Page 5062 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 26 October 2011
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we need to improve the situation. Mr Smyth’s motion would improve the situation. Ms Le Couteur’s amendment is simply pretending that it is happening. It is the amendment that says: “Don’t believe what is actually happening. Don’t believe the list that is given to you by Ms Burch in relation to the directorate. Just let’s assume that, because it is in the Labor-Greens agreement, it is happening.” It is not happening. It is a fiction. It is a fiction that we are being asked to accept. That is why we will not be supporting Ms Le Couteur’s amendment.
I commend Mr Smyth for his commitment to small business, I commend Mr Smyth for his commitment to improving governance and I think that this motion will go a long way towards that.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Leader, ACT Greens) (4.56): I would like to pick up on that point just made by the Leader of the Opposition. He was talking about how much interest has been paid on those invoices that have been paid after more than 30 days. It is really important in all of this to remember that it first of all depends on who was in the wrong. We have to look at why some of these invoices were late. Some of the reasons may be quite legitimate as to why they have not been paid within the 30 days. It may just be that the company was in the wrong. It may be that the wrong product was delivered. It may be that it was faulty. There could be a range of reasons, and it is important that they be checked out.
We expect that proper process is followed and that there is careful scrutiny of the work compared to the invoices to make sure that there is a match before they are paid. This is taxpayers’ money. I am alarmed, because what the Leader of the Opposition has said is: “Don’t check whether the product’s been delivered. Don’t check whether the service has been delivered. Don’t check if it was the right one. If anything goes over your 45 days or, in the case of the 30 days currently, just pay it. Just pay it, and if it is late, we’re just going to give them interest.” It might be that we should not even be paying them, but now we are also going to pay them interest. That is a nonsense position to put forward. It is quite alarming what he is putting forward actually.
Certainly, if the fault lies with the government, they should pay interest, and certainly the government could be doing more to prevent late payments. I do not think anyone has denied that. It is put quite clearly in Ms Le Couteur’s amendment about the importance of paying on time. She has also included calling on the government to make sure it goes into annual report directions so we can see in those annual reports whether invoices are being paid within the 30 days, how many might be over that time, the average value of overdue invoices and so forth. We would then be able to track what was going on.
But, as I said, I am concerned about the amount of late payments. The answer to that though is not to make the period longer; it is surely to do more to make sure that those invoices are paid. I really cannot follow the logic of saying: “Look, there’s something like 25 per cent of invoices not being paid on time. Let’s sort through to find out how much of that 25 per cent is legitimate and how much is legitimately renegotiated or being disputed.”
We need to be looking at where we might be going with this and get down to those figures. This idea that somehow, by making it 45 days, that is going to fix it all and
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