Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Banking and Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

I am a few centimetres taller than you, Senator Murray. I have this stack of annual reports in my office—hundreds of them are produced each year. That is fair enough. I do not have a complaint about that. Departments and agencies are required to publish annual reports, and they are on the record. The problem is you have to search through hundreds of different annual reports. I suggest, Senator Colbeck, that you go back and ask for a copy of every annual report to be delivered to your office, if you do not do it already, and just see how high the stack grows. One of the great difficulties with this is that, if you want information that is common to all agencies and departments, you actually have to go through every damn annual report to consolidate all the information across agencies and departments.

Labor and the Democrats are arguing on this occasion—which we think is a special case, given the nature of special appropriations, the importance of it and its growth—that there should be a consolidated register which we can readily go to. That is what we are requesting, and we think that is reasonable in the context of what has occurred and the difficulty in going through all these reports to identify a comprehensive list.

Question negatived.

I move amendment (3):

(3)    Schedule 3, page 24 (after line 3), before item 3, insert:

2C Before section 28

Insert:

27A Time limits for special appropriations

        (1)    If a provision of an Act:

             (a)    has effect immediately before the commencement of this Act; and

             (b)    appropriates money; and

             (c)    does not specify the amount of money so appropriated;

the appropriation of money by that provision, unless otherwise provided by the Parliament, ceases to have effect at the expiration of the fourth year after the day the Financial Framework Legislation Amendment Act (No. 1) 2006 receives the Royal Assent.

        (2)    Amounts otherwise payable under a special appropriation which ceases to have effect under subsection (1) are to be paid from money appropriated by the Parliament for that purpose.

        (3)    An appropriation under subsection (2) must not have effect for more than four financial years.

I am very disappointed that the government could not accept those two previous amendments. I think they were very reasonable in terms of improving, by a centimetre or two, the level of government accountability in this area. I will not have time to conclude my remarks on amendment (3). Amendment (3) is, again, co-sponsored by the Australian Democrats and the Labor Party. It goes to setting a time limit for the special appropriations that have been under discussion in this debate.

Progress reported.