Page 3296 - Week 11 - Thursday, 22 September 1994
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PUBLIC ACCOUNTS - STANDING COMMITTEE
Report on Review of Auditor-General's Report No. 1 of 1994
MR KAINE (11.30): Madam Speaker, I present report No. 15 of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, entitled "Review of Auditor-General's Report No. 1, 1994 - Overtime and Allowances - Part 2", together with extracts from the minutes of proceedings. I move:
That the report be noted.
In considering this report and the matters that the Auditor-General raised, the committee was sensitive to the fact that there is not a great deal of life left for this Assembly. We have a limited number of days on which the Government's response to matters like this can be dealt with. So, in a sense, we truncated the process. We also noted that, in their response to the matters that the Auditor-General had raised, the Ministers generally indicated that action was being taken to rectify the deficiencies that the Auditor-General had noted. In this case, the committee has taken the course of making merely one recommendation. It is that the Government, in responding to this report, advise the Assembly in detail on matters raised by the Auditor-General in his report No. 1 of 1994 and, in particular, respond to some specific matters that the Standing Committee on Public Accounts has identified.
In all cases, the responsible Minister has indicated that corrective action is in progress. The committee accepts that that is the case; but in some cases we would like to know what the end result is. In one particular case, we asked for a further report from the Minister next month. That was to do with the role of janitors where schools are used for community purposes. We have put a short response time on that because it is a matter that has been running for a long time. We noted at paragraph 2.9 of our report that the Standing Committee on Social Policy had reported on the community and cultural use of schools. That was quite a long time ago. We accept that the Minister is examining this matter. He indicated that a report on options will be finalised by December 1994. Given the time that has elapsed already, we would like a more rapid response to that, so we have asked the Minister to report before the end of October. Other than that, the committee generally accepted that the responsible Ministers had these issues under control; but we would like to know the final outcome of them.
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