Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 3 Hansard (8 April) . . Page.. 674 ..

Clause 7

MS TUCKER (12.15): I move:

Page 3, line 16, add the following subclause:

"(3) Where the Corporation enters into a partnership or participates in a joint venture, the Minister shall -

(a) cause to be prepared a statement setting out particulars of, and the reasons for, the partnership or joint venture; and

(b) cause a copy of the statement to be laid before the Legislative Assembly within 15 sitting days after the partnership or joint venture is entered into.".

This amendment requires the Minister to table in the Assembly within 15 days a statement detailing the particulars of any joint venture or partnership. For members' information, this is very similar to an amendment that was passed by the Assembly in relation to the Health and Community Care Services Bill. The Government would prefer to see it in a report. I think we might still have a disagreement there. We are asking that it be tabled within 15 days, and we believe that that is very important. The purpose of this legislation may be to make Canberra Tourism more businesslike, but this is not just any business. It is a statutory corporation owned and funded by the taxpayers of Canberra. From that point of view, in our opinion, there is no compelling argument why the Assembly should not be privy to details of joint ventures or partnerships. After all, this is the Government that wanted open government, and we believe that this amendment is therefore very important.

MR KAINE (Minister for Urban Services and Minister for Tourism) (12.16): This Bill will impose quite a level of accountability on the management board, and the amendment put forward by Ms Tucker was one we had a look at very closely. Originally, our proposal was that we would comply with the requirement to report these things, but only in connection with joint ventures or partnership agreements the value of which exceeded half a million dollars. I accept, however, the point made by Mr Corbell that there could be a quite large number of agreements entered into, each of which is worth only a few thousand dollars and therefore not a great sum, but, if you added them together over the course of a year, they could add up to a considerable sum. Putting a half-a-million dollars ceiling on it did not really achieve the objective the Greens were seeking, and we accepted that. Because of the very fact that there may well be a large number of such agreements entered into, it will be fairly onerous to have to table every one of them in the Assembly within 15 sitting days of signing it. What is the Assembly going to do with them anyway? If they are worth only $3,000, $5,000 or $7,000, is the Assembly going to sit around and debate them ad nauseam individually? What the Government is proposing instead is that we will meet the requirement of accountability and table the details of all such agreements entered into; but we will do it quarterly, in conjunction with the quarterly report that the Bill already obliges the board to present to the Minister and to the Assembly.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .