Page 2647 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 23 June 2009
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on the Auditor-General’s budget. It will be resolved, at this point, by reducing staff. And the auditor told that to the estimates committee. She will be forced to reduce staff, which in turn reduces her ability to do her job by performing fewer performance audits.
I think it is a most unsatisfactory situation for the ACT government and, indeed, for the ACT community. As the auditor told the estimates committee—and perhaps Mr Stanhope should read the transcript before he lashes out in the way that he did—they do more than just the audit; they work with the departments to improve their efficiency, to improve their management, to improve their record keeping. The auditor made the point, quite particularly for the smaller agencies that do not have large finance sections in their department, they work with them to help improve; they provide advice that they do not have in house. She has been providing a service, an extra service, a bonus service, for our small agencies.
But what we have got is a government that seek to constrain that. They do not want a more efficient public service; they do not want a more effective public service. And constraining the auditor’s budget in this way, in this budget, is an indication of that. It is interesting that the standard around the world and, indeed, more and more around Australia, now seems to be that you want to have a balance in the work that the auditors-general do, of about 50 per cent financial audits—and that is clearly defined by the number of departments and agencies that you have to audit—but also aim to have 50 per cent of your work in the performance audits, because that is the rich ground, to achieve a better outcome for the taxpayer, to get better services and to get better delivery of services for taxpayers.
But what we have heard from the auditor is that she will be constrained this year. She will have to reduce from eight probably to seven performance audits, whereas she probably should be going from eight to about 16 performance audits a year so that she can work in an efficient manner and in a timely manner through all government agencies over a relatively shorter period of time. The problem is that the government do not want that; they do not want the savings; they do not want the scrutiny. And we know from the outburst on Friday exactly why they do not.
I was going to go straight to the example that Ms Le Couteur quoted, which was RailCorp in New South Wales. I saw one quote that staff were blatantly siphoning off public moneys but it was the auditor and ICAC that took that department to task and ensured that moneys that were being appropriated were being spent on taxpayers, not lining other people’s pockets.
The auditor has a real benefit here. The auditor can go in and do things that ordinary scrutiny does not allow, simply because the Auditor-General Act gives the Auditor-General the power to go in and make sure they get the evidence and get to the bottom of it. I, for the life of me, cannot understand why we would be against that. I think it is unreasonable; there is certainly not a case being made for it.
Then there are these petty antics of the Chief Minister: (1) he will throttle the money; (2) he will conduct audits. You can have them audited at any time. If he is truly concerned, he needs to write to the chair of PAC and ask that we have the audit office audited.
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