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

I will take my time because this is very important. Whilst you might all laugh, the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2014 is a very important bill. The government in the Senate did not oppose this amendment—a move by the Labor Party—and made that decision in order to have the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013 commence as intended from 1 July 2014. The provisions contained in the PGPA Act seek to modernise the Commonwealth's current financial accountability performance and reporting framework. It is arguably the most significant change in public sector governance since the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997 and the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act 1997 were introduced around 17 years ago. The bill makes amendments to more than 250 pieces of legislation across the Commonwealth to align their operation with the PGPA Act and to ensure the effective implementation of the PGPA Act and supporting PGPA rules.

The amendment proposed by the opposition would insert a new savings provision into the main PGPA (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill to ensure that a legal basis for the guidelines would remain under the PGPA framework and the amendments in the PGPA consequential bill would themselves no longer have the effect of scrapping those guidelines. While the government is not supportive of the guidelines, to ensure timely commencement of the PGPA Act the government does not oppose this amendment.

Finally, a lot of effort has already been devoted across the Commonwealth to ensuring that entities are ready for a 1 July 2014 start to the PGPA Act. There would be a disruption to planning across a considerable number of Commonwealth government bodies if the PGPA Act were not enacted at this time.

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