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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Thursday, 4 March 2004) . . Page.. 739 ..

the problems for them is that there is no course that you can do: one member of staff did a one-day course or seminar and brought that knowledge back to the Auditor-General’s office. However, we think that, if we are serious about sustainability—as we said in the last report—and we are serious about making sure that, where we do do audits, we really get to the heart of them and examine not just the financial elements but also the spin-offs of those into the environment and the social outcomes, then it is very important that the auditor report on this. Where it is done, that would be fine. Where it is not done or cannot be done, the auditor should outline within the report the reasons for that.

Following on from that is recommendation 4, in which we recommend that the Auditor-General’s Office budget be increased to take into account the implications of recommendation 3. We want to examine the potential for setting up a dedicated environmental and social auditor position in the office. If there is not the expertise and it is hard to buy the expertise, then we have to start growing our own. We think that, for a small amount of money in the overall scheme of things, an additional position should be created that would allow these audits to be done in compliance with section 12 (2) of the Auditor-General Act.

It was an interesting report to do. The issues of sustainability and that sort of audit are matters that we have looked at several times over the last couple of years. I commend the report to the Assembly.

MS TUCKER (12.30): As the member who initiated the original amendment to the Auditor-General Act 1996, I would also like to make a few comments on the recommendation regarding triple bottom line reporting, so that, in the conduct of a performance audit, there is the potential to take environmental issues relevant to the operations being reviewed into account as part of the work of the auditor. It is time that we resource the auditor’s office appropriately to pick this up because we now have an Office of Sustainability, we are having indicators developed and things have definitely moved since I first proposed this amendment and it was supported by the Assembly. It is timely that now a committee of the Assembly is saying to the government that this work should be recognised and resourced properly.

I look forward to a positive response.

MS MacDONALD (12.31): I will speak briefly about recommendation 2.

MR SPEAKER: Ms MacDonald, I do not want to interrupt you, but it is about 12.30. Would you rather deal with it later?

MS MacDONALD: I will be one minute, Mr Speaker.

MR SPEAKER: Okay, that is good.

MS MacDONALD: I have no intention of going any further than that. I wanted to place on the record that I have dissented from recommendation 2, in which the majority of the committee indicated that it believed that there should be amendments to sections 34 and 19, as proposed by the former Auditor-General, and that this should be incorporated into the government’s amendments to the Auditor-General Act.

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