Page 862 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 2 May 2007
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The rules and regulations must be sufficiently tight to ensure that money is expended to achieve a tangible benefit for the community. It is not enough to say, “We went to a conference. Eight of us were over in Stockholm; we were looking at water” or “We had a retreat out at Bungendore.” I have a retreat on Friday night; I go out and have a few drinks with my staff. That is terrific; I do not expect this place to pay for it.
I know you can have conferences; I know you can have seminars. I am not such a wowser that I think people should not be able to have a drink at these things. But when you are using public sector money there is a much higher threshold of accountability. For that reason, it is important that we are able to demonstrate that there is benefit. If we are going overseas and we can demonstrate that we are bringing business in because of attendance at a particular conference—that we are signing up potential investors in Canberra—I am not going to sit up here and argue about taking those people out for a feed—even a good feed.
I have worked in government; I worked for the Victorian government. When I worked for the Premier there, one day I asked the chief executive of the premier’s department how many people we were sending overseas a year. He fluffed around and bumbled around; eventually he came back and said that 980 public servants were getting on overseas flights. They were the good times; they were the 1980s when governments were flush with money, nobody cared and everybody was employed. But there is a clear message here: you have to be very careful and very prudent. It troubles me that that level of control is not evident across the board in the territory. I am happy for it to be proven otherwise, but that is what I sense.
On 22 February the Canberra Times reported on this issue. It said that the four departments—education and training, ACT Health, territory and municipal services and the Chief Minister’s Department—were asked how much money through credit cards or other means was spent in 2005-06 on accommodation, conferences, courses and training, and meals, drinks and catering. Only ACT Health was able to answer in a timely and accurate fashion. The Department of Education and Training, TAMS and the Chief Minister’s Department all said in effect, “The information is difficult to come by.” The information should not be difficult to come by. It is the responsibility of the five ACT government ministers and the departmental secretaries that serve them, and the people under them, to ensure that such information and justification are available and open for the public to see.
I am flabbergasted that even today—after the Chief Minister was embarrassed by not having this information yesterday—the Chief Minister has not got the information at his fingertips. He ought to demand that information. We have demanded it. This information should have been able to be produced three months ago. Here we are in May and we are still being told, “We have to look into it.”
An accountable government—a government practising the core principles of good government—would ensure that expenditure can be justified. It would ensure that the items highlighted by the Auditor-General, including details of guests and the purposes of events, would be recorded. A tangible benefit to the people of the ACT is needed to justify expenditure on items like hospitality and other discretionary expenditure. This does not mean you cannot have hospitality. I have been here on New Year’s Eve and
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