Page 3023 - Week 08 - Thursday, 7 August 2008
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We have a relationship with the Auditor-General and we also have the responsibility of conducting a number of inquiries into her reports. I can tell that you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that we would have found the documents of the functional review very useful a number of times. At the moment, we are completing an inquiry into Rhodium, for instance. We do not know how the functional review affected Rhodium. That has also been the case in relation to the courts administration. What effect did those cuts from the functional review have on the courts administration? These are important bits of information that the public accounts committee should have access to.
Then, of course, after all those cuts in June-July 2006, we had the financial boost in December. The Treasury called this a boon, but perhaps it was the exact intention of the functional review. With the Costello report—the functional review—we saw the abandonment, or at the very least the watering down, of the social plan and the sustainable transport plan. Indeed, the loss of the sustainable transport plan is the most immediate impact of the functional review. And, of course, we have seen the dilution of the spatial plan as well. Subsequent budget windfalls have not gone into restoring and retrieving those documents and those plans.
It is very concerning in majority government that committees, especially those without a government majority, have lost their powers which are given to them in the standing orders through standing order 239. It is a great pity that the committees have lost this. It really should be of concern to every other committee chair.
It is unfortunate that most other committee chairs, apart from the legal affairs committee, are government members. Therefore, I do not expect that they will stand up for the right for committees to call for papers. That is a real pity, because the strength of this Legislative Assembly is its committee system. It is the way that we all work together in a cooperative approach as members of committees to do the work of committees.
We were told by the Chief Minister first that the document was cabinet-in-confidence. In fact, as it was a document prepared by a consultant for cabinet, I do not think it can really be given that status. Certainly the public accounts committee rejected that. We were told that it could not be released under the freedom of information laws because a conclusive certificate had been issued. These things just do not apply when a committee calls for documents. It is a very concerning thing.
The public accounts committee is raising this at the end of this term because we are giving the government one last chance to table the functional review, to retrieve the ACT Legislative Assembly’s reputation for transparency, for accountability and for running with the interests of our community in mind.
This is Mr Stanhope’s last chance to table that document. Of course he can choose to do so any time before the end of this Assembly. Not to do so would be a very bad way, I believe, to end this term of government when we are going to an election. We would very much say this is an indication that majority government and government majorities on committees do not appear to be the best ways of progressing accountability, democracy, and transparency in the ACT.
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