Page 4085 - Week 09 - Thursday, 26 August 2010
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That is a very important concern. The report goes on:
The Committee is most concerned that the response from the Minister was described as misleading by the Auditor-General.
On page 3 of a letter, the Auditor-General says:
The Minister’s statement is misleading as it seeks to attribute views not expressed or inferred in the audit report. Indeed, this statement mis-represents the following Audit views as stated in the audit report …
It is very serious for the auditor to write that. In my time here, I have never seen such comments made by the auditor. You only have to go to the report on the independent performance audit of the operations of the ACT Auditor-General and the ACT Audit Office. In para 2.21 of the report, the committee noted:
… the robustness of the Office’s procedures and methodologies for performance audits, and (ii) that performance audit reports, audit findings and conclusions have substantive and appropriate evidence.
Quite clearly Mr Corbell is out of sync with what the auditor sees in this review. Indeed, the committee goes on to back up the auditor in paragraph 2.23:
… the Committee is of the view that the analytic approach used was sound and the subsequent findings were supported by appropriate evidence and documentation.
It is important that the minister hears this:
… the Committee is of the view that the analytic approach used was sound and the subsequent findings were supported by appropriate evidence and documentation.
The report goes on. In paragraph 4.8, it says:
As mentioned in chapter two, in relation to the integrity of the methodology used to substantiate the Audit key findings concerning response times to emergency incidents having decreased over recent years, together with not meeting targets set by the Government, the responsible Minister stated:
The auditor invented her own methodology, which is not used by anybody except her, and which is not recognised as a credible way of managing risk and delivering emergency services in an urban environment.
Paragraph 4.9 states:
In evidence, when asked to comment on the Minister’s statement, the Auditor-General responded:
There is nothing to agree or not agree with because it is factual data. They may not like the result shown to them and they may say it is something that no other agency has done. In reality, it is a very fundamental, basic analysis ...
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