Page 3638 - Week 08 - Friday, 24 August 2012
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matters of principle as well as matters of process. The regime would have required Treasury to make public knowledge of a policy proposal before the proponent of that policy proposal had released the policy.
In relation to the guidelines which have been presented with this bill, I note they now contain matters of administration based on the provisions in the bill. This is as it should be with respect to these or any other guidelines. These guidelines can be amended at a moment’s notice by the director-general of Treasury and, as we saw in the draft guidelines, there could be essential matters of principle set out in the guidelines.
It is the responsibility of the parliament to make laws, and the executive can then administer those laws as appropriate, including making guidelines dealing with the administration of those laws. I note one concern with the current guidelines, however, and that is the inclusion of principles in the introduction from the current director-general. I would ask the Treasurer to make sure that the word “principle” is removed from the guidelines so as to avoid any situation such as we saw with the initial draft guidelines.
The second matter relates to a fundamental concern with the exposure draft of the bill and guidelines. These guidelines provided that as soon as Treasury received a costing request, the details of that request would be made public—that is, the knowledge of the proposed policy would be made public not by a person who was developing the policy but by the government through Treasury. This was a totally unacceptable situation. The government has seen the merits of that argument, and the situation now is that costing requests will only be made for policies which have been publicly released. This means that the person or party which is developing the policy will retain control over the release of the policy. That is how the situation should be. There can be no assumption of power by the executive over someone else’s policy.
The only other matter on which I propose to comment is the proposed amendments of Mr Rattenbury. The opposition will be supporting the amendments, which extend the period from which costing requests can be made to as close as possible to the rising of the Assembly prior to the election. I note that I had considered that the costing period could begin as early as the day the ACT budget is presented or even earlier, and that is similar to as it is in New South Wales. I am aware of the comment that this could create difficulties and might require that costings which have already been released be revised because of more up-to-date data becoming available.
Nevertheless, as the select committee found, the costing regime in New South Wales seems to work satisfactorily, and the New South Wales regime starts from the day of the budget immediately preceding the state election. If this approach is possible in New South Wales, presumably there is no impediment to it happening in the ACT. As there is a review clause for report after the election, no doubt these issues can be canvassed then. With that, the opposition will be supporting the bill and the amendments.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (4.55): The Greens are pleased to see this bill debated today, and we will be supporting it. The bill will allow the leader of each political party to request Treasury to cost an election commitment made by their party.
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