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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 10 Hansard (14 October) . . Page.. 3179 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

The committee will also benefit from consideration of the report of the Auditor-General on the performance audit of the redevelopment of Bruce Stadium and on the findings of the Select Committee on Government Contracting and Procurement Processes. The committee considers that it is inappropriate for it to conclude its review without examination of those findings and of the reports to be received.

MR QUINLAN (4.27): Mr Speaker, I move:

I do not think I need to speak to it, Mr Speaker, having already made the statement.

MR HUMPHRIES (Treasurer, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Community Safety) (4.28): Mr Speaker, maybe Mr Quinlan will regret having said that. I think that he does need to speak to it. He does need to explain what exactly he is doing with respect to this motion. The reference to the committee that Mr Quinlan chairs of a review of the operation of the Financial Management Act was, at the time that it was moved in this place, a matter of great importance to the Opposition. It was done, as I recall, in the heat of the debate about the Bruce Stadium and about problems that were to do supposedly with the shortcoming of this legislation. Mr Quinlan and Mr Stanhope were adamant that the shortcomings and inadequacies in the Financial Management Act needed to be redressed.

They referred in particular to problems to do with a lack of penalties. He recalls there was reference to a lack of penalties provided for in the legislation for breaches of requirements to do certain things in a procedural or legal nature within the legislation, and a general concern about a number of aspects of the legislation. The debate on 6 May preceded the debate on the motion of no-confidence in the Chief Minister. Nonetheless, it was in the context of the Bruce Stadium financing arrangements that this matter was originally referred to the standing committee.

Given the intonations of outrage and concern from Mr Stanhope and Mr Quinlan from the table back in May of this year about how desperately important it was to get this review of the Financial Management Act under way - and Mr Quinlan's brow is knitted with concern here, but you go back and see what you said; you were gravely concerned about what the Act was all about - it comes as some surprise and concern to me that after nearly six months there has been little or no work done by the standing committee into that matter at all. Mr Quinlan can correct me if I am wrong about that, but exactly

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