Page 2591 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 24 August 1994
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manage to bring a particular budget in on target or reduce the level of overspending in a particular budget. With great respect, the case has been made out for this legislation to be necessary. There is no existing legislation which says that you must pay an account within 30 days or pay some interest on that amount. I welcome the statement by the Chief Minister - - -
Mr Lamont: This is nonsense.
MR HUMPHRIES: It might be nonsense to you; but the fact is that there are people in this community who say, repeatedly, that they have an ongoing problem with the way in which the Government handles their accounts. Last September, when I talked about legislation being introduced, I received more than 20 phone calls from small Canberra businesses, all of whom were waiting, or had in the past waited, for outstanding payment of accounts by ACT government agencies and some of whom at that stage were still waiting more than 30 days for those accounts to be paid.
Since the legislation has been tabled, members will recall an issue which was reported in the local media concerning the payment of accounts by ACTEW to Canberra plumbers for work done on account. There was debate at the time about who was responsible for that account. I accept the ACTEW claim that, in some cases, they were not responsible for those accounts. But the fact of life is that the Master Plumbers Association of the ACT made it clear that some plumbers who were waiting for payment of accounts from government agencies were waiting between 60 and 90 days. With great respect, the problem is an ongoing one. You cannot say and have not said on the floor of this chamber that there are not still government agencies which breach this Treasury directive. They do do so. With great respect, the Treasury directive is a toothless tiger. It sets out a rule which it is open to agents of government to ignore or to put to one side when it is expedient to do so.
I welcome the Chief Minister's statement that the Government shares a concern about this problem. That is a positive sign. It is certainly an improvement on the assertion that it does not happen. But I do dispute that the Treasury directive provides a solution to the problem. It clearly does not. With great respect, when the legislation was first mooted, you alleged that there was not a problem when, in fact, there was. The Chief Minister has said that I have shown no deficiencies in the current legislation. As I point out, the deficiencies are that the legislation does not actually have any teeth. Mr Moore asserted that he believes that these problems of delay were invariably the result of a dispute. With great respect, that is not what the Estimates Committee found last year and it is certainly not an assertion which has been made and supported by anybody here today.
Mr Moore: How do you deal in your legislation with accounts that are under dispute? That is what I am asking.
MR HUMPHRIES: Under this legislation, if accounts are in dispute they are not caught by the legislation. That is perfectly clear here. It is perfectly clear that, if there is a dispute between the agency and the supplier of the services or the goods, it is not required that this be dealt with in this fashion.
Mr Lamont: But the plumbers issue would not be dealt with anyway, Gary.
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