Page 2704 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 June 2011
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more tweeting, more websites, more Facebook, more spin, more putting stuff out there to give the impression of open and accountable government. But when it comes to probably the function that can provide the most balanced, objective view of this government’s performance—the office of the Auditor-General—she has decided to squib it. Rather than provide an enhanced amount of money, an increased amount of money, to the Auditor-General’s Office, so that the Auditor-General can conduct more financial and performance audits, she has decided not to give them sufficient; essentially it is an amount that is around the CPI measure, which will allow them to conduct a decreased amount of performance audits.
I do not understand—maybe the Chief Minister would like to comment on this; I am sure we would like to hear from her—why it is that she thinks that in an era of openness and accountability, where she wants scrutiny of her government and the way it is performing, she would in essence, through this budget, and reminding members that she is still the Treasurer, provide the amount of funds to the Auditor-General which will mean a decreased number of performance audits.
To me, there is an anomaly there. I think what we are seeing from the Chief Minister’s statements is that, on the one hand, there is a lot of talk. When you look at the reality of that, when you look underneath, you see that the opposite effect will be achieved.
One of the reasons that the audit office is struggling is that of staff retention. It is quite clear that the people that work in the audit office are people who are sought after. Because it is a public service town, with the seat of the federal government and with the Australian National Audit Office, many of the staff are poached, or certainly see the National Audit Office as somewhere that they would like to work, and they move. So the separation rate is 26 per cent, which is extraordinarily high. It is something that we need to make sure is addressed, because an audit office, or any organisation, simply cannot sustain that level of staff separation if it is going to be effective, if it is going to do what this Assembly requires of it.
In that regard there was a recommendation in the report. The committee recommended that the ACT government examine options to ensure greater staff retention by the office of the Auditor-General. I think that would be a big step forward. I am sure that the staff there will look forward to hearing how the government could achieve that.
There were also some more technical concerns raised regarding the change with the directorate structure and how that will affect reporting by the audit office and accountability measures. With the new directorate structure, I think with a number of the directorates it took place prior to the commencement of the 2011-12 financial year. It presents some challenges for the audit office with regard to entities which have been discontinued in a number of lines of reporting. I quote what was said by the acting director of financial audits. He said:
That is where it is going to be difficult because you will have—for the new directorates that start off from 17 May, the only thing that will be in their financial statements will be actuals. There will not be any budget figures and there will not be any comparatives. For the entities that end on 16 May, you will be comparing an annual budget with 46 weeks effectively of actuals and a whole
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