Page 2801 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 24 June 2009
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You go down further and the website says:
Our budget is set by Parliament, not the government of the day. About a fifth of our budget comes from income generated …
from other sources. There you are. The British parliament can set independence for their Auditor-General. It should not be hard for us to do the same.
In New Zealand the Auditor-General is paid by standing authority from the parliament and the quantum of the budget for the Auditor-General is determined independently by the remuneration tribunal. Importantly, the Auditor-General makes requests for funding directly to the parliament, not through the executive. If members go to the Controller and Auditor-General for New Zealand website:
The Auditor-General:
• makes requests for funding directly to Parliament (rather than through the Executive Government).
Why? Because at the heading of that section it says:
How does the Auditor-General maintain independence?
It maintains independence from the executive that it investigates by having the resources and the independence to do so.
I have not checked the debates about these decisions in each of these parliaments. I simply note that these countries have already gone down this path. At this time, no jurisdiction in Australia sets the budget for the auditor-general, other than by including the appropriation in the annual budget.
In this context, it is also pertinent to note some research to which the Auditor-General referred in her evidence to the estimates committee. Ms Pham referred to studies that have been done in the United Kingdom which indicate that, in the case of the United Kingdom, for every £1 spent on a performance audit, the government will get a return of £9 in terms of increased efficiencies and through savings. I would have thought that, at a time when we were looking for increased efficiencies and indeed savings, having the expert guidance of the Auditor-General would be a useful tool to a government that cannot make those decisions or will not make those decisions or simply refuses to make those decisions. There is evidence, I understand, that the joint standing committee in the federal parliament has a number that is basically $1 to $10. That shows the effectiveness of auditors-general.
What Ms Pham continued to say, however, was that performance audits can lead to important outcomes such as improved transparency, improved accountability, protection of community safety, enhanced government decision-making processes, increased efficiencies and generated savings in expenditure. I would emphasise, as did the Auditor-General, that achieving monetary savings is only one possible outcome from a performance audit and, as she said, there are a number of possible outcomes that will benefit the community in terms of the use of the community’s resources.
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