Page 1209 - Week 04 - Thursday, 26 March 2015
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For the applicable reporting period—1 July 2014 to 31 December 2014—the committee considered a total of 14 proposed appointments to six bodies. In accordance with continuing resolution 5A, I present the following paper:
Education, Training and Youth Affairs—Standing Committee—Schedule of Statutory Appointments—8th Assembly—Period 1 July to 31 December 2014.
The standing committee notes that, whilst it had no specific comment to make on any proposed appointments during this period, the committee makes the observation relating to the establishment and publication of a consolidated list of agencies and bodies to whom statutory appointments are made by the ACT government and which are referred to the Assembly committee pursuant to the Legislation Act.
The committee’s understanding is that there is no centrally maintained list of bodies and that there is no centrally maintained list of appointees which would, for instance, show the number of bodies particular individuals may be appointed to and their terms of appointment.
The committee considers this information would assist committees, the public and good government generally. The committee thanks the ministers with which it deals on statutory appointments for their cooperation and assistance, and looks forward to reporting further under this order of the Assembly in the second part of the year.
Executive business—precedence
Ordered that executive business be called on.
Annual Reports (Government Agencies) Amendment Bill 2014
Debate resumed from 27 November 2014, on motion by Ms Gallagher:
That this bill be agreed to in principle.
MR HANSON (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (12.03): I can indicate that the opposition will be supporting the bill in principle, but we do have concerns with an aspect of this legislation, that being the delay in annual reporting from three to four months that is an aspect of this legislation. We will be opposing those clauses in the detail stage.
Annual reports are an important aspect of government scrutiny and accountability. But, as is noted in the explanatory documents provided with the bill, there is no doubt that information reporting requirements are evolving and changing over time. What we have seen is that some of the information that is provided in the annual reports is duplicated across the range of reports provided by various agencies and is now available in other forums and in other places—online or in other agency reports.
We now live in an environment where a lot of information is provided to us. It is important that it be timely. On occasion, waiting for an annual report simply to provide duplicated information is of little use other than creating a bunch of administrative work that may be unnecessary.
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