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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 12 Hansard (12 November) . . Page.. 3467 ..

MS DUNDAS (continuing):

The bill says that the chief executive officer of a government agency must ensure that the agency complies with the act. My amendment asks that for each six-month period the chief executive officer certify in writing that compliance requirements have been met. How are we to know that there has been compliance unless the chief executive officer writes it down and lets us know? Without that, all we will have is a requirement that the CEO of a government agency "must ensure", which is similar to what we already have.

The idea of written certification that the act is being complied with is straight from recommendation 2 of report No 28 of the Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration in the Fourth Assembly. It was clear to that committee, chaired by the now Treasurer, Mr Quinlan, that any assurances that the act was being complied with should not rest with the Auditor but can and should reside with the chief executive officer of the government agency providing the information.

Our Treasurer, in opposition, was prepared to support the idea that responsibility rests with chief executive officers and that their responsibility was something they needed to certify. I hope that the Assembly now sees that we need to call on chief executive officers to certify that they know what is going on and that the act is being complied with, so we do not have a repeat of pretty words in legislation but still no accountability for compliance.

I ask the Assembly for their support for this amendment.

MR QUINLAN (Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development, Business and Tourism, Minister for Sport, Racing and Gaming and Minister for Police, Emergency Services and Corrections) (5.09): The government will not be supporting this amendment, not for compromise but for very practical reasons. If someone is to certify that the list is absolutely complete, the amount of work that they or someone they absolutely trust would need to do is horrendous and quite out of kilter with the process of being chief executive.

I started out with the view that Ms Dundas has espoused, "Chief executives had better certify this lot,"but during the process of consultation I came to realise that that is an impractical process. It is an impractical impost on chief executives to require them to have firm knowledge that this list is complete and unadulterated.

It would seem to me that we should frame the legislation in line with the role of the chief executive, which is to set directions and set the controls in place to make sure things run properly. They do not have to do everything themselves.

The amendment is impractical. We should focus on the terms of the bill before the house, which says that chief executives will be responsible for implementing the control processes to ensure this happens. If it does not happen, the chief executive will still be responsible, because it will have been a failure of the system, unless of course somebody down the line maliciously and deliberately leaves one out, in which case there is no way the chief executive could know. We do not hold the chief executive personally liable for many of the other mistakes that might be made in a department. We hold the chief executive liable for the overall operation of the department. If mistakes, errors or

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