Page 2641 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 23 June 2009
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I think perhaps it’s time for the Auditor-General’s office to be audited so we can have a look at the appropriateness of the level of her funding.
He went on, apparently, to say that most certainly there could be a funding cut. He said:
I wouldn’t anticipate that, but when we have a situation where the ACT’s Auditor-General’s office, on early advice to me, receives 400 per cent more funding than the NSW Auditor-General’s office, then that’s an issue I want to look at.
He went on to talk about the per capita funding. In the ACT, it is apparently $16.95 per resident, whereas in New South Wales it is the lowest, at $4.88. Talking about that, yes, certainly our costs are more than those in New South Wales. That has to be true for quite a lot of things that the ACT government does. We are a small jurisdiction.
Mr Seselja: It’s about critical mass, though, isn’t it?
MS LE COUTEUR: Yes. There are some inevitable issues with being a small jurisdiction. Given some of the issues in New South Wales—and RailCorp is probably the first one that comes to mind—do we really want to say, from an auditor-general point of view, that we are comparing ourselves with New South Wales? Is this really what we are aiming to be—as good as RailCorp? I really do not think so.
Last year, the Auditor-General’s Office ran a deficit, and it ran a deficit so that it could continue to keep the same number of performance audits. The estimates committee discussed this issue at some length, because it appears to be the case that the Auditor-General has two choices, neither of which I would regard as attractive, given the current budget allocation. Either they will have to run a deficit again or they will have to decrease the number of performance audits. So recommendation 14 of the estimates committee was:
The Committee recommends that the Auditor-General’s funding allocation be increased to allow for the target number of performance audits to be reached without running a deficit.
I strongly support that recommendation. I am getting close to running out of time. In the government’s response to the recommendations, they point out that expenditure for the Auditor-General has increased in the last few years. While I am not the Auditor-General and cannot answer in great detail, my understanding is that a significant reason for this was the challenge of implementing the international financial reporting standards in the public sector.
As some members may be aware, there have been significant changes in these standards, but most of these changes have been made on the basis of private company reporting rather than public sector reporting. There are significant changes or interpretation work that needs to be done to make this work within the public sector. It was the topic of a whole afternoon’s discussion at ACPAC because it is a major issue. This is one of the reasons why the Auditor-General has required additional funding so that we can implement these properly in the ACT.
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