Page 3882 - Week 09 - Thursday, 25 August 2011
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performance and accountability framework—strengthening performance and accountability: a framework for the ACT government—which was released in February 2011. Subsequent to that the Department of Treasury also released updated advice on performance measures for the previous budget. All of that is very positive.
The committee made a number of recommendations. The first recommendation was to make sure that, given the new directorate set-up, the recommendations of the Auditor-General are appropriately monitored and addressed. Our recommendation 2 also dealt with that. One of the issues we have had is completeness and reporting for new and discontinued entities. This was a problem at the last budget estimates hearings. I hope it will not be a problem at the next one.
The next issue that the committee looked at and made a recommendation on—recommendation 3—related to ESD reporting. As the Auditor-General said in evidence, one point about ESD reporting is the lack of targets. Basically, there are a number of indicators to report on, but there are not any targets to see whether or not we are doing the right thing in terms of energy consumption, recycled material and paper.
I would have to say from an observation point of view that the reporting has improved in degrees of consistency. When I first started in this place, ESD reporting was all over the place. The various agencies have managed to become a lot more consistent. I think the idea of a target, even if it is only a target for those agencies which are basically office-based, would be a good idea. I appreciate that there are substantial differences between the various agencies, but that is not a reason to have no targets.
Continuing on with the ESD theme, our fourth recommendation was that the government table in the Legislative Assembly by the first sitting day of October 2011 the report of the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment on an audit assessment of ACT government agencies’ environmental reporting. I hope that the previous appointment of the Auditor-General will lead to better interaction between the two groups, but in the meanwhile at the very least the good work that the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment has done should see the light of day and be tabled in the Assembly.
The previous Auditor-General, has, of course, made recommendations about ecologically sustainable development. That was report No 3 of 2005. PAC would like to see the government report back to the Assembly on the progress and effectiveness of the implementation of the recommendations from that report.
Our second-last recommendation is that the government report back to the Assembly by October 2011 on the government’s progress in implementing the recommendations from the Auditor-General’s report No 1 of 2010 on performance reporting, that being the report that we are reporting on. Our last recommendation is that, where the Auditor-General makes an across-agency audit, the chief executives of the agencies being audited should still respond to that, not just the CEO of CMD. Most of the agencies were in fact audited, so it is appropriate that they respond individually. I commend this report to the Assembly. I note that other members of PAC may comment on it.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
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