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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Thursday, 24 June 2004) . . Page.. 2633 ..

MS DUNDAS: Mr Speaker, I seek leave to speak again without closing the debate.

Leave granted.

MS DUNDAS (12.22): Mr Speaker, I first wish to thank the Treasurer for agreeing to a cognate debate on these two bills, and the Assembly for allowing this to take place so that we can deal with the issue of the Treasurer’s advance and financial management in a very cohesive way. I understand that my bill will be defeated and the government’s bill will be passed unamended, but I do wish to put on the record why I still believe that the provisions in my bill provide better accountability for the expenditure of the Treasurer’s advance.

The Treasurer’s advance is the only money the government can spend that has not been approved by the Assembly for a particular purpose, so I do believe it is appropriate that we have special accountability requirements for it. Although the Treasurer’s advance, as is clearly defined, cannot exceed one per cent of the total monies appropriated by all appropriation acts, the amount is very significant in light of the fact that the overwhelming majority of budget funds are non-discretionary funds to cover unavoidable costs such as wages.

As I stated when I tabled my bill, the current wording of the Financial Management Act does not specify whether the Treasurer’s advance or a supplementary appropriation is the right process to meet expenditure requirements that are not accounted for in the budget. Presently, where expenditure could not be reasonably foreseen and included in the first appropriation act, the expenditure can be funded using either process.

I believe, as do other members, that the Treasurer’s advance exists to provide emergency funding to cover unanticipated costs, where there is insufficient money in the existing appropriation and there is no time to prepare a supplementary appropriation bill because of the urgency of the required expenditure. Although there are some strong similarities between the two bills being debated today, I wish to highlight four main differences.

First, the government’s bill does introduce the word “urgency”, which is a small step forward, but that word is not defined. I understand that regulations the Treasurer plans to make will not include any time element in the definition of urgency, and it would then be up to the Treasurer to make a subjective decision about whether or not the requirement is urgent.

In contrast, the proposal I put forward made it clear that urgency means that the need for the expenditure is so urgent that there is no time to prepare and debate a supplementary appropriation bill. The test would be simple to assess objectively in almost all circumstances. That a supplementary appropriation can be raised in most circumstances has been well demonstrated this financial year, when we have seen no less than three supplementary appropriation bills.

I think this demonstrates that we have already seen a cultural change from the previous financial year, when the government seemed to be working to expend all the advance rather than return it to consolidated revenue or deal with it through supplementary

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