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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (3 December) . . Page.. 4487 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

As indicated, the Auditor-General appeared before the Estimates Committee on 14 October 1997 and responded to committee questions based upon the annual report and other questions germane to the accounts of the ACT. The Public Accounts Committee notes that the Estimates Committee, in its report presented to the Assembly on 2 December 1997, commented upon the findings of Auditor-General's Report No. 10 of 1997 - Public Interest Disclosures - Lease Variation Charges, and recommended that the Public Accounts Committee, pursuant to its statutory responsibilities in relation to the development of the annual budget for the Auditor-General, consider what provisions should be made in the budget to enable the Auditor-General to undertake audits in the area of lease administration. The Public Accounts Committee supports this recommendation.

The year 1996-97 was the first full year in which the committee exercised its statutory function in relation to the Auditor-General's budget and, in carrying out that function, the committee had the opportunity to discuss with the Auditor-General the agency performance audit program for the forthcoming year. The committee was satisfied with the indicative Auditor-General's audit program, which is outlined in the Auditor-General's annual report and which was developed through this consultative process. I commend the report to the Assembly.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Debate resumed.

MR MOORE (5.54): I rise to support this legislation. In doing so, I must say that there are a number of issues that I would like to take up with Mr Kaine. It was very interesting that Mr Kaine, in his arguments against proceeding with this legislation before a trial takes place or is completed, suggested that there is not enough evidence. He said, "After all, 60 per cent of all crashes are on arterial roads". That begs the question: What happened in the other 40 per cent of crashes? We could infer from that that 40 per cent of all crashes were on suburban roads. Maybe there would be a 3 or 4 per cent factor in there for country roads, minor roads or something to that effect; but he was talking about crashes in the city.

It seems to me, given the figure that Mr Kaine gave of $140m annually, that the $1.5m that he has nominated for implementation is very cheap. If there were to be a reduction of 10 per cent in that 40 per cent for suburban road trauma, if we were to have a 10 per cent reduction in the figure of $140m annually, we would be looking at the sum of $14m - almost 10 times the figure he is talking about. It seems to me that the figures he gave are, at the very best, figures that encourage us to proceed with this legislation.

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