Page 4429 - Week 14 - Thursday, 1 December 1994
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PUBLIC ACCOUNTS - STANDING COMMITTEE
Report on Review of Auditor-General's Report No. 3 of 1994
MR KAINE (11.51): Madam Speaker, I present report No. 17 of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts entitled "Review of Auditor-General's Report No. 3, 1994 - Public Housing Maintenance", and I move:
That the report be noted.
This Auditor-General's report, as the title implies, had to do with the effectiveness of the management of maintenance of our public housing stock. The audit concluded that the management of maintenance services has been only partially effective in ensuring that appropriate quantities of maintenance services have been acquired at the lowest achievable costs. That is a summary of what the audit concluded. In discussing that conclusion, the Auditor-General covered a range of issues. In most cases he was critical of the performance of the Housing Trust.
In discussing the general question of whether we were getting value for money in terms of maintenance expenditure, the Minister asserted, among other things, that the report - and I presume that he meant the Auditor's report - "could not measure what is being achieved by maintenance programs over time and whether current expenditures are sufficient to maintain the value of assets". There were comments, first from the Auditor-General, suggesting that we are not necessarily getting value for money; and, secondly, from the Minister, implying that we do not really know what the consequences of the expenditure on Housing Trust houses are. Those comments were a little disturbing to the committee. We also noted, and we expressed our concern, that there should be no confusion as to whether expenditure is adding to capital value or just maintaining the value of the assets. For example, there seems to be some difficulty in the Housing Trust administration in determining whether expenditure that currently comes under the heading "maintenance expenditure" is capital expenditure in that it adds to the ultimate value of the house. There seems to be some difficulty in the existing accounting systems and costing systems within the organisation in coming to any firm conclusion about that.
The committee has expressed its concern about these issues. Conscious of the fact that there would be no product from this report during the remaining life of this Assembly, in our report we have drawn the attention of the Assembly to some of the issues that have been raised by the Auditor-General. Apart from a couple of recommendations that we think should be adopted, we have asked the Government to inform the Assembly at some appropriate time of the results of action which the committee requests that they take and, incidentally, which the officials of the Housing Trust undertook to take. The best that we could do under those circumstances was to ask the Government to report on the progress on those issues. During the life of this Assembly, that will conclude this issue. I suggest that it should be taken up again by the Auditor-General, perhaps next year, to review further whether there has been any progress in that matter.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Sitting suspended from 11.55 am to 2.30 pm
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