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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (30 June) . . Page.. 1840 ..
MR KAINE (continuing):
In our opinion, there is no such intention revealed in the Financial Management Act but rather a contrary intention. Thus the investment must be one "prescribed by the financial management guidelines -
"the" is underlined -
The language points to it being a condition precedent to the exercise of the discretionary power that guidelines must be in place at the time the decision is made.
I am quoting again:
A decision made without reference to the guidelines cannot be converted into a decision made in accordance with guidelines operating retrospectively because this would impute to the Treasurer a state of mind which ... she did not have at the time of making the decision.
That is Professor Richardson. So the argument about it being an investment, whether under the revised law or the precedent law, does not stand up. Then Mrs Carnell said, "Well, it was only a minor technical flaw". It was only a minor technical flaw. There was a missing guideline. Well, there has been a lot said about that too, and the legal opinion, again, knocks that contention right on the head. It was not a minor flaw and it is a very significant and major event.
Today we heard yet another justification from the Chief Minister. She has not run out yet. Today she said, "Well, it wasn't appropriated but it was authorised". That is a very strange and new concept in public accounting. It was not appropriated, but it was authorised, and I will come back to that. Kirsten Lawson, writing in the Canberra Times, summed up the Chief Minister's squirming perfectly in an article on 12 June. She wrote:
Since the legal doubts were made public ... Carnell has been in a state of denial. The justifications are made, then crumble with each justification, and new justifications are found. Her story is always upbeat, but the words and emphases shift like sand. And always a refusal to admit wrongdoing, with each admission and each concession squeezed from her.
We know that since 12 June the Chief Minister has now said, "Well, yes, I did it and I'm sorry", and that makes it okay, but at the time that Kirsten Lawson wrote that she was spot on.
More recently, of course, and after all of these series of events, everything else having failed, everything else having gone down the big black hole, Mrs Carnell made the following demand of us as members of this place - not a request, no repentance, no humility, but a demand: "Here is my amendment to the Appropriation Bill and you will okay it. It is a package deal and, along with appropriating money to make all my expenditure legal, you will also exonerate me from all illegal activity". What sort of
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