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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 9 Hansard (5 September) . . Page.. 2866 ..

MS CARNELL (continuing):

It was my view that the Auditor-General Act suggested that the chief executive did have to get an actual final draft. Apparently the Auditor-General Act reads in a way that it could mean that or it could mean any draft. It is really up to the Auditor-General how he perceives or understands his act, but I understand again that the Auditor-General was interviewing former members of various departments as late as last Thursday. On that basis, how could the head of my department have a final draft of the end document? Again, this is not an issue for me or for the government.

The Auditor-General is at arms length. The Auditor-General has an act under which he operates and I believe that the Auditor-General will do the job in the way he sees fit.

Mr Speaker, what I said last week was that I did not believe that it would be tabled this week. Obviously I was right because I got a letter from the Auditor-General yesterday saying that he was not going to table it this week.

MR QUINLAN: I have a supplementary question, Mr Speaker. Is it not the case that the immediate past head of Treasury met regularly with the Auditor-General during his investigations with a view to ironing out any discrepancies or disputes on facts progressively, a process that should have obviated the need for any final review by the chief executive anyway? Is it not the case that there have been many generations of the Auditor's report which have been available to your administration for a large slice of the inordinate time that has elapsed since it commenced?

MS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I am sure you would agree that this is not an issue for the government. The Auditor-General conducts his business under the Auditor-General Act. Under that act, as the Auditor-General operates, he provides regularly throughout the process copies of all reports to people who are affected by those reports. That is a normal process. That is what happens the whole way through. That is the issue of natural justice.

Those individuals then respond. It is certainly true that the former head of DTI and, I have to say, many others regularly met with the Auditor-General throughout this process to iron out issues surrounding the report. Equally, Mr Speaker, appropriately I have had nothing to do with those meetings. I do not even know when most of them-in fact, just about any of them-happened. It just happens that I know about one that occurred last week because I met the person involved that night at a particular function and that person told me what he had been doing that day.

Mr Speaker, this is part of the normal process that the Auditor-General embarks upon to ensure that his reports are as fulsome as they can be.

Mr Humphries: In accordance with the law.

MS CARNELL: In accordance with the law; and in accordance with the law, I have to say, he does not inform me of the process or the approach that he is taking, nor should he because the law does not say that that is the approach to take. It does say, though, that the head of CMD should be given an opportunity to respond to the final draft or to a draft at the end of the process.

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