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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Tuesday, 4 May 2004) . . Page.. 1704 ..

The Minister at the first available opportunity explain to the Assembly why the Assembly was told that the Treasurer’s Advance was being used to fund additional services in child protection, when evidence received by the Committee indicated that the Treasurer’s Advance had not been used at that time.

This relates to the evidence given to the committee by Minister Gallagher in relation to child protection. The report expands on this further. Recommendation 4 reads:

The Department of Education, Youth and Family Services review how it collects statistics in relation to substitute care, and assess the adequacy and effectiveness of the information collected with the aim of improving its service delivery and financial planning ability in this area.

This was based on the fact that the minister requested that she come before the committee a second time to provide supplementary evidence. The committee was happy to allow that. The minister made it clear that the Treasurer would be putting through an amendment to the appropriation for an additional $4½ million. The minister then wanted to explain to the committee why that $4½ million was needed. Given that the amount was almost three times the original request in the appropriation, the committee was rather stunned that this amount had not been forecast in advance. It felt that, given the great disparity between one amount and the other, the collection of information should be reviewed. Recommendation 5 reads:

The Government improve the procurement processes of ACT Housing and be better able to explain how monies appropriated will be expended.

This is also elaborated on in the report. Recommendation 6 reads:

The Government post to a website all transcripts of the coronial inquiry of the 2003 Bushfires immediately, as they become available.

This being perhaps the most sensitive matter to the community we felt it was important, in the public interest, that this information be posted. It is public information but we felt that the sooner it was put on the website the sooner, this information would be accessible to all in the community. Recommendation 7 reads:

The Minister for Planning present to the Legislative Assembly all the documents and correspondence relating to the proposed purchase of the Phillip Oval and, that the Assembly review the issue on receiving this information.

The Phillip Oval issue was interesting. The Minister for Planning, Mr Corbell, asked for $800,000 in this appropriation to purchase Phillip Oval. We sought and received information from a number of parties on this matter. This generated great concern to the committee because the information we received from the minister seemed to contradict the information we received from the relevant parties. Recommendation 8 reads:

The Minister for Planning apologise to the Legislative Assembly for withholding relevant information to the Select Committee on Estimates, in relation to the Phillip Oval matter.

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