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Title

INDIGENOUS EDUCATION (TARGETED ASSISTANCE) BILL 2000

In Committee

Database

Senate Hansard

Date

01-11-2000

Source

Senate

Parl No.

39

Electorate

Victoria

Interjector

 

Page

18803

Party

ALP

Presenter

 

Status

Final

Question No.

 

Questioner

 

Responder

 

Speaker

Carr, Sen Kim

Stage

In Committee

Type

 

Context

Bills

System Id

chamber/hansards/2000-11-01/0055


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Wednesday, 1 November 2000
Page: 18803


Senator CARR (12:15 PM) —Minister, I was concerned about ensuring that other senators had access to the documents, given that they are obviously consequential to this bill, and it is appropriate that the guidelines actually be read by senators before they are asked to make judgment. I appreciate that these are draft guidelines. But even in the format of draft guidelines they are quite clearly different from proposals in the bill. Minister, I take you to page 7 of the draft guidelines, for instance. At 2.6.3 there is a heading `Failure to Meet Conditions of Agreement'. It says here:

If a recipient does not meet a condition of IESIP funding in respect of a particular programme year, the recipient may have to repay to the Commonwealth any unspent monies. In any instance of a breach of the Agreement the Commonwealth will notify the Recipient in writing, and the Recipient may have to repay any funds advanced from that date should the breach not be satisfactorily resolved in 28 days.

Minister, a question then arises. If I look at the bill itself—if I could ask you to compare the two propositions—from my reading of the bill on page 10, clause 12, under the heading `Recovery of payments', it simply states:

... one or more of those conditions is breached; the Minister may, by notice sent to the recipient, require the recipient to repay to the Commonwealth the amount (the recoverable amount) stated in the notice.

Quite clearly there is a discrepancy between the provisions of the bill and the apparent meaning of the guidelines. Further, it says:

The recoverable amount cannot be more than the payment made to the recipient.

I am pleased to hear that the Commonwealth is not going to ask for more—although does that include interest? Do we actually ask for interest in these circumstances?