Page 319 - Week 01 - Thursday, 16 February 2012
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MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (12.12): The Greens also will not be supporting this motion. I find it a most peculiar motion. I would have thought that before moving this motion Mr Seselja would have looked at what the public accounts committee was doing. If he had done that, he would have found that we have an ongoing inquiry into Auditor-General’s report No 6 of 2009, Government office accommodation. The terms of that ongoing inquiry can quite easily encompass whatever the public accounts committee wishes to do with respect to the government office building.
I have here the most recent 246A statement which I, in my role as PAC chair, made to this Assembly. I made a statement on this as chair on 20 September 2011. My last sentence is this:
However, the committee will continue to monitor the outcome of the government’s market testing processes and the progress report on the government office block project by December 2011 as required by the Assembly motion.
So Mr Seselja’s motion really has no basis. PAC has before it an inquiry into the Auditor-General’s report. PAC as a committee will choose. Despite being chair, I obviously am making no comments as to what PAC may choose to do with its time, because we simply have not had that discussion. But PAC has the matter of government office accommodation as one of the things that it has an ongoing inquiry into. If the Liberal member of the PAC wishes to raise these issues, that would be entirely appropriate and the committee, if these issues are raised, will consider them.
There is absolutely no reason for the Assembly to be making a referral on this issue. It may even be out of order. I am not sure about that but I do not think we will have to work that out because it is just totally unnecessary.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (12.15): I thought the minister was going to speak, but apparently he is not. Let me address some of the points that Ms Le Couteur just made. She said “if the Liberal member raises it in the committee”. That is the point. This is about the Assembly endorsement of specific criteria to ensure that the things that are outlined in the motion are actually done.
I am aware of the 246A statement; I have agreed to it. If Ms Le Couteur reads the statement yet again—it does go to market testing. We will keep a watching brief on that. That was a good thing. But if you look at the criteria, you will see that the criteria are quite different. The criteria ensure that it is about what has occurred also being looked at. The watching brief is prospective. The bulk of this is retrospective, about holding the government to account. If my two colleagues from PAC who are with us in the chamber at the moment agree that these criteria can be added to what it is that we are going to do, I would be very happy with that and I am sure the opposition would be very happy with that.
What we wanted and what we sought was the Assembly’s endorsement that this issue, which is a serious failure of process, of strategy, of detail and of due regard for taxpayers’ money, is addressed in the public accounts committee. If that commitment
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