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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 5 Hansard (14 May) . . Page.. 1166 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

The first point is that more often than not there is a delay of at least six months before the transfer of funds by a government is even brought to public attention and to the attention of this Assembly. I submit that that in itself makes it inappropriate. This Assembly should know long before that if money is being used for purposes other than that for which the Assembly had appropriated the money in the first place. This year the Treasurer said, "I am prepared to submit myself to the detailed investigation and examination of an estimates committee before I change the allocation of the money. Indeed, I will seek the Assembly's approval to reallocate the money now. I will not tell them about it in six months' time; I will not leave it until September, October or November to be questioned on the appropriateness, the necessity or the lawfulness of my shifting money around. I will submit myself to that process now, in advance of doing it".

Having explained to the Assembly why, the Chief Minister and Treasurer says, "The Assembly can make a decision about whether they want me to rearrange the finances; whether they want me to make provision now for additional expenditure in the health budget; and whether they want me to take money from the capital works program, from the redundancy pool and from the Treasurer's Advance to cover this additional expenditure". To my mind, that is a far more open and accountable process than the old one which the Labor Party seems to be saying is more appropriate, more necessary, more lawful than the one that the Chief Minister and Treasurer has chosen to adopt. All I can say is that, if that is their logic, it is the strangest logic that I can conceive of. They are asserting that to put yourself on the griddle before the action is taken, to be answerable for it, to explain it, is far more inappropriate, less essential and perhaps unlawful - there is an insinuation that perhaps it is unlawful - than to leave it for six to eight months downstream and allow the examination to take place then.

By what process of logic can Ms McRae say that the old system, the one that has been commonly used, is better than this one? I do not see it. I believe that the Chief Minister has made herself far more accountable. Interestingly enough, of course, what the Chief Minister has done does not replace the old system; it is merely a supplement to it, because at the end of the fiscal year she is still going to have to table the statement required by the Audit Act, which previous Treasurers have done; she is still going to be subjected to further investigation, interrogation and debate in the Estimates Committee when it comes up in October, November, December, or whenever it comes up, to look at next year's budget and the performance on this year's one. She is not avoiding that in any way. The Audit Act statement is a statutory requirement; it has to be tabled. What she has done is really to subject herself to two different occasions on which the Assembly can question her on this matter - before the event and afterwards.

If Ms McRae is so dead set on the system that has been used in the past, she can still do just what she suggests ought to be done. She can subject the Chief Minister and Treasurer to the same questioning again, if she wants to, when the Audit Act statement is tabled as a matter of law, which will be in about July; and she can do it again when the Estimates Committee sits to consider the 1996-97 budget and to review the 1995-96 budget. What could be fairer than that? What could be more open than that? What could be more honest than that?

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