Page 4921 - Week 16 - Tuesday, 26 November 1991
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certain amount of money for discretionary efficiency audits like this and that there should then be a process, by way of an amendment to the Act that appoints the Auditor-General, whereby the Auditor-General is able to seek additional funds from the Assembly. That issue then can be debated quite properly on the floor of the house and the money can be allocated accordingly. The Auditor-General then can go about his or her business as appropriate.
That probably is one way in which we can provide a degree of independence - by ensuring that the Auditor-General comes to the parliament. After all, we are the people to whom he or she reports. It is important, I believe, for the Auditor-General in these situations to be able to seek money. I would expect that it would be allocated out of the Treasurer's Advance. I would suggest that an Auditor-General would be reasonably discreet in the way he went about this particular process because he himself, of course, is audited. Quite clearly, he would not want to be seen to be wasting money; it certainly would not look good on his report card at the end of the year. Provided that the Auditor-General can justify that there is a requirement for additional funds to enable him to conduct this sort of work, he should be able to do so, provided, of course, that the time is available for that to occur. I would like to see that issue taken up by the next Assembly and the next government so as to make sure that that ability is provided to the Auditor-General.
MR MOORE (5.42): Mr Jensen raises some very important points about the Auditor-General. I think it is very important to recall that the Auditor-General has demonstrated that money spent in that area has often resulted in money being saved through attention being drawn to inefficiencies within government. I think it is important for me to reiterate what Mr Jensen has said; that the Auditor-General does need to have enough money to do those efficiency audits beyond what is required of him by statute. Whilst it is important that we look into that solution offered by Mr Jensen - the next Assembly ought to - it seems to me that, in our second year of financing, we should have been able to see that the position of the Auditor-General is underfunded. That is particularly clear when we see the efficiency audits that he was forced to cut.
I think that the most important one of those was the efficiency audit that he had proposed to carry out with reference to leasing and the leasehold system. It has long been a matter of conjecture in this Territory that there were problems in the leasing system prior to self-government. Indeed, allegations of corruption were levelled prior to the last election. That would be an area, I think, where the Auditor-General could, at the very least, clear the air.
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