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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 173 ..

MR BERRY: Mr Humphries, if you want to speak again, go for your life.

Mr Humphries: I have an amendment. You can speak to Mr Moore's amendment, but do not close the debate.

MR BERRY: I will speak to the amendment. I agree with Mr Moore's amendment. It is just a matter of finding a common date at which the information is provided at the same time regularly and is given to members rather than held over until the sitting periods. The amendment makes a bit of sense to me. I feel the same. As far as Mr Humphries's proposed amendment is concerned, it seeks to strike - - -

MR SPEAKER: It has not been moved yet.

MR BERRY: Okay.

Amendment agreed to.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General) (6.33): Mr Speaker, I seek leave to move the amendment which has been circulated in my name.

Leave granted.

MR HUMPHRIES: I thank members. I move:

Omit all words from and including "Assembly Members, by the close of business" to and including "editions of these reports", substitute "to each Member of the Assembly these Information Bulletins each month".

What this amendment does is basically remove the reference to the tabling of certain reports today. Some of those reports were tabled yesterday and some will be tabled tomorrow. It simply is not possible to table all of those reports today. I would say to members that it is foolish to require the Minister for Health to do what she simply cannot do. The Minister has undertaken to provide that missing information tomorrow. The information which is not provided, though, or is not proposed to be provided is the information about quarterly activity reports.

Let me make something fairly clear, Mr Speaker. Mr Berry's whole motion is clearly centred on a misunderstanding of the new financial accounting system, even though, in fact, he and all members of his party voted for the Financial Management Bill. There is a difference between what was provided in the old quarterly reports and what is provided in the new monthly reports. We would maintain it is going to be the monthly reports that are far superior, because they give you a month-by-month picture of what is going on, rather than a quarterly picture where averaging goes on and all sorts of distortions can be hidden. But that is another argument. We say that the monthly reports are better and that the information we are now providing in the monthly reports is the information being collected by the department pursuant to the Financial Management Act and the financial reforms the Government has already extensively briefed members of the Assembly about.

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