Page 5576 - Week 13 - Thursday, 17 November 2011
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We have a 60-page document from the Chief Minister addressing some of this process. In that document the Chief Minister says, “Yes, I had a conversation with the chair of PAC and it was just to apologise and assure her that I was not being discourteous.” But the chair of PAC says:
My memory is that Ms Gallagher also stated that Dr Cooper was the Government’s nominee and that she (Dr Cooper) would be the new Auditor-General.
Of course, Ms Gallagher’s version of that conversation is simply, “I spoke to the chair to reassure her and the PAC that no disrespect was intended by the press release.” Yes, in the absence of any additional evidence or any discussion or any investigation or any attempt to resolve the contradiction of those two statements—and only one can be right—we are here today. The problem is that the committee has not had public hearings, which I think is to the detriment of the process and to the detriment of the committee and to the detriment of this place. This was, in fact, done in secret. What the committee was asked to do was done in secret, and that is unacceptable.
The committee has sided with the Chief Minister and not with the head of PAC. The head of PAC, with the support of PAC, when asked by the Speaker about the issue of precedence, wrote back and said: “There are two issues here. On the first one we believe we were interfered with. We cannot determine the degree of interference. But on the second issue, yes, we were interfered with. It is a serious interference if it is allowed to stand into the future.”
That says this process was not a good process, and we should not accept the fruits of a poor process. We do not know who may well have been thrown up as a different nominee by the government for this position of Auditor-General because of the process, and I will go to some of that process.
As we debated this inside the public accounts committee, a number of issues were raised, and not all by me. They were raised by various members, and some of that was about the independence of the office of the Auditor-General when the Auditor-General comes from within the organisation. The point was made that private sector companies will not appoint an internal auditor because the internal person may well have been part of the problem. It is a valid point, and perhaps that needs to be addressed in the act.
I certainly then had some concerns, primarily about the government’s process. Firstly, I would like to go to the advertisement that the government placed. The government asked that candidates have appropriate tertiary qualifications—they are a prerequisite. As is always the case with this government, you need to ask what it means. I think most people looking at the advert for a new auditor-general would think appropriate tertiary qualifications might mean you were somehow qualified in auditing. Apparently not.
The new standard of this government is that appropriate tertiary qualifications for somebody in a senior position is that they hold greater than a bachelor degree. That is
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