Page 2644 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 23 June 2009
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Not agreed.
A preliminary analysis of funding of Auditor-General functions for Australian States and Territories suggests the ACT Auditor-General is comparatively well funded. The ACT Auditor-General has the highest total revenue per capita ($16.75 per person in the ACT—the lowest is NSW at $4.88 per person) and a mid range (fourth highest out of eight) level of direct government appropriation per person.
So what do we do? Are we going to pick and choose the standard by which we judge what our auditor does? It would be interesting to apply that same analysis, the flawed analysis, to the states. And it starts from a flawed assumption that you can actually compare these directly. If New South Wales spends less on education, will there be a rigorous audit of education to reduce education funding to the level of New South Wales? Do people want that? Is that what the Chief Minister is saying? Is he saying that the spending per capita on health in New South Wales is the target level and we do a rigorous audit of health to find out? And is he saying, for instance, in relation to arts funding and perhaps even public art funding, that we do a rigorous audit of what is spent in the ACT against what is spent in New South Wales?
If you want to pick New South Wales as the benchmark, I do not think there are too many people in the ACT who would like a New South Wales standard applied to the people of the ACT. I cannot think of any issue where the people of the ACT would like to be treated in the same way as the New South Wales government—
Mr Seselja: They cannot even pay their bills.
MR SMYTH: They may be starting to pay their bills but it is going to take them a long time to pay off their bills. It is the most appallingly run state but it is the state that the Chief Minister runs to. What he is saying is “We want a New South Wales-style of government in the ACT.” There might be some advantage in that. At least by 2012 they are going to be back in surplus; at least that was their intention. At least they have put the intention on the table, although many might have doubt about it. But the problem with this is that it is a flawed premise from the start.
You only have to look at, for instance, the editorial in this morning’s paper—and I will read it—about the Chief Minister. It states:
He said Pham’s office received the most per capita funding in the nation, at $16.75 per ACT resident, whereas NSW was the lowest at $4.48. But there are vast differences in the size of the population. NSW has more than six million residents and the ACT has just more than 300,000—a factor of 20.
The obvious burden for a tiny jurisdiction is having to fund establishment costs while relying on a lower overall funding and potential revenue from clients. The NSW Audit Office generates revenue in excess of $20 million a year and has more than 400 clients. In Canberra, the Auditor-General receives about $3 million, or two-thirds of its income, from financial audit fees from government agencies—
of which there are probably fewer than 100—
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