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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 5 Hansard (5 May) . . Page.. 1336 ..
MS CARNELL (continuing):
Did it end up in the Auditor-General's report on the financial audits for the year ending to 30 June 1998? Was this issue in tiny print somewhere? Was it in a footnote somewhere that people missed? It was in "Significant Findings". Under "Significant Findings", in big black letters, the report went through exactly what the ACT Government had done across the end of the financial year. What happens to these financial audits that the Auditor-General does? In his significant findings he alerts everyone to the following fact:
This year $14.7m was spent in cash on the Bruce Stadium redevelopment; this exceeded the $5.6m received as a capital injection for the project; the shortfall was met by borrowing $9.7m from the Commonwealth Bank; $17.4m has been expended on the redevelopment to year end with a further $10m committed at balance date;
That is very open, very transparent. What happens to a financial audit? Such audits are tabled in this Assembly and they are referred to an Assembly committee. That is exactly what happened to this one. It was referred to Mr Quinlan's committee. What does Mr Quinlan's committee then do with a financial audit? In this case, it came back to the Assembly with a review of the Auditor-General's Report No. 9, "Financial Audits with Years Ending to 30 June 1998". And what did it find? Right there in the document highlighted again were the audit findings. Highlighted again was the fact that $9.7m was spent and that there was a loan over the end of the financial year. What did the committee say in comment? This is not in footnotes. It is up there in black and white. It is a pity that some members of the crossbenches are not here, because the committee report under "Bruce Stadium" says:
The committee observes that the Bruce Stadium redevelopment is the subject of a separate audit by the Auditor-General which is expected to include an evaluation, and the appropriateness, of the organisational arrangements to finance, construct and manage the redeveloped stadium, identify the total capital cost, the effectiveness of procedures and reliability of information used in making strategic decisions relating to the redevelopment and other matters concerning contractual and financing arrangements for the redevelopment.
This report was tabled in the Assembly in the last sitting week, only a couple of weeks ago. What was the finding of Mr Quinlan's committee? It was that the Auditor-General was looking at all of these things and we should let him get on with the job. What happened to that? Where is the lack of transparency? Mr Quinlan's own committee made that comment only two weeks ago. Maybe it was three weeks ago, but it certainly was not long ago. So what has changed? Absolutely nothing.
We need to look at this issue seriously and understand just how much public money will be wasted if we go down the path of requiring information to be put on the table in the Assembly only for political purposes, only to play political games, not for any community benefit. Members of the Assembly have to ask: Is there any evidence of impropriety? The answer is no. Nobody has made any comment whatsoever. Is there
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