Page 1465 - Week 05 - Thursday, 12 May 1994
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and very comprehensive report. It is interesting, I think, to note in retrospect what the administration's comments were in connection with those audits, what the Government's responses were and what the situation is now. I would like to pick two matters and follow them through.
The first one is the question of the performance audit on fraud control. The Auditor-General's comments are on pages 10 and 11 of his report No. 6 of 1992. His comments, in fact, were quite adverse in that there seemed to have been very little progress made on the question of putting fraud control measures into place. He was quite critical. The committee had a look at those matters, and in our report dated June 1993 we noted in connection with fraud control:
The Committee was advised that most agencies have undertaken preliminary planning on risk assessment -
this is a year later, I might add -
and prepared outlines of fraud control plans, although only one or two plans would be in place. During the hearing the Committee was also advised that it was expected that all plans would be in place in the first half of 1993-94.
That was before December last year. The Chief Minister, when she responded to the report, said with reference to that section of the report:
The Government notes the Committee's concern at the development of fraud control plans ...
She referred then to an Auditor-General's report for the year ended June 1993, a report one year later than the one we are currently debating. She said that that report one year later noted:
... all agencies should have fraud control plans in place by the end of the 1993/94 year.
We have already seen a slip. The committee was told that the plans would all be in place in the first half of 1993-94. One year later, the Chief Minister said that they will all be in place by the end of 1993-94. We are at the end of 1993-94, for all practical purposes, and I would be interested to know whether in fact those fraud control plans are in place a year-and-a-half later. There is nothing to indicate that they are. It is an interesting case study to follow it through and see what the Auditor-General says, see what the committee's comments were, and see what the Government's comments were one year later. Here we are almost another year later and we still do not know whether the action that was promised by the administration has in fact taken place. It is a slow process.
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