Page 1459 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 17 April 1991
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Auditor-General's Report
MR BERRY: My question is directed to the Chief Minister. Does the Chief Minister agree with the statement by the secretary of his department to the Public Accounts Committee that the ACT Auditor-General's first report contains "broad generalisations which are untypical of such reports in other jurisdictions", and that it is not "necessary or desirable to respond to some of these generalisations"?
MR KAINE: Quite clearly, Mr Speaker, there will be some opinions expressed by the head of the ACT Government Service as a public official that will not necessarily coincide with mine or those of the Government. He has a particular position and he is entitled to take that position. That is a fairly general statement. I think that my personal view is that we have a new body politic here; we have a new legislative body. Some of us have been trying to make it work in a different way from that in which other legislative bodies work. I think that leads to the conclusion that the way the administration is put into effect and managed perhaps can be different, and that also leads to the conclusion that the office of Auditor-General can perhaps be performed in a different way from the way it is performed elsewhere.
I do not know that there are any hard and fast conventions about what an Auditor-General should and should not say in his report or how he is supposed to couch the words. If he has a strong view or even if he is expressing views of a broad and general nature, I think that he has the freedom to express them in any way he wishes. That may not be acceptable to some of our senior public servants, but it is a difference of view which might in fact be healthy in that they see things from a different viewpoint and get into some debate about the kinds of things that ought to be in the reports, how they should be dealt with, and what the public service response ought to be. So I do not have a strong view about this.
I would certainly not attempt to direct the Auditor-General in what he should say and how he should say it. He is a statutory officer. On the other hand, the head of the ACT Government Service is entitled to express his view, both in a Public Accounts Committee situation and elsewhere. I am not going to tell him what he should say either.
MR BERRY: I have a supplementary question. What specific actions have you directed in response to the Auditor's report, given that your public servants are proposing not to respond?
MR KAINE: Well, there are two things. First of all, the Public Accounts Committee is pursuing its own particular course of action in connection with that report. As I have said, the Government will respond to that when the Public Accounts Committee comes forward with its report for
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