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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 14 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 4710 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

Mr Speaker, members may remember that the Assembly authorised the Planning and Environment Committee to examine the Auditor-General's report on this issue. Auditor-General's reports are normally referred to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. Indeed, we have just had a series of responses from the Government to reports of the Public Accounts Committee on Auditor-General's reports. But in the case of Auditor-General's Report No. 5, at the request of the Assembly, the Standing Committee on Planning and Environment took on the role, in a way, of the Public Accounts Committee. This action by the Assembly reflected the fact that the Planning and Environment Committee had already brought down a lengthy report on contaminated sites. Two of the members of the Planning and Environment Committee actually serve on the Public Accounts Committee, and Mr Wood made it very clear that he felt that it would be more appropriate for us to deal with it than for him to be involved, since he had been involved with the particular issue as a Minister.

Mr Speaker, the committee comments on the Auditor-General's report and makes a number of recommendations. I think the most important sense of the recommendations that comes through is that the Government deal with this issue as a matter of urgency. We recommended that the Government urgently finalise its remediation strategies for land affected by possible contamination by arsenic from former sheep dip sites; that the Government promptly publicise the strategies, especially to the residents of affected areas; and that the Government make arrangements for a public meeting in Watson in February 1997, at which it should outline the whole situation affecting possible contamination in that suburb.

Mr Speaker, the committee, in its original report, urged the Government to be quick in terms of such matters. We believe that it is an appropriate opportunity to continue to urge the Government in the same way. The committee recognised that both the former Government and the present Government had tried to manage extremely sensitive issues of possible contamination of residential properties and that, by and large, the officials are handling these issues in an improved manner.

Mr Speaker, we are also conscious of the Auditor-General's finding that a figure of around $400,000 was committed but was unnecessary. It seems to me, Mr Speaker - and I am now going beyond the recommendations of the committee - that there are more issues to consider than just the issue of the straight costs in a dry economic sense, which is the role of the Auditor-General, and that there are personal and other costs to take into consideration. As far as I am concerned, Mr Speaker, I approve of the extra spending, in the context of when it was done. I think the warning through the Auditor-General is: Let us check the context and make sure that in the future, in dealing with such issues as contamination and asbestos - which was the previous example - we have all of the relevant facts before us to make a more effective decision, so that there is not unnecessary expenditure incurred on behalf of the people of the ACT. I think that that is indeed an important finding.

Debate (on motion by Mr Humphries) adjourned.

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