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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 14 Hansard (12 December) . . Page.. 4440 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

Recommendation No 2 in that section says, effectively, that the Auditor is unclear. If the matter is unclear, let us make sure that we retain in this debate from this point on that it is unclear.

Mr Humphries: Okay.

MR QUINLAN: Right. We need to address the point of the foreseeability. We know that there was some identification of a need back as far as June 2000, I think. Do not hold me to that, but certainly well before the build-up. But then we had a series of audits done within multiunit public housing. One minute we had to do something about fire safety and a reasonable person might think that we needed to fit smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, whatever. All of a sudden, we were getting audits coming through for $1.3 million and $1.4 million. Bang, bang! In no time at all, they were in excess of $10 million and we had the then head of Housing saying, "I have a real problem here. With the resources I have now, I cannot really address this problem. I have also got a legal opinion that tells me that you could be held liable for any misadventure if you don't do something about it."

You do not have to agree with it, but I think it is reasonable to accept that someone might have said, "We ought to make sure that we have on record a full commitment to address that problem"-not a dribble, but a full commitment to address that problem. I see the Treasurer's Advance and I talk to the Under Treasurer. There is $14 million or so unexpended and there is a problem. It is a problem that we have inherited. Like lots of other problems, I wish I had more time whereby I might address the deficiencies which border, as far as I am concerned, on misleading in previous budgets, the stuff that was left out. I rather think and rather suspect I have confirmed that in the latter half of the last Assembly, Mr Humphries had given up all hope of re-election and was involved in a scorched earth policy. I did mention that that approach seemed to ooze through his last budget.

Mr Humphries: What has it go to do with the MPI, Ted?

MR QUINLAN: I cannot recall the Hansard, but I am just saying that. Here we have a situation where the problem already exists, there is a liability already incurred, and I take unexpended funds available and apply them to a liability already incurred. If it wasn't actually expenditure-

Mr Humphries: You could not possibly spend that money in two weeks.

MR QUINLAN: Let me finish on the technical note. If it wasn't, why is it so that at about page 180 of this report the Auditor give an unqualified report to the ACT Housing account? He mentions again the misuse term and the question of legality, but he gives an unqualified certificate. That means that he accepts that this was revenue to Housing. In relation to this event, he gave an unqualified certificate to the central government accounts, which means that he accepted, by certificate, that this was expenditure in that year; so it is expenditure in the year.

Mr Humphries: But he found it was a misuse of the Treasurer's Advance.

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