Page 3908 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 15 December 1992
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MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (8.40): I would like to reinforce the concerns Mr Cornwell has expressed about this Bill, and they have to do with financial accountability. As Mr Cornwell has pointed out, the first of those matters is the proposed increase in powers for the commissioner to enter into contracts. It is proposed that that limit be increased from the present $500,000 to $1.5m without ministerial approval. Given that the housing budget is only, on my recollection, something of the order of $45m a year, the $1.5m to be entered into by the commissioner without the prior approval of the Minister is a very significant amount of money. The commissioner would not have to enter into too many such contracts before he used up the entire budget.
I think it is a matter of relativities, and I am sure that the Minister has a good reason for putting this to us in the form of a Bill. However, he has not really explained it to my satisfaction, nor has he explained how that $1.5m commitment that the Housing Commissioner can make compares to the kind of contract that other senior officers of the ACT Government Service of similar status can enter into. I do not know whether, for example, the Secretary to the Department of Urban Services can enter into a contract for $1.5m without the Minister's approval; I very much doubt it. Yet here we are saying that the Housing Commissioner will be able to do that under this Bill, once it is passed. So, it is a question of accountability and what the factors are which make it necessary or desirable that the commissioner should have this flexibility and freedom of action when other senior officers of the ACT Government Service do not.
The second point Mr Cornwell referred to is the question of off-budget funding and borrowing. It appears to us that clause 7 of the Bill permits the Housing Trust to receive borrowed money without limit. It does not say that the Minister can set a limit on how much money the Housing Trust can borrow. I would like to see some limitation placed on this. The State of Victoria recently got itself into deep financial trouble. It borrowed some billions of dollars more than it was authorised to by the Loan Council, and that appears to be the same kind of arrangement that is now being proposed for our Housing Trust. A lot of that money was borrowed by Victorian statutory authorities, who were able to borrow without the Minister formally approving it.
I would like the Minister to amplify the proposal here, to see whether that is intended, whether the Housing Commissioner has unlimited powers to borrow for this purpose, and whether that borrowing is off-budget and beyond the scrutiny, for all practical purposes, of this Assembly. If that is the intention, then I have to say that I cannot agree with it, for the same reason that the situation needed to be changed in Victoria to get control over it. I think we would be moving in the wrong direction, in the light of that experience, in allowing the Housing Commissioner or any other statutory body in the ACT unlimited borrowing authority without the Minister setting some limits to it.
I would like the Minister to give us some assurance on both of those points - what the justification is for the proposals that appear in the Bill and whether our reading of those matters is wrong or unreasonable. If he can demonstrate to me that we are off the track, we would be prepared to accept his Bill; but unless he can do so I agree with Mr Cornwell that we would seek to amend those two clauses.
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