Page 2649 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 23 June 2009
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the Auditor-General is quite open to having a discussion about the right role for the Auditor-General’s Office—I think if the government does not want this to be a threat, it needs to undertake any consideration of the role of the Auditor-General in a very transparent way.
I think it should primarily operate through the public accounts committee. Any review of the Auditor-General’s Office should work through the public accounts committee. There should be a discussion of the terms of reference so that there is a very transparent process. Any report that is received from the executive must be provided in full to the public accounts committee, not some edited version, some highlights package or some interpretation from the executive. It must come in full.
I would seek in this chamber today a commitment from the government, from the executive, that if there is to be any review of the Auditor-General’s role it be done through the public accounts committee, that it be done in consultation with the public accounts committee and that it does not turn into some sort of witch-hunt that reflects a sense of frustration that the Auditor-General is making critical findings. These are not political findings and there seems to be an assessment or an approach by this government that if there is a critical finding, it is a political finding. That is simply not the case here.
To suggest that the Auditor-General is making some kind of political finding and therefore question the Auditor-General’s independence is outrageous. The government need to be very explicit; they need to stand up in this chamber and say that that is not their strategy. We need to know that there is an absolute freedom for the Auditor-General to make critical findings in the spirit in which the office does. It is important here to re-emphasise the way the Auditor-General’s Office approaches these things. It conducts an inquiry, further discussion with that department, presentation of initial findings and further discussion before the Auditor-General comes out with the report.
I look forward to the Chief Minister and/or other ministers in this place clarifying their positions in relation to the Auditor-General and confirming their commitment to the absolute independence of the role of the Auditor-General’s Office.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Treasurer, Minister for Health, Minister for Community Services and Minister for Women) (11.15): The government believes that the Auditor-General plays a very important role in monitoring and reporting on government activities, particularly through the performance and financial auditing process. It is important for the Assembly to acknowledge, though, that the government, again, like the Legislative Assembly, exempted the Auditor-General from an efficiency dividend when we were looking to apply that across government. It was in recognition of the important role that the Auditor-General plays and the fact that we were in a very tight budgetary situation in terms of capacity to fund new expenditure.
I have to say that as part of the budget process we would have got budget pressure, budget bids, from almost every agency across government. At least 90 to 95 per cent of them would have been returned without being addressed through this budget. Indeed, we went further: not only did we not address those budget pressures that
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