AUSTRALIA
The Guardian (UK)
Daniel Hurst, political correspondent
theguardian.com, Wednesday 28 May 2014
A senior bureaucrat has moved to allay concerns about nearly $7m in savings gained from the royal commission into child sexual abuse, saying they were the result of lower-than-expected capital and legal costs.
The opposition questioned the redirection of $6.7m of previously earmarked funds into a separate royal commission – the Abbott government-ordered inquiry into Labor’s home insulation program – and accused the attorney general, George Brandis, of concealing the decision.
But the secretary of the Attorney General’s Department, Roger Wilkins, said the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse, initiated by the previous Labor government, was not being under-resourced.
Wilkins said capital spending on fit-out work had been $4m less than expected, and the other saving of $2.7m arose because the government had not incurred forecast expenditure for commonwealth witness legal costs.
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