Page 1323 - Week 05 - Thursday, 18 June 2020
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While we are supportive of this bill and its necessity, I note that this should not be taken as an opportunity for the Barr government to do whatever it wishes with taxpayer funds without oversight. As I have said before, extraordinary times require extraordinary scrutiny. It is important that the Assembly and Canberrans are kept well apprised of what the Barr government intends to spend taxpayers’ money on during this period without a formal budget.
We do not know exactly what initiatives will be funded and we do not have the normal estimates process to put specific questions directly to ministers and public officials. My colleagues have already pointed out the ever-increasing number of taxpayer-funded signs and the extraordinary amount of communication that has taken place across this city now that there is an election around the corner.
The Treasurer has already highlighted in his address today that the government is likely to not meet some of its financial reporting requirements, which should be of concern to Canberrans. This remains a critical area of oversight, especially in the absence of an appropriation.
As I have said, the Canberra Liberals support this bill to ensure that the normal functions of government can continue. These have to be the normal functions of government, not extraordinary functions of government that are designed to help Mr Barr be re-elected. We will continue to scrutinise the government’s spending and hold it to account to ensure that Canberrans’ money is spent wisely.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (11.56): The Greens will be supporting this bill. Clearly, one of the most important jobs of the Assembly is keeping the government of the day accountable for the way it spends money. The way it spends money is one of the major ways, possibly the most major way, in which the government impacts on the lives of people in Canberra. So it is really important that we get this right. Government resources are finite and they need to be spent in the best way.
Many of the worst aspects of politics that we have seen federally, in other parts of Australia and around the world involve, unfortunately, the misuse of government funds. Earlier this year, for example, we saw the federal Liberal government’s disgraceful sports rort coming to light. Funds for community sports and recreation were funnelled away from groups that needed the money into other groups who were politically expedient, and in some cases ineligible to get any funding at all.
To help keep governments accountable for the money they spend, Australian democracies have a complex process for setting annual government expenditure. It starts with the government presenting a budget each year, sometime before the start of the new financial year. Following that, there are formal scrutiny processes. Here, this includes a formal budget reply speech by the opposition and the crossbench, followed by two weeks of estimates committee hearings, a committee report, the recommendations, then a week and a half of debate on the various pieces of appropriation and revenue legislation. So this is quite a substantive undertaking every year.
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