Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .
Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (30 June) . . Page.. 1818 ..
MR HARGREAVES (continuing):
As section 6 of the Financial Management Act, 1996 states. No payment of money shall be made otherwise than in accordance with an appropriation.
He said:
It is paramount that the source of any expenditure of public money by the Executive has to be found in an Assembly enactment. Otherwise, such expenditure is illegal.
He questioned the definition of investment when he said:
It is beyond question that "investment" is the spending of money or use of capital in order to secure profitable returns, especially interest or income.
Later, applying this to the loan, he said:
At the time the facility -
that is, the loan -
was provided there was no real prospect that the unit would pay interest and the loan was not, in our opinion, a genuine exercise of power vested in the Treasurer under section 38(1)(e).
In other words, the loan was shonky. He went on to say, in terms of the legality of the guidelines, that "the issue of financial management guidelines retrospectively cannot rectify the situation", and "no financial management guidelines were in place when the facility was provided and hence ... the loan was not in accordance with that section". He further said:
A decision made without reference to the guidelines cannot be converted into a decision made in accordance with guidelines operating retrospectively because -
this is an important point that he made -
this would impute to the Treasurer a state of mind which he or she did not have at the time of making the decision.
Adding to this he said:
A Court ... in the light of the Auckland Harbour Board case, would decline to uphold an action of the Executive seeking to validate the use of public funds which at the time it had no right to use.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .