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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (30 June) . . Page.. 1776 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

Mr Sackar was also of the view that the subsequent unappropriated and unauthorised repayment of the loan was unlawful, a view shared by his colleagues Mr Richard Tracey, who was briefed by the Government, and Professor Jack Richardson, SC, who was briefed by Mr Osborne. The device worked in that it covered the appearance of the books for the auditor. But it also excited the Auditor-General's interest. While he signed off on the books, he sought a legal opinion on what Mr Sackar called extremely curious circumstances - the overnight loan.

That legal opinion, which the Government eventually sought from Mr Tracey, led to two more extraordinary actions by an increasingly desperate Chief Minister. First, she concocted another device, this time to validate the actions which Mr Tracey found were taken in contravention of the Financial Management Act and the ACT Self-Government Act. She created financial management guidelines and backdated them, and the guidelines defined an "investment" that would seemingly allow expenditure on property such as Bruce Stadium. Secondly, she revealed the extraordinary, complex corporate structure designed to entice the Commonwealth Bank to join the project as a private sector financier. It was a structure that looked like an outdated atlas of the 1980s corporate world, rather than a plan to fund the redevelopment of a football stadium.

Within a fortnight the guidelines had to be rewritten as the Government staggered from bomb crater to bomb crater. Now, this third attempt to secure the long-awaited private sector finance has collapsed and the Chief Minister proposes to appropriate the entire cost of the redevelopment. This is an admission by the Chief Minister that until now she has regarded the Assembly as an irrelevant stumbling block to the achievement of her personal goals. She would not be facing this motion today if she had taken the Assembly into her confidence two years ago and come back and asked for the moneys to be appropriated.

Mr Speaker, this is a government waiting for Godot. In the meantime, as is its wont, it has scrambled for justifications and explanations of its behaviour. On 24 April, the Canberra Times reported a government spokesman as saying:

On 29 April, the Chief Minister told ABC radio that the unappropriated expenditure was being "cash-managed across the government". It was like spending money to treat hospital patients from New South Wales, in the sure knowledge that the New South Wales Government would eventually cough up. It was a question of net appropriations; spending the money, but making sure that at the end of the financial year the books balanced. The Auditor-General, in evidence to the Estimates Committee on 4 June this year, said that he was not aware of what the term "cash managed" meant, or if it had a meaning at all.

The Financial Management Act provides for three classes of appropriations - outputs, capital injections and payments by departments on behalf of the Territory. Section 9 of the Act provides for a net appropriation of outputs. Clearly, Bruce Stadium is bricks and mortar. Clearly, the Bruce Stadium redevelopment is a capital project and an output. Clearly, this defence of the Chief Minister does not stand.

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