Page 2805 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 24 June 2009
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deliver to the best of our office capacity within our allocated budget, but the lack of adequate resources for our office will affect our ability …
It might be worth just reflecting on that statement from Ms Pham for a moment. I suspect that the report that Mr Stanhope was responding to on Friday was only part of the story. I suspect that that statement from Tu Pham to the estimates hearing is part of why Mr Stanhope felt that he needed to put her back in her box.
Tu Pham came to the Assembly, came to the estimates committee and appealed directly to us as an Assembly, saying, “We do not have adequate funding to do our job.” She does not have adequate funding to do her job. I suspect that that was what first raised the ire of the Chief Minister—which eventually led to his intemperate remarks, which have already been referred to, that she dared to go above his head: she dared to go direct to the Assembly and appeal for more money.
Ms Pham talked about the effect of not getting the kind of funding that they need. To return to a balanced budget in 2009-10, they need to cut around $200,000 off the budget. They are looking at cutting at least one senior staff or two staff. Ms Pham went on to say:
The reduced funding means that we will not be able to employ people from outside, as we have in the past. That could translate to a reduction of one or two performance audits. So we not only reduce our current capacity; we will not have improved capacity to respond to the government’s bigger budget and the government’s increased spending.
She went on, and I touched on this yesterday, about the proportion of spending under this government. She said:
So we are not keeping pace with the government’s increased spending, even though our work and the demand for our work link very closely with the government’s spending and activities.
I asked her what this would actually mean in terms of performance audits. Ms Pham said:
I think we may have to reduce performance audits by one or two a year.
I said:
So that would be down to?
Ms Pham said:
It will be down to six or seven per year instead of a target of eight.
We are talking about bare bones in terms of performance audits, going down to around six performance audits a year.
Isn’t that exactly what the government wants? That is exactly what this government wants. The fewer performance audits the better. There is nothing like having a
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