Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Thursday, 1 April 2004) . . Page.. 1554 ..

Question resolved in the affirmative.

MR SMYTH: I move:

That the report be noted.

On behalf of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, it is a pleasure to present the report on the Financial Management Amendment Bill 2003 (No 3). The bill was referred to the committee and concerns the use of the Treasurer’s Advance. I suspect that it grew out of long-term concerns about how the Treasurer’s Advance is used and, in particular, about the use of $10 million of the Treasurer’s Advance that was moved to fund fire safety in ACT Housing the year before last.

The committee examined the bill; held public hearings, which the Treasurer, the newly-appointed Auditor-General, Mrs Tu Pham, and Ms Dundas attended; and sought submissions. If members look at the appendix, they will see that the committee received submissions from most of the states and territories and the Commonwealth. Overall, it was interesting to see what is happening in other jurisdictions. The summary in appendix C shows the various ways that other jurisdictions approach the use of the Treasurer’s Advance. The majority are somewhat more lax than that currently in place in the ACT at this stage.

After some discussion, the committee made four recommendations. Rather than go line by line through Ms Dundas’s bill and say, “Approve this bit, approve that bit”—the government’s submission indicates that it was going to bring forward a number of amendments to this section of the Financial Management Act; the committee looked at the suggestions and thought that some of them were very good—rather than recommend that Ms Dundas’s bill be agreed to or not agreed to, the committee has said:

The Legislative Assembly should not consider the Financial Management Amendment Bill 2003 (No 3) until the Government presents its amendments to the Financial Management Act 1996, in relation to the Treasurer’s Advance.

That is recommendation 1. Recommendation 2 gives the Treasurer some hints on what the committee would like to see come forward. Some of it is the Treasurer’s own work, amended slightly, and some of it has come from the submissions. Recommendation 2, paragraph (a), states:

provide for urgent and unforeseen expenditure, and where there is an error in omission or the understatement of other appropriations;

This has come from the Commonwealth’s definition, which is quite broad, with the understanding that sometimes you do make a mistake. We all make mistakes and expenditure, programs or the taxpayer should not be disadvantaged because of that. We thought the inclusion of the Commonwealth’s definition of “urgent” was quite appropriate and is, of course, covered in recommendation 2, paragraph (b).

Recommendation 2, paragraph (c), defines expenditure. There was some toing and froing in the committee about how to define expenditure. We spoke to the Auditor-General who said that money is considered to have been expended when you have entered into a

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .