Page 864 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 2 May 2007
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ACT agencies, focusing on compliance with existing policies and procedures. While the Auditor-General found that there was room for improvement in the procedures adopted by some of these seven, it is significant that the office found no evidence of fraud or misconduct by any officer or by any agency. Importantly, the report stated that most of the audited agencies had adequate policies and guidelines and that a satisfactory control framework was in place to manage and account for credit card use and hospitality expenditure.
The government did not simply breathe a sigh of relief and move on. Agency internal audit teams have been working with the ACT Auditor-General’s Office to review their guidelines for hospitality and other discretionary expenditure. In addition, the senior executives responsible for business integrity risk unit from each agency met recently to review the ACT’s integrity policy.
It is always easy from the opposition benches to make officials punching bags for political gains, but those sitting on the opposition benches today in this particular legislature have made public servant bashing a very cruel art form. It worries them not a bit that they besmirch the reputation of public servants through innuendo laden questions and motions. It worries them not that they cause needless anguish and embarrassment to individuals who, for the most part, have absolutely nothing to answer for. It worries them not that they quaff the wine and eat the finger food paid for by ACT officers at government or agency sponsored events and then proceed to question the expenditure on that wine and the cost per canape, barely pausing to wipe their lips before progressing from indulgence to confected outrage.
There is considerable—and even, at one level, delicious—irony in having the ACT Liberals attempt to lecture and admonish this government on the issue of good governance. The ACT Liberals, of all people! I am pleased that the Leader of the Opposition has moved this motion. It allows us to reflect for a few moments on the track record of those opposite on these important—utterly important—issues of good governance.
Let us look at the Liberal Party’s record in government—for instance, at what the Auditor-General found about the former Liberal government’s behaviour in relation to the Bruce Stadium redevelopment fiasco. Let us look at what the Auditor-General found in relation to that matter and the extent to which that government, including Mr Stefaniak, embraced the notion of good governance. What did the auditor find? That Mr Stefaniak and his colleagues breached the Financial Management Act when they borrowed—illegally, overnight—$10 million to help pay for an ill-advised and atrociously mismanaged fiasco. What did the Auditor-General say? The Auditor-General wrote:
… There have clearly been serious breaches of laws.
… Breaches of the law relating to expenditure of public funds without legislative authority are serious as they contravene a most important principle of the Westminster tradition.
That is what the Auditor-General said about Mr Stefaniak and his colleagues. Of course, that borrowing—by stealth, in the dark of night, in secret—was just the tip of
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