Page 3798 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 18 October 2005
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bottom line approach. The Treasurer’s office has been very open in calling for support and guidance in its project to shift the paradigm of the ACT’s public accounting to give us all the capacity to assess our social and environmental management as closely as we scrutinise financial management.
I do not understand how these ambitions are going to get beyond the bounds of rhetoric if this government continues to reject a commitment to ensuring that its agencies are governed by people with the capacity to understand and embrace the social and environmental goals that it sets. It seems very clear to me that getting expertise on to the boards of government authorities would assist us greatly in embedding sustainability principles across government activities. I look forward to the Treasurer taking my concerns seriously and advising the Assembly on how he can ensure that it will happen in another way if he rejects these amendments.
MR MULCAHY (Molonglo) (5.44): The opposition will not be supporting Dr Foskey’s amendments. It is undesirable that the legislation becomes overly prescriptive in terms of the profile of board appointments in the territory. Ministers ought to be capable of addressing the skills of, and criteria for, appointees to these boards. I think in the main, certainly those that I have seen that have come up for review by the Public Accounts Committee, they appear to be, in almost every case, people appropriately skilled in a range of different disciplines.
I would hate to get into this tick-a-box approach where we have to have someone who fits this category or that category. I know Dr Foskey has argued the view that they should have an understanding of the social and environmental issues, but equally it could be argued that there are a host of other areas that it is important they look at.
Generally governments try to assemble a mix of skills in board appointments. It may be that someone with particular expertise does not fit into any of these sorts of policy categories that would be appropriate and yet could be seen as a good contributor to those boards. I do not think it is appropriate to put this level of constraint into the bill before us. Accordingly, we will not be supporting the amendments.
MR QUINLAN (Molonglo—Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development and Business, Minister for Tourism, Minister for Sport and Recreation, and Minister for Racing and Gaming) (5.46): No, the government will not be supporting these changes. We are setting up a framework within which the agencies and authorities have to work. That is the process. We are also talking about the reporting process and reporting requirements for those agencies and authorities. That is the appropriate thing to do. If we start stacking the boards with people who are going to “keep the bastard honest” from the inside and move the focus from the primary objective, it will be a bit of a belt and braces job, possibly at the price of suboptimal management of the organisation.
We want business agencies and authorities to satisfy the objectives of their enabling legislation to the utmost, but at the same time living within the framework that is set and then being accountable ultimately to this place against that framework. That is what we are now setting in place. To then want to have another layer by building into the management of the board a certain dimension is to reduce the amount of expertise in relation to the objectives of the agency.
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