Page 2806 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 24 June 2009
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performance audit from an independent Auditor-General to actually show up government mismanagement and government waste. Mr Stanhope could not have that, so what does he do? He attacks the Auditor-General.
Ms Pham went on and cited a number of studies, which Mr Smyth referred to in his speech this morning. She went on to talk about the fact that performance audits are about savings and efficiencies, but not only about that. She said:
I also would like to add that our performance audit works are not always aimed at saving money. We aim at improved transparency, improved accountability, the protection of community safety or look at the government decision-making process.
All of these are critically important to the community. We want to see our government being as efficient as possible in using taxpayers’ money. The Auditor-General does that and provides that role. She went on to say that it is about improved transparency, improved accountability, the protection of community safety and looking at government decision-making processes. These are critically important to the community. I do not think there would be anyone in the community who would say, “It would be better if we had fewer audits, if we had less of a look at how they are dealing with community safety, if we had less of a look at how they are spending our money and whether they are spending it wisely, if we had less transparency, less accountability.” But going down to a bare-bones six performance audits is exactly what we will be getting. Tu Pham went on to say:
If we continue the way we are doing now, it will take at least 10 years to make sure that we cover all key risks and key activities of the government …
Essentially, there will be a massive backlog. Ms Pham went on to say that at the moment they do not even have enough desks for the office. It is outrageous that we have got an Auditor-General, an independent Auditor-General, whose task should be to keep the government accountable—to do the performance audits, or as many as possible, and to look into government activity—and who instead has to worry about whether they have enough desks for the number of staff they have. If the Chief Minister gets his way, there will be fewer staff and therefore they will have enough desks, but it is far from an adequate outcome when we see that kind of strain on resources.
It is worth going through some of the reports that they have done in recent years, some of the very valuable reports for the community. In 2009, we have seen Road projects: Fairbairn Avenue; Follow-up audit: implementation of audit recommendations on road safety; Management of respite care services and Delivery of ambulance services to the ACT community. Are there any of those that anyone here thinks was not a worthy audit, was not useful to government, was not useful to the community? Which of those audits do we not want to see take place in the future? Which of those do we want to see cut? Is it about ambulance services? Is it about respite care? Is it about road safety? Which of those won’t we see in coming years as they run the budget down?
In 2008 we saw Management of Calvary hospital agreements, Records management in ACT government agencies and Maintenance of public housing. There was Proposal
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