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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (28 June) . . Page.. 2175 ..
MS TUCKER
(continuing):MR QUINLAN: Well, I share with Mr Osborne, when he concluded his dissertation yesterday, the sheer admiration of your capacity to speak on two sides of the question with equal conviction.
In relation to the Legislative Assembly Secretariat, the only comment I wish to make is on behalf of many of the members in this place who have been disgruntled by the information systems that we use. We trust that there are sufficient resources available in the first instance to remedy those problems, and possibly, in the longer term, to insulate the Assembly from problems that beset the administration as a whole. We might now, or in the future, bring whatever pressure to bear that we can to get ourselves on a separate stand-alone server with reasonable backup support in order that we do not have the breakdowns we have had. I contend that if that system had been down over the last couple of sitting days, or any sitting days, but particularly the last couple, with the amount of material that came through, particularly in relation to the GST, we would have been in total chaos. I think we should be moving towards insulating the Assembly against that genuine risk that we face.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Proposed expenditure-Part 2-Auditor-General, $909,000 (net cost of outputs).
MR BERRY
(4.55): I rise merely because of the issues which have confronted the Auditor-General this year. I just wish to make the point that it would appear to somebody on the outside, even perhaps to those who have some inside knowledge on the subject, that the Auditor-General has been almost totally distracted by the Bruce Stadium affair, or, I should say, the Bruce Stadium scandal. This scandal in the territory has ended up with the Auditor-General devoting huge amounts of his resources over many, many months. Could somebody remind me when it first went to the Auditor-General?Mr Quinlan
: I wasn't here then.Mr Stanhope
: Over 14 months ago.MR BERRY
: I am reminded that this matter went to the Auditor-General 14 months ago. Since then I suspect that a great deal of resource has been poured into poring over all of the documents, preparing reports, sending them out to people who might be affected by it, fighting off a barrage of lawyers' responses and working towards an end report which will come to this place at some time in the future. People sitting around this chamber will say, "So what? That's what auditors-general do. It is their job to do all these things and to pore over all of these documents."This was an extraordinary event, by any measure. The government illegally spent the taxpayers' money on a development which was aimed to bring plaudits for the government. It was an extraordinary event because the government then had to come back to this Assembly and seek a further appropriation to cover its illegal, unlawful, or whatever you like to call it, expenditure. This was a misappropriation of government funds. It was unlawful.
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