Page 5398 - Week 17 - Tuesday, 3 December 1991
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the decision that you have made and not supply the monthly updates, because that is easier, given the budget problems we can see coming down the track. It is easier to do that than to take the step of agreeing to this motion or of accepting the motion's intent". Mr Speaker, I think that attitude on the part of the Minister is contemptible and should be rejected by the Assembly.
Mr Speaker, I will not comment in detail on the letter provided by the chairman of the board, but I believe that that issue has to be taken with some of the comments that he makes. He says that he believes that the board will not operate properly if it has to release financial statements on a monthly basis to members of the Assembly and hence to members of the public. That, it seems to me, is a view which we should not encourage in officers who administer or preside over statutory authorities in the ACT. Accountability to the Assembly is a fundamentally important part of the Westminster system and should not be lightly discarded by this or any other government. He says:
Continuous diversion of its staff -
that is, the staff of the board -
from their vital management tasks will simply lead to a recurrence of the difficulties of the past, which arose before the Board was created.
I want to make it quite clear, Mr Speaker - perhaps Mr Service misunderstands - that the Assembly, in its motion of last week, or 20 November, was not asking for any greater level of work or accountability on the part of the board than it currently already delivers to the Minister for Health.
We were not asking for extra work. We were not asking for extra paperwork to be produced, extra figures to be made available, extra information to be supplied. None of that was being sought by the Assembly. We were simply asking, in fact, that the Minister hand on to the Assembly the information he receives from the board. That cannot entail, surely, Mr Speaker, a single iota of additional work on the part of the board or its staff. It surely cannot entail any extra work in doing that. If that is the case, it seems to me that it would be extremely easy for the Minister to make those figures available without compromising the role of the board.
Mr Speaker, I made it quite clear that I consider that this motion of Mr Berry's exhibits contempt for the Assembly. I believe that it is appropriate for us to reject Mr Berry's motion because I believe that this area, of all areas of the Government, must be subject to very close scrutiny by this Assembly. I am not out to damage or harm the way in which the board administers the health budget in the ACT, but I believe that we have the same right to ask the same questions that Mr Berry asked when he was in opposition.
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