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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 14 Hansard (12 December) . . Page.. 4438 ..
MR QUINLAN (continuing):
Significant items ... include $10 million to address fire safety issues in ACT Housing's multiunit complexes and to meet current standards under the Building Code of Australia ...
So you were advised. To her credit, Ms Dundas picked it up and thought she would ask a question or so about it. You talk about not a single voice being raised. You must have been asleep not to be able to raise your own voice at the time. Where was the query? No, you didn't notice it. It did not mean a thing until we had a florid term in an audit report.
In order to put that audit report in context, let me go back to the 2001 audit report and let me presume , Mrs Dunne, that you would apply the same standards. That audit report says, in a concession made by Treasury on the basis of legal opinion provided by the solicitor, "Legal advice received is that the situation is unclear"-as we have seen this year-"but it is possible that a breach or breaches of section 18 may have occurred."
I haven't got a thesaurus in my office, but I have got "Word for Windows"on my computer, English (Australian). I looked up "breach"and both in synonym and in meaning it says "break."I looked up "act"and both in synonym and meaning it says, "law."So it is possible that last year that law was broken. We have quite a stark parallel here. We also have, in this audit report, the Auditor saying, "Yes, this happened,"and then he makes a recommendation, recommendation No 2, as follows:
amendments be made to the FMA and suitable guidelines and processes be developed to ensure that the Treasurer's Advance provisions in the FMA are clear and fully complied with.
Ergo, they are not clear now. In fact, this year we have a "might have"and last year we had a "might have". As best I recall, Mr Humphries was Treasurer from about August 1999-would that be right?-and in the last audit report for 2001 there was a list of these probable breaches, payments that possibly should have been made under appropriations..
What do they include? They include: Bruce Operations; to fund payments to the hirers of Bruce Stadium; to provide funding for the construction of canteens at Bruce Stadium; to provide funding for the car park licence at Bruce Stadium; and GST component for the car park licence at Bruce Stadium. So, even after Mr Humphries had taken over as Treasurer because Mrs Carnell stood down as a result of the Bruce Stadium redevelopment, we had payments being made out of the Treasurer's Advance for Bruce Stadium. Let me say that I think, by comparison, the payment of money for the protection of life and limb in public housing stands a little bit above payments for Bruce Stadium in that context.
In terms of the spending having to be in the given year, we do not have to agree exactly with the Auditor-General all of the time. I have disagreed with the Auditor-General for three years over a superannuation issue and I thank Mr Cornwell very much for asking the question he asked today to underscore that matter. I now have the Auditor-General agreeing. He has done a 180 on that view. There is no great difference, let me tell you, between the 2001 and the 2002 audit reports.
Mrs Dunne: Except the nasty words "misuse of the Treasurer's Advance".
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