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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (30 June) . . Page.. 1834 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Management Act. They both concur that the intention of the Act was that the guidelines must be in place beforehand so that the Treasurer could know whether an investment was prescribed or not before investing the money.

Even the Government's own legal advice is not clear cut on this matter. Mr Tracey, QC, says that he was not asked to advise separately on whether the financial guidelines could be made retrospectively. He only said that if such guidelines did exist then the previous misappropriation would be legal. The advice about retrospectivity came from the Parliamentary Counsel, and even this advice is contradictory. Mr Leahy admits that it would not be possible to make guidelines expressly validating investments already made. However, he then says that it may be possible to make the guidelines take effect from a date before the unauthorised investments were made. The approach he then suggests gives the impression that he was asked to find loopholes in the Financial Management Act and Subordinate Laws Act to achieve an objective that was never intended.

The Government then abandoned this approach and sought to amend the Financial Management Act via the Appropriation Bill to validate its retrospective guidelines. But even this approach was questioned by the Clerk as to its relevance to the Appropriation Bill. The Government is now introducing new separate Bills to make the misappropriation legal.

The Government's efforts to dig itself out of the hole it has created with the Bruce scandal just seem to be creating an even bigger hole. Mrs Carnell is asking the Assembly to accept her apologies. She has admitted that mistakes were made and said that the Government has moved as quickly as possible to resolve any outstanding issues. But really I have to ask: Is this enough? Can the Assembly and the community trust this Government to act responsibly in the future? I believe the answer is no.

The Bruce Stadium affair is just the most blatant example of this Government's willingness to bend the rules to achieve its objectives, its can-do approach. It is quite clear in this case, however, that the law was broken. It has been commented that the Financial Management Act does not contain any penalties for non-compliance with the law. On the other hand, the Financial Management Act is not like other laws, because it goes to the heart of the operations of governments in managing taxpayers' money. The community's confidence in this Government's ability to manage the Territory's finances has been seriously shaken.

There is really only one ultimate penalty for non-compliance with the Financial Management Act and that must be that the responsible Minister be removed from that position. I believe this also must translate into a lack of confidence in the whole Government. I am not of the view that this is just about the Chief Minister. It is about this Government. The Chief Minister and I agree on that much, maybe for different reasons. A can-do approach is good up to a point but after that it becomes dangerous. No wonder the community is cynical about politicians.

Who else in the community can retrospectively change an offence which they have committed to be not an offence? Where is the integrity in such an action? If the Chief Minister and her Government had decided just to admit the mistake once it was realised instead of progressing into damage control measures which have reached the

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