Port Moresby, 24 April 1968
In my letter of 16th April about amendments to the Papua and New Guinea Act and suggestions for the role and duty of Ministerial Members and Assistant Ministerial Members,1 I did not express a clear opinion on the question of financial delegations. Paper CWP/2,2 part 11(3), suggests that the role of the Ministerial Member would include:
‘ . . .3 to exercise such delegations as may be authorised by the Administrator.’
and then the last stage of this working paper contains in the final paragraph the following:
‘Financial delegations—Ministerial Members should exercise financial delegation within the framework of the budget. Variation within allocations or for other purposes, of any extent, would still be required to be approved by Treasury. Considerations will also have to be given to any form of financial delegation to a Ministerial Member which now rests with a Departmental Head.’
I have now had a note, copy attached, from the Treasurer setting out his views on this question.4 It raises a number of aspects, all of which to my mind suggest caution on this question of financial delegation.
From the more general point of view expressed in my earlier letter, namely that it is preferable for the responsibility of Ministerial Members to be a collective rather than an individual one at this stage of development, I have also been led to the conclusion that there should be no financial delegation to Ministerial Members at the present stage.
Perhaps this point could be considered in more detail when Constitutional and related questions are discussed during my visit to Canberra on 6th and 7th May.
[NAA: A452, 1968/4245]
1 Document 171.
2 See loc. cit.
3 Ellipsis is in the original.
4 Newman had written that ‘a number of embarrassing features attach to the suggestion of Ministerial financial delegations’—‘bearing in mind’ an administrative order from the Minister limiting the Administrator’s financial delegation to $100,000 and therefore the delegations given by the Administrator to various Territory officers. Inter alia, these awkward features included the wording of the Treasury Ordinance, which currently allowed only for delegations to the Administrator and Territory officers; the question of the level of delegations to MMs, which was ‘questionable’ given that it needed to be set below the Administrator and above departmental heads; and the possibility that legislation enacted might mirror that in Australia thereby giving MMs the authority to delegate—something that Newman felt should not occur ‘at this juncture’ (minute, Newman to Hay, 22 April 1968, NAA: A452, 1968/4245).