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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 10 Hansard (13 October) . . Page.. 3044 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

Mr Smyth talks about the information being provided in the quarterly reports. Some of the information is provided in the quarterly reports, but it does not necessarily line up because, as you know, Mr Speaker, the only consistent thing about our financial management systems and reporting has been the rate of change they have experienced over the years. Mr Quinlan is trying to get a very clear picture for anybody to see and compare performance. It is not too big an ask. In fact, if this clever Government were to think seriously about it, perhaps it could get rid of a whole stack of reports that people cannot read through because of the provision of this information. That would not be a problem, I would have thought.

There has been talk that it is going to cost $100,000 to provide this information. I am afraid that I do not accept that argument at all. I think that it is a spurious argument. We have acres of economic modellers within what I presume is now called the Treasury. That is its name this week, Mr Speaker; God knows what it is going to be next week. We have acres of them, but they cannot do any sort of economic modelling, it would appear, because we have asked for this sort of information before and the Government just cannot provide it. I know a couple of them, actually, and they are quite capable of doing it as part of their normal job. If they are not doing it as part of their normal job, this Government is particularly poorly advised.

I have to tell you, Mr Speaker, that if I were the Minister for Urban Services or police and emergency services, I would be expecting that information to be provided to me, because I could not manage the portfolio without it. If it is available to the Minister to manage the portfolio properly, it would be a small quantum leap to whack it in the budget papers.

There is another thing to consider, Mr Speaker: Members of this Assembly, by and large, are not endowed with accounting qualifications. Only a couple have them.

Mr Berry: We have personalities instead.

MR HARGREAVES: Thank you very much , Mr Berry; the point is taken. Those who come from that sort of background know how to wade their way through some of these things, but it is still an arduous task. But spare a thought for those members of this chamber who are not trained in accounting and who do not have the public sector skills of report analysis. They need to be provided with the information in such a form that it is easy to read, easy to comprehend and easy to equate with what they expect government to do and to have done.

I think it is only reasonable that we assist those members and, I might add, their staff, because members rely on their staff. I do not know how many members of the crossbench and my own party have staff who have accounting qualifications or particularly strong skills in this area. I know that there are some, but I would suggest that not all of them would.

It would be helpful to this Assembly and probably it would be less inflammatory and we would have fewer blues in this chamber if the information was that transparent. Having comparative information in a report as significant as the budget paper should be a prerequisite, it should be automatic, unless we have something to hide. I do not think

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