Page 2153 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 21 June 2011
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The bill also proposes an administrative change to the Financial Management Act. At present the FMA contains a list of all territory authorities which operate within the ACT government. The issue which this approach creates is that whenever there is an amendment to the list an amendment is required to the Financial Management Act. As we are all aware, amending an act is often an awkward and expensive process.
This bill proposes to remove the listing of territory authorities from the act and place the list in a financial management guideline. This is a much more simple approach when any amendments are required to the list of territory authorities. At the same time there will be no loss of transparency as any financial management guideline is a disallowable instrument which can of course be debated in the Assembly as might be necessary.
There is one amendment which is proposed as a consequence of the amendment to section 54 of the Financial Management Act to remove the list of authorities. Section 76(2) of the Financial Management Act lists those territory authorities which have governing boards. As the Treasurer noted, this listing is not a legal requirement, hence the FMA will be amended by removing section 76(2).
The opposition supports each of the amendments in the bill, particularly as they relate to enhancing the comprehension of the territory’s legislation.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Convenor, ACT Greens) (7.35): The Financial Management (One ACT Public Service) Amendment Bill is of course the first of a series of bills this week that will give effect to the Hawke review recommendations and, rather than any detailed discussion about the merit of those changes more generally which will no doubt be had on Thursday, it is sufficient to say that the Greens support the changes within this bill. The text does little more than define a directorate and a director-general and replace the existing terminology of department and chief executive with directorate and director-general.
As the Treasurer observed in her speech, the budget papers and the appropriation bill itself have already adopted the proposed terminology and anticipate the passage of this bill. As the minister noted, the changes have no impact on the operation and directorates will continue to have the same financial obligations as were in place for the previous departments. So the Greens will be supporting this bill.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Chief Minister, Minister for Health, Minister for Industrial Relations and Treasurer) (7.36), in reply: The Financial Management (One ACT Public Service) Amendment Bill amends the Financial Management Act 1996. It amends the FMA to facilitate the new public service model which establishes a single agency with nine directorates as the administrative basis of the ACT public service from 1 July 2001. The FMA is the principal financial management legislation in the territory, and the objective of this legislation is to promote the high standards of financial accountability to the Assembly and the community and to provide appropriate transparency in resource allocation and management.
With the granting of self-government to the ACT 21 years ago, the time is now right to take stock of where the ACT public service has come from, where it is now and
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