Page 3262 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 16 August 2011
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separation of powers would indicate that PAC’s recommendation is the appropriate recommendation. I understand the government sees it otherwise.
PAC made other recommendations in case the government did not accept all the recommendations, and here we were trying to deal with the possibility of what happened if there was a veto. Unfortunately, the government has not agreed with PAC’s recommendations. I guess it is fortunate that we have not had to try and practise what happens with a veto, but I think that, whatever you think about the separation of powers, there is a considerable area of greyness as to what happens after any veto might occur.
I have to disagree with the government’s views on recommendation 9 where it simply says that in other jurisdictions such a thing would be done by the Governor-General or Governor in Council. We do not have one. The government seems to believe that, therefore, the executive would take this role. I think that is a very arguable position, and I will be arguing otherwise. I think in many cases the Speaker takes the role which otherwise would be taken by the Governor-General or the Governor in Council, for instance, in signing legislation into effect.
Moving right along here, because I realise we are quite behind in our program for the day, recommendation 16 is about periodic independent performance audit. PAC made some recommendations based on our experience of doing it last year. Unfortunately, the government has not agreed to those. I think it is unfortunate that the government is not seeing the role of the Assembly, and PAC as its delegate, in managing the Auditor-General herself or himself and the offices.
Also moving right along here, I note recommendation 24, which deals with the Auditor-General’s budget. I note that Mr Smyth has a bill on the notice paper, and I regret that the government has not seen fit to agree with PAC’s recommendations. While they are possibly not totally what Mr Smyth would agree with, they are a step forward in terms of achieving greater clarity as to what will happen with PAC’s role. Clearly, PAC currently has a role, but that role is, in practice, ill described and leads to contradictory outcomes. In other words, sometimes PAC says what it thinks the budget should be and sometimes it does not. The proposed amendment makes it clear what the situation is, and I think that would be a worthwhile amendment.
One of the other most interesting recommendations of PAC is recommendation 30, which can be summarised as the follow-the-money provision. At present, as members may be aware, the Auditor-General has no statutory right to look into how the government’s money is spent if it is spent by a third party rather than by the government. The government has agreed in principle but has thought that in many cases contractual agreements in most grant and other funding arrangements allow for this. Certainly the government is correct in that, but I am not confident that it is correct in all cases. I think it would make it more straightforward to have this in as a matter of course. I think it is an important principle, particularly as more government work gets outsourced, that the government still has a responsibility for what happens to taxpayers’ money, regardless of whether it is spent directly by public servants or spent by some third party on the government’s behalf.
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