Page 766 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 1 May 2007
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I would like to know how it can be that the ACT government can give funding to an event that we know often includes antisocial behaviour, which I know the government does not approve of, without requiring taxpayers’ funds to be accounted for. How can it be that ACT government funding was provided without the standard requirement that any unexpended funds will be delivered back to the ACT?
I did ask the Chief Minister or the Treasurer—whichever hat he was wearing—whether there was a requirement for an acquittal of the funds. Apparently there was not. Consequently, there is no way of telling whether there are any unexpended funds and consequently they could not be called back. We still do not know whether those funds were actually pocketed as profit because Summernats is a profit-making venture.
I would like to know what makes Summernats so special that it was not obliged to adhere to the same funding requirements as any other event or program. In his reply to my letter, the Chief Minister noted that Mr Chic Henry, who is the director of Summernats, had originally requested that the ACT government supplement the cost of hiring the EPIC venue, but the Chief Minister declined as he felt that this approach lacked transparency. Rather, the Chief Minister chose to provide the funding through a Treasurer’s advance to general Summernats activities as then the funding could be tabled in the Assembly. I think that if the aim was transparency it would have been better to tie the funding to something specific against which the grant could have been acquitted.
I had also asked the Chief Minister in my first letter if a copy of the acquittal of $300,000 could be provided to me. His response was that as there were no specific conditions placed on the funding there could not be a formal acquittal of funds. I am not aware of there being anything to prevent the Chief Minister from having a contract drawn up, even if the money was provided through a Treasurer’s advance. It would concern me, in fact, if a Treasurer’s advance was a way of giving a handout to organisations that, for some reason or other, achieve favour in the Treasurer’s eye.
If grants are going to be made available to, in this case, a recreation activity or to a sports event or to a community service organisation, they should be advertised, with a set of criteria published against which those applications can be assessed. All groups that fit into the category should be notified that such grants exist.
My feeling is that Summernats is now seen as an important institution. The Greens acknowledge that as much as anyone, though we see some problems with the event. It has become an annual part of our events cycle in a quiet time of the year, but how does that entitle it to receive $300,000 last year? We do not know what is going to happen this year. At what point does the government say, “This event constantly requires a drip in the arm and we cannot do that any more”? So there is an issue of accountability about that event, and I am still bemused as to how $300,000 could be expended without an acquittal.
MR STEFANIAK (Ginninderra—Leader of the Opposition) (4.48): It is no wonder there are problems with accountability for the use of funds by the ACT government when the Chief Minister cannot even add two and two without getting something like 35 and a half. That is what he did today in an amazing statement in reply to
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