Page 268 - Week 01 - Thursday, 17 February 2011
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We also said that any revision of the Auditor-General Act should have regard to the New Zealand officers of parliament system.
The committee received a number of submissions to the inquiry from interested stakeholders and was grateful to be able to draw upon their broad range of expertise and experience for its deliberations. As I mentioned earlier, particularly useful was the submission from the Australasian Council of Auditors-General. As I said, they represent the collective wisdom of the Australasian auditors-general. The committee recognises the significant commitment of time and resources required to participate in an inquiry of this nature. Many of the recommendations suggested by participants, or variations thereof, have been adopted as recommendations in the committee’s report.
The committee would like to thank all stakeholders who contributed to the inquiry by making submissions, by providing additional information, or by appearing before it to give evidence. I would like to conclude by thanking, as well as the external stakeholders, my fellow committee members, Mr Smyth and Mr Hargreaves, and of course the Committee Office staff. In particular, I thank Andrea Cullen for her excellent work in this. I commend the committee’s report to the Assembly and I note that my committee colleagues may well wish to provide comment.
MR HARGREAVES (Brindabella) (11.25): I rise actually to support the general thrust of the report before the Assembly this morning. My colleagues have indicated the issues that they feel are important—or at least Ms Le Couteur has. Mr Smyth will do so, I guess, in a minute. But rather than go over the same grounds, I will avoid the points that they have made, or intend to make, and leave the digestion of the main body of the report to Assembly members and the government in particular.
Members will know that it is not my practice to append a dissenting report to committee reports. I find this, in the main part, to be, at best, difficult to read and reference and, at worst, the application of a political point-scoring perspective. However, I do depart from my colleagues in certain elements of the report—and there are not many of them—and I shall address them all shortly. I do want to thank my colleagues for the degree with which they have applied the notion of parliamentarianism to this report and the way in which both my colleagues have approached the academic consideration of the roles and responsibilities of the Auditor-General and the degree of compromise they have allowed in the construct of many of the recommendations.
My first concern is the notion of the Auditor-General being an officer of the parliament. I know that this is the case in New Zealand and is becoming the vogue within other parliaments, some of which are in Australia. However, I do not have to agree to something just because it is becoming the accepted way of doing business. If I think it is lacking in principle, it is wrong.
This notion implies—backed up by unsubstantiated evidence—that independence from the executive is not guaranteed by the Auditor-General Act and that there can be undue influence exerted through lack of control of the Auditor-General’s budget. I do not accept these premises. The Auditor-General Act is strong enough. It provides for
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