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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (20 November) . . Page.. 3903 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

We have already demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to accountability to the community, one that no other State or Territory has matched, with the introduction of accrual accounting which records the cost of every activity undertaken by the Government according to output.

This new trial grants process will maintain and even expand that accountability. The community has an assurance of the tightest scrutiny of grants, independently reported against and accounted for in public documents. The fact that the whole Cabinet, rather than a single Minister, Mr Speaker, considers those grants is again a measure of public accountability. It seems strange that these people opposite have sometimes argued for more accountability, but now seem to argue for less. It is very hard to understand. This process, I should emphasise, Mr Speaker, will in no way affect peer assessment processes.

Mr Wood quite mischievously suggested that the Cultural Council's role in some way was being detracted from, downgraded, derogated from or compromised. None of those things is true. It is quite false and quite wrong to suggest that any of those things are likely to occur. In fact, the Cultural Council's role in this whole process is completely unchanged and they are not likely to notice any difference in approach. For that matter, the position of individual arts practitioners or applicants for funds is also substantially unchanged. I doubt that any member of the arts community will notice any difference in their application processes. What they will notice a difference in, I suspect, is the process of reporting on grants which have been made. Rather than dealing with one area, they will be dealing with a different area of government in terms of accounting for and collecting the money that they have been voted. So, Mr Speaker, I think it is very unfortunate that people are drawing the conclusion that this results in some corruption of the system or some downgrading of the system of accountability. Quite the contrary. It is precisely the reverse.

I would be very interested to hear what Ms Tucker thinks are the criticisms of this process, but I would urge her not to fall into the trap of thinking that extra scrutiny within the Government of this process is necessarily a bad thing. It may be true that having a matter go to Cabinet, rather than before a Minister, could take slightly longer in itself.

Mr Wood: Would you call it streamlining?

MR HUMPHRIES: A Cabinet submission takes a bit longer to prepare than a submission to a Minister; but, because we are streamlining the process of management of the entire grants round - advertising of grants will be conducted through this centralised process, and the management of information going out to people about potential grant applications will be managed by the centralised process - cost savings and time savings in that process may well cancel out and overcompensate for the extra time that it takes. I again urge members not to jump to conclusions about this process.

We have had a process of community consultation going on in the past week. I know that Ms Tucker has said that this sounded more like a process of being told what was happening than a process of consultation; but I assure her and other members that the Government is interested in the outcome of that process, which the Community Information and Referral Service is conducting at our behest, and that my failure to attend

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