Page 5565 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 9 December 2009
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prospect of territory-owned corporations being subject to this form of scrutiny. It is interesting that, on this occasion, the opposition choose to ignore the advice or recommendations of the Auditor-General in relation to this particular addition.
The Auditor-General has expressed concern about this form of scrutiny. Indeed, Actew also explained to the select committee that it does not—and I think this is the point, and the point that I believe is at the heart of why this amendment should not be supported and why territory-owned corporations should not be subjected to this legislation—use public moneys. Surely, the desire for this level of scrutiny is about the use of public funds. TOCs do not use public funds; they do not run government campaigns; they do not receive an appropriation of public funds. We in the government believe that this is a quite significant departure from the purposes of the bill.
The objects of the bill are stated in clause 5:
The object of this Act is to prevent the use of public funds for advertising or other communications for party political purposes.
That is the object of the bill—to prevent the use of public funds. Territory-owned corporations do not use public funds. We find this a quite bizarre departure from the objects of the bill. The objects clause has been incorporated in the bill, and it is explicit, one line—to prevent the use of public funds for certain purposes. Now the opposition are incorporating in their legislation the use of funds that are not public funds and seek to bind territory-owned corporations to certain provisions in a bill. In other words, you are departing from your own objects. We do not believe that that is appropriate. We agree with the Auditor-General in relation to this—we do not believe this is appropriate, and we do not believe it is consistent with the objects of your bill. We wonder why you are insisting on this particular inclusion of statutory corporations that do not use public funds when your whole stated purpose in your objects clause is to prevent the misuse, as you see it, of public funds. The government will not support this amendment.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (3.43): The Greens will be supporting this amendment. We believe that it is useful to clarify the scope of the legislation to include territory-owned corporations. Certainly I have flagged publicly in the Assembly during the year that I wanted the select committee to look at the issue of whether or not TOCs should be covered by the legislation, as there was some uncertainty. The committee took evidence on this issue and made a recommendation that, yes, territory-owned corporations should be included.
At the time of the committee hearings, there was discussion about whether this was appropriate. This comes to the point that Mr Stanhope was just making. I would imagine that discussion will continue. The Greens are clear that TOCs should be covered, and we will be supporting the amendment. That is partly driven by what some might describe as an old-fashioned view that a territory-owned corporation is in fact a taxpayer asset as it is a territory-owned corporation. To that extent, I do believe that TOCs do use public funds, because I know that any profit or surplus that they make comes to the territory as a dividend. I must confess that I have not read the
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