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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (30 June) . . Page.. 1788 ..
MS CARNELL (continuing):
What happened in that case, Mr Speaker? The Government and the Assembly got on with the job of fixing the problem that had been identified. And we have done so here, Mr Speaker. Of course, that legislation to fix up the section 90 issue had to be done retrospectively, Mr Speaker; exactly what we have done.
More recently, the New South Wales Labor Government and its parliament were confronted with an issue very similar to the one that we are confronted with today. Previously, it had been a longstanding practice of the New South Wales Government to facilitate a number of transfers of funding after the end of the financial year and after the appropriations for the particular year had lapsed. Finally, after the Auditor-General had signalled his intention to qualify the State public accounts, a piece of legislation was introduced and passed which retrospectively validated the appropriations and the expenditures and therefore resolved the breaches involved. Mr Speaker, the retrospective legislation was not about $20m; it was about over $3 billion. By the way, that was done with the support of the parliament, understanding that sometimes these things happen and they have to be fixed. I think that that illustrates just how complex the issue of financial management is under financial legislation, not just in the ACT, but right round this country.
Mr Speaker, I think it is important to quote here some comments made by the New South Wales Labor Treasurer, Michael Egan, on these issues. I quote directly:
Advice from the Crown Solicitor has pointed to the problem of ambiguity in the provisions of the Public Finance and Audit Act and the inability of the Act to accommodate practical issues arising from new financial systems such as accrual accounting.
The way to deal with those problems is by legislating to fix the system, not by prosecuting people for doing their jobs in good faith in accordance with instructions.
If it took the Auditor-General so many years to decide that the established financial system involved breaches of the law, how can this Parliament expect public servants to be prosecuted if they have not reached the same conclusion?
He went on:
If there have been breaches of the Public Finance and Audit Act - and it should be noted that no court decision has so determined -
as there is not here -
any such breaches would be technical in nature. There is no question of fraud, deceit or the misuse of public funds involved.
Those are telling statements, Mr Speaker, by the New South Wales Labor Treasurer, Mr Egan, and I think that they have particular relevance to the ACT. In summary, there was an unintentional technical breach that was fixed by a retrospective legislative instrument, as had been accepted practice in the past. Mr Speaker, there was an
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