Page 2646 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 23 June 2009
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In 2007-08 we increased our target to achieve £9 for every £1 of net expenditure, up from £8:1 to £1 in 2006-07. We achieved the target with financial impacts of £656 million in 2007-08.
Our total financial impact is drawn from detailed estimates of the financial benefits—
there is a good phrase, “financial benefits”—
of changes in government practice which we trace to our value for money studies recommendations or financial audit findings. This total is compared against our actual net running cost for the relevant year. To ensure that our financial impacts measure is as robust an estimate as possible of the impact of our work, we agree the estimates of impact with the department or other public body concerned and they are then reviewed by our internal auditors and by our external auditors.
So there is a very clearly enunciated process, a process with relevant checks and balances, that requires the agreement of the departments so that the British National Audit Office can actually quantify what they saved the British taxpayer.
What have we got? We have got a Chief Minister who wants to attack that process. He is not interested in savings; he is not interested in greater efficiency; and he is not interested in better outcomes for the taxpayers of the ACT. What he is interested in is protecting his own ego.
It is not just the British National Audit Office that makes these findings. Committees from the federal parliament, the commonwealth parliament, have come up at some stages with a figure of $1 to $10. For every $1 that the Australian Audit Office spends, they make savings or efficiencies of $10. At a time when times are tough and times are tight, for the life of me, I cannot understand why we had this outburst from the Chief Minister on Friday.
I guess Mr Stanhope’s problem is that he just cannot handle criticism—reasonable and balanced criticism of the management of the Ambulance Service, in this case; reasonable criticism of the management of respite care facilities, which came out recently; and reasonable criticism, for instance, of the role of the Chief Minister’s Department in the data centre and gas-fired power station proposals in Tuggeranong. And the problem for the Chief Minister, and consequently for the people of the ACT, when he is embarrassed, when he is caught out, when he is brought to account by the independent auditor, is that he lashes out.
The Auditor-General is a critical component of the ACT’s democratic process. Particularly in a unicameral house, where we do not have a house of review of this place, the auditor is the independent person who looks at it. The Auditor-General should be, must be, valued and supported appropriately. If the Chief Minister has a problem, he should respond positively and, as required, defend the record of his government’s administration.
The ACT’s Auditor-General has proved to be an excellent watchdog of the ACT administration for a number of years. The reality now is simply this: we have pressure
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