Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

The Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013—the PGPA Act—is scheduled to replace the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997—FMA Act—and the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act 1997—the CAC Act—from 1 July 2014, as the main legislation covering the financial operations of entities across the Commonwealth. It is important legislation.

To support this change the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2014—the PGPA(C and TP) Bill—has been introduced into parliament to repeal the CAC Act and to substantially reduce the number of operative provisions within the FMA Act, as it is now known. The PGPA amendment bill generally makes necessary technical amendments to the PGPA Act that had become apparent over the past 12 months as a result of the development of the supporting rules, as well as some amendments which are needed to properly implement the operation of the supporting PGPA rules to be proposed to parliament.

This bill also addresses—this is important—some drafting errors in the PGPA Act that were not noticed during its drafting. We heard the member for Watson talk about the fact that Labor was, indeed, the party which, when in government, introduced this bill. But they did not get it right. How often have we heard that Labor did not quite get something right? They missed by that much!

Mr Morrison interjecting—

I hear the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection chuckling. He might well chuckle, because Labor missed out by just that much when it came to border security. There were 55,000 people arriving on hundreds of boats but that all stopped when the coalition put in place its new border protection regime. They put in place a minister who actually knew how to stop the boats. But I digress.

The PGPA (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill will make amendments to around 250 pieces of legislation as a result of the PGPA Act's introduction. The amendments include technical changes to replace reference to the FMA and CAC acts with references to the PGPA act; repealing or amending provisions in enabling legislation where the PGPA provisions will operate in future, or where they operate together, such as with corporate planning and annual reports; application provisions to specify when provisions in the PGPA Act apply, such as in relation to annual reports; savings and transitional provisions for various provisions in the FMA Act and CAC Act to allow for an effective transfer from those arrangements to the PGPA Act.

We heard the member for Watson earlier in this debate over egging the issue when he was talking about what a huge thing this was. It is important but the member for Watson did over egg the issue, when some of these matters are just cross-referencing in this legislation.

The Australian Constitution provides that amounts for the ordinary annual services of government and amounts for other purposes cannot be presented to the parliament in the same bill. As a result, the bills are being presented in three separate bills. I will go through them: the ordinary annual services of government bills numbered 1, 3 or 5; amounts for other purposes bills, numbered 2, 4, and 6 and amounts for the parliamentary departments.

We heard the member for Watson talk about the necessity to push these through. Yes, there is a necessity to get them through before 1 July 2014. The member for Watson, the leader of opposition business, made out that the necessity to get something through in a quick and timely fashion was something that had never occurred since Federation. Certainly under his watch as water minister, Labor tried to get through the Water Act such that the Murray Darling Basin Plan could be implemented.

We saw 8,000 people turn out to a protest rally at Griffith. In fact, it did not start as a protest rally. It actually started as an information session by the Murray Darling Basin Authority to—

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