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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (2 December) . . Page.. 4369 ..

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (9.48): Mr Speaker, for everybody's elucidation, proposed new clause 8B is the amendment that allows departments to trade over the end of the financial year by up to 3 per cent of their appropriation. That is eight working days, or about a week. The end of the financial year, 30 June, is an artificial point, but you have to come up with a day and that happens to be the day. In certain circumstances it may be more prudent to pay a particular person or a particular contractor on the 29th, rather than wait till the end of the financial year. That may be an appropriate way to go. This allows some flexibility in timing cash flows.

Mr Berry: This cannot be for that purpose. It is silly.

MRS CARNELL: This is how everybody works, Mr Speaker.

Mr Berry: Nowhere else in Australia. Businesses do, but not governments.

MRS CARNELL: You would think from what Mr Berry was saying that this was a huge amount of dollars. What we are talking about is one week, or eight days' worth of appropriation over the end of a financial year, one way or another. Surely this just allows for some sensible management. This all has to be transparent. It all has to be on the table. It cannot be hidden anywhere. There is just no reason why you would oppose this, except to oppose it for the sake of opposing. It is transparent. It is a small amount of money. It allows for prudent financial management. I would have thought that everybody in this place would want our managers to do the best that they can via the timing of their cash flows across the end of a financial year. It happens over the end of every other month, between the 30th of one month and the 1st of the next month. It just happens that this is an artificial timeframe.

MR SPEAKER: Order! There is far too much audible conversation. You did not understand it last time. The least you can do is listen to it now.

MR WHITECROSS (9.51): Mr Speaker, we did understand it last time. We voted against it. This is one of a series of amendments which have to be viewed as a whole. This is the way the crossbenchers should be viewing them as well. There is a series of amendments, all of which say, "What does it matter if we take a little bit of money from here and move it over to here? We know that the parliament appropriated it for purpose A, but what does it matter if we move a little bit of it over to purpose B? What does it matter if we move a bit from the next financial year back to this financial year? What does it matter if we move a bit from capital to operating expenses? What does it matter if we move a bit of it from expenses on behalf of the Territory to departmental expenses? What does it matter if we do all these things?". What matters is that all the way through the Government's proposals there are a series of amendments, all of which are designed to give them just a little bit more here and a little bit more there, cribbing as they go, and all of which add up to allowing them to move very substantial amounts of money from one appropriation - an appropriation agreed to by this parliament - to another appropriation.

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