Page 2826 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 24 June 2009
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MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (11.29): It is interesting, when you look through the government payments for outputs, to see who got the bucks and who did not. If we go to page 23 of the Auditor-General’s operating statement, her government payment for outputs goes from $2,072,000 to $2,112,000—a two per cent increase.
How much did the executive give themselves in terms of an increase? If you go to ACT executive, payments on behalf of the territory—let us do the right comparison here—it goes up by four per cent, which is 100 per cent greater than what they are willing to give the Auditor-General. They will look after themselves but they will not look after the Auditor-General.
You have to go to the heart of why this man, this Chief Minister, will not fund the Auditor-General appropriately. It is because he does not like the scrutiny. And he read out a litany of reports that had some of the failings of former governments. That is what she is there to find but she is also there to find them for the current government. Governments do not always get it right. And the Auditor-General is fundamental in making sure that it is at least brought to the attention of the public and that we learn.
I can go back to all the reports as well. I have got them all on my shelf as well. I will just read one. I will not waste the time of the house on this. If you go to page 38 of the Auditor-General’s report, financial audits for the year ended 30 June 2002, report No 7, right from the start of the Stanhope years, it talks about $10 million that was moved from the Treasurer’s advance late in June 2002. The Treasurer’s advance is for unexpected events. Some $10 million was moved. It was spent on fire safety in public housing, which is a worthy cause, but the Auditor-General of the day questioned the legality of that move. So right from the start, the Auditor-General has been looking at, has been scrutinising, the Stanhope government in the way they do business and, consistently since then, the auditor has been finding fault.
How has the Chief Minister treated the Auditor-General of the day? It is a continuous stream of contempt. And the mind boggles as to why the Greens would take away what are simply statements of fact that the Chief Minister has made. The mind boggles as to why the Greens will not hold the government to account. And the Greens can answer for themselves.
In regard to Mr Seselja’s motion, they accept point (1), which is that we all support the role played by the ACT Auditor-General in monitoring government agencies and programs. Even Ms Burch got that. She is in favour of that. So thank you for that support of Mr Seselja’s motion in that regard. No (2) is that we note that the Auditor-General is held in high regard by the Assembly and the ACT community, which the Greens will accept and which apparently the Chief Minister will accept.
We then get to 2(b). There are just three selections of what the Chief Minister has said about the Auditor-General. These are statements of fact. How can you object to statements of fact being in the motion? You talk in this place all the time about context. The Chief Minister gets away with context all the time. Here is some context. The Chief Minister warned—these are his words—on 19 June:
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