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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 5 Hansard (11 May) . . Page.. 1520 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

those conclusions to be circulated to people directly involved, and all of a sudden was furnished with more information. There has been, apparently, some sort of cyclic or iterative process, as he teases out what happened within the process overall.

That process of teasing out overlaps into the process he has instituted to ensure that natural justice exists within the overall project, and certainly appears to exist. There will effectively be five rounds of audit report. He has produced what he calls outline draft reports. The next layer were draft reports, then there were revised draft reports, then there were proposed reports. Each time the report is being refined and apparently, within each layer at least, clarification of some matters has occurred or more information has emerged.

The committee acknowledges that the Auditor-General, particularly in an audit like this, must observe due process in affording people who may be affected with the ability to comment on his findings before they are promulgated on a wider basis. Certainly the committee does not wish to interfere with the rights of individuals, and the protection of them from any ill-founded or unsoundly based comments. However, the committee's view is that the statutory requirements to afford natural justice have been more than amply fulfilled, and that the number of rounds that we have seen certainly seems to be unusual.

I have to say that, to his eternal credit, the Auditor-General was very circumspect and very deliberate in the information he provided to the committee and the comments that he made, and more particularly in the comments that he did not make, or could not be drawn to make.

We wish him well in completing this particular project. I have on my desk consideration of actions that I might be able to take, or at least initiate, to allow this report to come forward as early as possible, even from now, such as legislation that would allow it to be tabled and promulgated with privilege through the Speaker, without the Assembly sitting. However, I need to take further advice on that particular legislation, or alternatives in relation to some form of resolution that might go through this house. That last bit is a personal statement. I commend the report to the house.

Mr Humphries: Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I have perused the Assembly Hansard of Tuesday of this week, and I have observed that Mr Berry has quoted sections of the dissenting report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety on the draft budget. Members will recall that this was subject to some preliminary debate before it was adjourned. Offending sections from the draft report, those parts of the dissenting report that were criticised in the Assembly-I think you ruled, Mr Speaker, that they were potentially defamatory-were in fact read into the Hansard. When Mr Hargreaves originally paraphrased or repeated the comments he made in his dissenting report he was required to withdraw them on the basis that they offended against standing order 54 or 55.

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