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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 14 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 4258 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

Foreseeability at the time of the appropriation bills is another element that may come into the argument. The absence of anything like adequate fire safety in public housing could not have been foreseen until a Labor government came to government and had time to receive and assess relevant information. We did bring down two appropriation bills. I think one was brought into this place in December and passed in February. One was brought in in February/March and passed in April.

Mr Humphries: The first one was passed in December, at the same time as it was introduced.

MR QUINLAN: Two days later, yes. That was a bit early in the piece. I agree with you, Mr Humphries. Thank you for that support. And there was one early in this calendar year.

Clearly there was an urgent requirement for the action to be taken. There was a need and there was unexpended funding. I would like to put this issue into context. In so doing, I would like to refer to Auditor-General's Report No 11 of 2001. Under "Significant findings"it says:

Non-compliance with the [Financial Management Act] probably occurred in relation to the use of Treasurer's advances.

... a number of payments from the Treasurer's Advance were made around the times of passing Appropriation Act (No. 2) and Appropriation Act (No. 3).

These are selected quotes, by the way. The report also says:

It is therefore probable that Treasury officials, if they had considered the issue, would have reasonably foreseen the need for some of the payments to be made at the time the Appropriation Acts were passed.

I assume the Treasurer of the time, as I am doing, took responsibility for that. The issue addressed in this statement is therefore not a new one. I have no doubt that in future times there will be debate at the margin of the use of the Treasurer's Advance, no matter where that margin is set.

As for changes for the future, we have certainly taken on board the comments of the Auditor-General and his recommendations for review and probable amendment of the Financial Management Act to make it tighter.

In conclusion, the government acted promptly to address an urgent problem related to fire safety in public housing, using available funds. This was a matter, effectively, of life and limb. It was also an issue that had direct parallels in previous years, including 2000-01.

I table a copy of the statement and a listing of the urgent fire retrofitting that was considered necessary as a function of audits dating back to 2000. I present the following papers:

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