Page 2230 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 28 August 2007
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These reports provide pointers to where politicians should seek more information, ask questions and try to get to the root of problems. The ability to achieve the obvious efficiencies and synergies of working across government was identified as a difficulty hampering the implementation of recommendations, even when governments agreed to them.
At hearings, the Auditor-General identified that there remain problems with record keeping across this government. Record sharing and maintenance is one of those jobs which can be neglected in an under-resourced public service—put off until later unless there are sufficient people employed in the area of setting up and maintaining systems. I will be interested to see if the Auditor-General’s inquiry indicates that this is the case.
The Auditor-General also expressed concern that, unless the public accounts committee decided to conduct an inquiry, departments were not too quick to implement audit recommendations. However, the workload of the PAC at present requires more than one secretary to keep up with it, and we need to review our workload until the Assembly decides to devote more resources to servicing committees. As it is, the Auditor-General is looking for more leadership from government—most properly from the Chief Minister’s Department, since this is where the responsibility for the public service lies in having sensible measures implemented across government.
The Auditor-General indicated disappointment with the government on a topic about which the Greens are scathing in relation to this budget—the lack of any evidence of adoption of sustainability indicators in the budget. I quote from her:
However, in this budget I did not see further progress made on that line of progress that you would expect the government to continue to get to the improved or final product of sustainable reporting.
It is extremely disappointing that the government has rejected the estimates committee’s very mild recommendations on following up the Auditor-General’s reports. I believe that she sincerely expressed a real problem when she said that she did not see her recommendations being implemented. It is clear that there should be follow-up by the government. It would seem to me that the Chief Minister’s Department is the appropriate place for that to occur, since the Chief Minister is the primary minister in the government and the Chief Minister’s Department has responsibility for an across government approach. Remember that we used to have a public service commissioner. We do not have one of those any more; that function is now being carried out in the Chief Minister’s Department and that is where the work needs to be done.
I have not heard—and I would like to hear—how the government plans to make sure that departments follow up on the Auditor-General’s recommendations. It is not enough to simply reject recommendations and give a reason why you are rejecting them when you do not explain how you are going to perform that task. It does not matter how useful and illuminating the work of an Auditor-General is: as with any
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