Page 2571 - Week 09 - Thursday, 8 August 1991
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communique issued on 30 July that one can agree with, but there are some bite-the-bullet issues coming up in November that our Government must be fully aware of - for example, the disability services agreement, the in-principle signing of which took place at the conference.
The real crunch for that issue, of course, is the financial division in November and the advice to the community as to what the accountability and enforcement procedures will be - I use the word "enforcement" in a non-police sense - in relation to Commonwealth supervision of the expenditure of funds by the States on welfare. One might have thought that 90-odd years into federation we would have some commonality of approach on welfare issues, but we are not going to go that way, we are going to try another experiment and there is going to be a divesting by the Commonwealth of its heavy involvement in welfare since the 1960s.
That came about around the time of the great referendum to give the indigenous population of Australia the vote, and to attend to our moral conscience in that area. The Commonwealth began to become far more involved in the welfare issues that struck every corner of our nation. What is happening now is that - as the Commonwealth Auditor-General reported in his report on the 1989-90 year - the Commonwealth Auditor-General was unable to find how more than $6 billion given by the Federal Government to the States and Territories was spent. There were no adequate certification processes and it was not clear how that was spent.
Let me give an example. Shortly after the Goss Government was elected I had a meeting with the Deputy Premier of Queensland, Tom Burns, and one of his first comments was that he could not find the public housing. He could not find where it had all gone under Joh Bjelke-Petersen. He was looking for it, and he did find some. There had been a model settlement built in Kingaroy, and other places.
There, starkly, is the sort of challenge facing us. We, as a community, want to deliver, at a community base, welfare, accessible housing and social justice, and yet we can have governments which act improperly, which divert those funds to other purposes. I remind members again that the Auditor-General, in his report for 1989-90, was unable to adequately account for $6 billion in so-called tied grants. So, I agree with Jack Waterford when he says that the accountability regime of the Commonwealth on tied grants has been pathetic. It has been, and we know it.
It has been pretty good in the ACT because we are close to the seat of government and are an informed, articulate, small, homogeneous population. You cannot get away with much in government. I think we even know that at our level. Therefore, with ACTCOSS and the community service agencies chasing us, we largely have given good stewardship. But in the backblocks of Queensland and in
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