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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 5 Hansard (5 May) . . Page.. 1335 ..

MS CARNELL (continuing):

competence? I certainly hope not. I hope that members of this Assembly do not question the competence of the Auditor-General either. We have asked the Auditor-General to go down the path of looking at exactly the things that Mr Stanhope just said he wanted the Assembly to look at. The question everyone would have to answer is: Why should the Assembly do that if we have confidence in the Auditor-General? I have confidence in the Auditor-General, the Government has confidence in the Auditor-General and I would hope the whole Assembly does. It would be an obvious next step for those opposite to move a no-confidence motion in the Auditor-General because they believe he cannot do the job. The Auditor-General is doing exactly the same job that Mr Stanhope now believes that this Assembly, a select committee or whatever needs to do.

I also ask: Why do we have an Auditor-General to do such things as performance audits, or audits, of major projects? Why do we not just let the Assembly do those things? Why does Mr Quinlan's committee not do performance audits, or audits, of various parts of government? The reason is that we do not have the expertise.

Mr Berry: Ha, ha!

MS CARNELL: Mr Berry actually believes that we here in this Assembly could do a performance audit. I would suggest that there is not one member of this Assembly, including Mr Quinlan, who would have the current qualifications or expertise to go into a full performance audit. That is because our jobs are different. People have expertise in different things. The Auditor-General is doing the audit. The Auditor-General, the contractors and the members of the Auditor-General's staff are the people we employ and pay to do these very specific tasks.

The Government does not have any particular concerns about releasing some of these documents. The question you have to ask is: Why, when all of these documents either have been provided to the Auditor-General or will be provided to him on his request - and I mean all of them?

It is not possible to provide a number of items on Mr Stanhope's list publicly, but they have been provided to the Auditor-General, so the Auditor-General is in a position to have an overall look at this issue, with all of the documents on the table and with the expertise both within his office and with the people he regularly contracts to do these jobs. This is the job of the Auditor-General and his office.

If those opposite believe that the Auditor-General will not do that job properly, please make that the motion here. That is a really serious thing to say. If what we are talking about now is just playing politics by putting a whole lot of documents on the table, then this Assembly should see it for what it is - a little effort at playing politics.

Mr Stanhope started to debate the whole issue of Bruce Stadium rather than the issue of just providing a number of the documents involved. I think it is really important to note a few things here. Nobody has indicated at any stage that there was any evidence of impropriety in any of this. Has there been any lack of disclosure about the redevelopment? The answer is no. Mr Stanhope talked about borrowings over the end of last financial year. Yes, that is what happened. And where was it? It was right there in the accounts, in the Auditor-General's end of financial year audit of the ACT finances.

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