Page 2588 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 24 August 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
In many instances, the Territory deals with business through a normal contractual arrangement. These contracts specify the due date and, in many cases, provide for penalty interest for late payment. The Territory is bound by the conditions of any contract that we enter into. So, again, there is an enforceable arrangement that is already in place.
Moreover, the principles underlying Mr Humphries's Bill do not appear to be terribly well thought out. A number of clauses - in particular, those which deal with due date - are extremely convoluted. In fact, they may provide a disadvantage where the due date is specified in the contract. Clause 7 is very convoluted. I understand the purpose of it; but it may mean that, where there are existing penalty clauses in a contract, the Territory will have to pay interest twice. I know that your intention in the clause is to avoid that; but, because of the drafting, that may not be the case.
Furthermore, clause 8, while attempting to attribute interest costs to the program area, may have the side effect - I presume, unintended; but certainly unfortunate - of excluding the Trust Fund, through which many of the Territory's commercial transactions are actually made, and possibly also some statutory authorities, as sources from which interest payments can be made. I think that would make the effective operation of this Bill extremely difficult, if not impossible.
So, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I can assure Mr Humphries that I share his concern about late payments; but I do not believe that the Territory should have two pieces of legislation addressing the same issue, particularly when one of those pieces of legislation - namely, Mr Humphries's Bill - is less than clear and very convoluted and may have some unfortunate side effects. In fact, Mr Humphries has not shown any deficiencies in the current legislation. I do not think that there is sound reason to believe that small business would be better off under Mr Humphries's Bill. For all of those reasons, the Government will not be supporting the Bill.
MR MOORE (12.07): When questions have been asked at various estimates committees about this issue of late payments by the Government, invariably the answer has come back to us that part of the problem is that the matter has been in dispute. I think that one of the difficulties with this Bill is that it does not deal with that issue of matters being in dispute. When a matter is in dispute between the Government and somebody to whom they owe money, clearly, the question of interest is a difficult question. That is not addressed by this Bill, and I feel that that is one of the inadequacies here.
Ms Follett raised the issue that there is a Treasury direction, which she refers to as legislation, on this matter already. I must say that, to be persuaded to support this Bill, I would need Mr Humphries to deal with these two issues in particular: Why we would need to have a second piece of legislation and what you are trying to achieve by that, and how you would deal with disputation. As it is for Ms Follett, this is a concern for all members. I know that Mr Stevenson has asked a number of questions during question time - maybe it was in the previous Assembly - on late payment of bills by government and government authorities. The number of times that this has occurred in the last six or eight months, or the last year, must have reduced somewhat. The number of complaints that I was getting previously was probably similar to the number that other members were
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .