Page 1428 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 26 September 1989
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Mr Speaker, at the very least the Government owes this Assembly an open and accountable means of ensuring that its own use of consultants is above board. As it stands, the LA(MS) Bill gives no full consideration to accountability even in the current proposed employment of Ministers, and I foreshadow that amendments may be moved in that area in the course of this debate.
Just as importantly, the Bill does not provide the Assembly with the right to expect full and open accounting for what the Government spends on itself and why. We understand that amendments will be moved to rectify this also. Until both these major flaws are rectified, this Bill is purely and simply inadequate. However, the Rally does not propose to oppose the Bill at this stage as it is important for the arrangements to be put into place for the protection of members of our respective staffs as soon as possible. At this stage I would like to pay tribute to the staff of the opposition parties, all of whom work extremely ably and in a dedicated fashion and interact very well in the roles that the public purse is paying for them to perform.
In the future the Rally will be looking carefully at proposals for amendments to the Bill to allow for members to employ consultants on the same basis as that provided to Government Ministers with similar provisions for accounting and within the constraints of the amount of funds available to members. We understand from the Chief Minister that ministerial consultants employed by Ministers are employed within the same constraints, but a great deal more light needs to be thrown on the Government's employment of consultants to date.
MR STEVENSON (4.00): There are two concerns with the LA(MS) Bill. The first is public accountability and the second is fairness, or equity. My intention in the near future is to move an amendment to do with fairness. The amendment would allow members the right to hire consultants. Should a member wish to use all or a proportion of his staff allocation budget for the hiring of a consultant, that should be the responsibility of the member.
In the area of public accountability there are perhaps three times when consultants may be accountable: prior to the hiring of the consultant, during the consultancy, and in the final report. I wish at this time just to address the final report. In the LA(MS) Bill, under part V, "Miscellaneous - Annual Report", the only things that are required to be reported are the name of each consultant, the period of engagement and the tasks. The tasks are not necessarily specified and, incredible as it may seem, there is no mention whatsoever of the cost of the consultancy. In the memorandum to the Bill, under "Financial Statement", it states:
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .