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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 6 Hansard (18 June) . . Page.. 1711 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

Since that time, the policy of releasing monthly financial statements has followed a similar lacklustre pattern. One illustration of this is the January financial statement, which was actually released on 28 March, two months after the end of the reporting month. It was released on the Thursday before Good Friday. That was clearly designed to avoid public scrutiny of her financial statement. The March statement then arrived in May, so that it could get lost in the budget coverage. Mr Speaker, we are meant to be debating in this sitting period the Government's budget. But we still do not have any financial statements since the March financial statement. Scrutiny of the Government's performance on financial management is not high on the Government's agenda. The Government's approach has ensured that the Assembly has had the least possible number of opportunities to scrutinise the Government's performance.

As chair of the Public Accounts Committee, I have written to the Chief Minister and Treasurer about the quality of monthly financial statements and the use of phased budgeting. The PAC and I were concerned about the fluctuations in the operating result from month to month and requested an explanation and the monthly targets, to compare whether or not there were really improvements. In November, the monthly statements revealed that we were doing $4m better than the so-called phased budget; in December, we were doing $70m better; in January, we were doing $54m better; in February, we were doing $62m better; and, in March, we were doing only $38m better. Such dramatic fluctuations deserve explanation; they deserve a proper justification. Yet Mrs Carnell, the Treasurer, has refused the PAC's request for information about how these phased budget figures were allocated; she has refused to provide them in advance of the end of the month. Effectively, Mrs Carnell announces the target only after the arrow has been fired and has hit; then she paints the target on. Mr Speaker, that is the approach that Mrs Carnell has taken to financial reporting, and we believe it is absolutely essential that we have an objective basis for assessing her month-by-month reporting of finances. It is all very well to talk about improvements in financial reporting, but the improvements have to be real.

The passing of the Financial Management Bill also brought with it outputs-based budgeting, accrual accounting and purchaser-provider models for relationships between Ministers and departments. Such new financial arrangements mean increased knowledge about the true costs of providing services or producing outputs and the performance of departments and their agencies in meeting these costs. Performance measures and the price paid by the Government for outputs are essential tools in managing the Territory's finances. Yet, Mr Speaker, all the monthly reporting, all the reporting that is provided for under the Financial Management Act, relates to inputs, not to outputs. Even though an integral ingredient in the whole approach of the Financial Management Act is a move to output-based budgeting, all of the reporting is of inputs. Purchase agreements were created by the Government as a means of monitoring the performance of agencies, and part of the agreements is the requirement for chief executives to provide quarterly departmental performance reports. I have asked the Chief Minister for these reports in the past. I got a copy of one report, for the Chief Minister's Department only. That report, I thought, was informative and useful; but the Chief Minister has refused to provide any further reports and has refused to provide reports on any other agencies. She has explicitly refused to do so.

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