Page 1818 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 8 June 2016
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The government is happy to support the referral to a select committee. We will undertake that work in the month of July, as appears to have been agreed, and we will be able to provide something back to the Assembly for the August sittings.
Having said that, Madam Speaker, I will close my comments and indicate that we will be supporting the proposal for the referral to committee that has been circulated by Mr Rattenbury.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (12.21): The Greens are quite open to the idea of a parliamentary budget officer. Indeed, in the 2008 parliamentary agreement, the Greens proposed an inquiry by the admin and procedures committee into establishing a parliamentary budget officer to strengthen the capacity of the Assembly to better hold government to account by increasing transparency in its fiscal planning framework and improving the scrutiny of the estimates process.
I sat on the committee that looked at that issue. The result of that process was to establish the financial adviser position to support the estimates process, but not to proceed, due to the high costs for such a small jurisdiction as the ACT. Since that time, as the Chief Minister has referred to, we have implemented the election costings bill and had one cycle of election costings through that mechanism at the 2012 election.
Mr Smyth’s bill brings together those functions into one bill through the establishment of a permanent parliamentary budget office as an independent office of the Legislative Assembly. As with all measures—changes to standing orders and the like—normally this would go to something like the administration and procedure committee but, in discussion amongst colleagues, we have formed the view that a select committee would be a better approach.
The procedure requires that I will speak now and we will move this motion shortly. I will seek leave of the Assembly to do so. But I think it is important that we have a look at this.
Firstly, there is a policy debate here about the merits of such a bill, given that the 2009 committee report recommended that we did not establish a PBO. I think it is useful for the Assembly to take time to consider this bill further rather than just passing it straightaway, as there is no doubt that this is a change in direction.
Secondly, a discussion is needed about some of the finer aspects of how a PBO would be operationalised. After my office had conversations with both the ALP and the Canberra Liberals while considering this bill, it became clear there were very different ideas about what the PBO would look like. Mr Smyth described a realistic version of the PBO the implementation of which would likely require cooperation between the executive and the Assembly. This committee provides us with an opportunity to sort that cooperation out.
It is important to recognise that we are referring a specific bill to the committee and it is not the same question we put back in 2009. But also things have changed since 2009. We have had the costings process. I think the committee will provide a valuable pathway to look at that.
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