Page 6241 - Week 19 - Tuesday, 17 December 1991
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AUDIT (AMENDMENT) BILL (NO. 2) 1991
Debate resumed from 5 December 1991, on motion by Ms Follett:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (5.46): Again, I have been through this Bill in fine detail and I have to say that, unfortunately, this time I do find a difficulty with it. I have circulated an amendment - and, if you have not seen it, you will - which I would seek to make. The Bill does three things, in effect, and I take exception to only one of them. I must admit that, when I read the proposed section 33F, I felt like giving the Chief Minister a little quiz at question time. I thought of asking whether she could explain in detail an interest rate cap, an interest rate floor and perhaps a swap option, but I did not do that. I thought I would save it up for another time.
The matter with which I do have some difficulty and in connection with which I will move an amendment is the proposed new section 49, subsection (1A), paragraph (b), where it is proposed that an appropriated amount may, with the Minister's approval, be moved around between divisions and between subdivisions as long as it does not exceed 5 per cent of the originally appropriated amount. I did some sums on that and I was a little concerned about accountability to the Assembly.
For example, if you take this year's health budget, the amount appropriated is, in round figures, $220m; and 5 per cent of that is $11m. So, by an administrative act, a Minister could simply move around $11m in his budget, not only within a division but from one division to another. I was a bit concerned by that.
Let us look at education. I acknowledge that there are four programs in the education budget, but adding them together they come to, in round figures, $280m, and 5 per cent of that is, in round figures, $14m. So, if we allow this to go through, we give a Minister approval to move an appropriated amount of up to $14m not only within a division but between divisions.
That seems to me to be no control at all, because the only thing that is required in accordance with this proposed provision is that within six sitting days the Government simply inform the Assembly that this has been done. It does not say that the Assembly can do anything about it once we have been informed.
So, I was a bit concerned about that, but I am mindful of the fact that flexibility had already been granted to managers and to Ministers to carry from one year to another 3 per cent of the amount appropriated in the current budget. So, I figured that, since that latitude has already been given to the Executive, to Ministers, there
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