Page 4674 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 7 December 1994
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addressed as well. Madam Speaker, I think that exhibits a desire to knock off this troublesome concept of having to pay your debts on time and to pay interest if you do not, and instead to leave it to the so-called Treasury directions, which apparently deal comprehensively, she claims, with that problem.
I will make a further point about the drafting of this document. It may surprise the Chief Minister - it may not - to know that I did not draft this Bill. I gave instructions for what I wanted, and a very experienced and competent draftsperson from the Office of Parliamentary Counsel drafted it. I think it is a little unfair to impute your problems with the Bill to the work of the draftsperson. I think that this Bill has been carefully prepared. It was a complex matter to begin with. I do not accept any of the criticisms levelled at these particular definitions or the terms of the Bill, because I have discussed them extensively and I believe that they are sound and are workable. I think it is unfair for her to attack the public servants who were responsible for the drafting of this legislation.
Madam Speaker, I will come back to some of the specific clauses in a moment. The Chief Minister has made the point that the Government shares the concerns of the Opposition about the late payment of accounts and considers that only a tiny handful of cases have been demonstrated to warrant the legislation. Point 1: Surely that is a very good reason to pass it. It does not occasion a great impositional burden on the public service, because they are meeting these obligations, for the most part. Therefore, the number of occasions on which it would impose some time burden on a public servant to calculate interest or to comply with the terms of the legislation would be very small. Point 2: When this Bill was first mooted, the Attorney-General said, "There are no cases of late payment. We have eliminated late payment. You prove that there are any cases of late payment". Well, we did. We indicated that, in fact, there were at least half-a-dozen cases in the Department of Health alone in the course of last year that would breach the terms of this kind of legislation. So, with respect, the ground has shifted. First of all, you said, "Prove that there are any cases". Now you are saying, "Well, there are not very many, and we have fixed up the problem. It will not happen again".
With great respect, I think that you place too much emphasis on Treasury directions. What is the consequence of a public servant failing to comply with a Treasury direction? Do they face dismissal? I think not. Do they have to pay interest or do they have to arrange for the payment of interest to the person who has suffered from the failure to comply with a Treasury direction? The answer is clearly no. There is no provision at all in those Treasury directions for payment of interest. So, how do we come to the point where those directions can cover the point of this legislation? They clearly do not.
Let me come back to a number of other matters that the Chief Minister raised. As to matters subject to dispute, it is true that there is no mechanism here, in regard to matters that are subject to dispute, for the interest component arrangement to be put on hold while the dispute is being sorted out. But, of course, the point is that it is not possible to have a mechanism to do that. While the parties are in dispute, there has to be an incentive for them to resolve the matter quickly. You must bear in mind that the
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