Councils and well in excess of 200 inter-governmental agreements. Many of these are in the health and education area.
The scale of ACT participation in inter-governmental discussion and negotiation needs to be carefully weighed in terms of the costs and benefits.
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