Page 2662 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 23 June 2009
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expressed a preference for direct funding from Parliament or the legislature, even though this arrangement may not be ideal in all circumstances. Participants stressed the need to demonstrate clearly the benefit that a well resourced, fully functioning audit office can bring to all concerned.
I think that last bit is the bit that is the most relevant: “Participants stressed the need to demonstrate clearly the benefits that a well resourced, fully functioning audit office can bring to all concerned.”
It is disappointing that this government is not embracing the Auditor-General. It is disappointing that this government is not working proactively with the Auditor-General to try and improve service delivery. If this government were fair dinkum about spending money properly and delivering services that the people of Canberra actually want they would be embracing the Auditor-General. They would not be doing what they are doing—that is, threatening them and then carrying out their threat by what is, in effect, cutting their funding. What we are seeing here is the government trying to minimise the role and the influence of the Auditor-General in the governance of the ACT. That is a pretty disappointing sign. Elsewhere we are seeing governments bolster auditors-general, but here in the ACT we are seeing the absolute opposite. We are seeing a government that is scared of the Auditor-General, scared of what the Auditor-General does, scared of what the Auditor-General will unveil and scared that the people of Canberra will realise how much wastage this government is producing.
The Leader of the Opposition touched on the issue of ACTION and the Auditor-General’s role, or lack thereof, in measuring the timeliness of their services. For members that may not be aware of what happened in the estimates committee with regard to ACTION, I will give a quick rundown. We asked why the target of 99.8 per cent timeliness for bus services was not met and why it was, in fact, only 83 per cent—a fall of about 16 per cent. After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing and people going all over the place, members of the committee and those present finally found out that the target that was set for 2008-09 and the way it was measured for 2008-09 were totally different things. The ACTION representatives present could not even explain how it was measured last year and how it was measured this year. Of course, that aroused some concern from the opposition. We asked this question on ACTION’s timeliness indicator:
Please explain the change in monitoring this indicator.
We received an answer to this question on notice and, like all the other ones, it was particularly late, but we did get it. Minister Stanhope said:
The previous measurement for this indicator was reviewed by the Auditor-General in its management comments about ACTION’s 2007/8 Statement of Performance. The Auditor-General considered that measuring timeliness of services by recording the time that buses left the depot was inappropriate.
If that was the case, why was there not a line in the budget to say, “It is inappropriate so we are going to change the way it is measured”? Instead, they just put in a figure
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