Page 2227 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 28 August 2007
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to achieve two main strategic objectives: firstly, an accountable, effective and efficient ACT public sector and, secondly, a highly valued ACT audit office. They are high ideals, and I think there is no doubt that the Auditor-General comfortably achieves the second of these.
As to the first, the Auditor-General is, to a large extent, in the hands of the government. All the Auditor-General can realistically do in relation to the first is to identify the areas where there are weaknesses, make recommendations in relation to those weaknesses, report on them and later follow up to see how things are going. What of the last such follow-up? On 14 June the Auditor-General submitted to the Speaker her report titled Agency implementation of audit recommendations. The report and the accompanying media release are published on the Auditor-General’s website. The media release is very telling. Probably the most telling statement is this:
The absence of adequate public reporting on the implementation of audit recommendations raised concerns that audit recommendations were accepted by the agencies and Government, but may not be subsequently implemented, with little effect on improved agency performance and accountability.
The Auditor-General says that in some cases there are “delays in the implementation of recommendations of nearly three years”. She goes on to say:
Overall, current review and reporting arrangements adopted by the agencies are not adequate to provide assurance to the Government and the Assembly that recommendations arising from performance audit reports are implemented consistently across agencies and in a timely manner.
Can we say that the Auditor-General has failed in her efforts to deliver the first of her main strategic outcomes; that is, “an accountable, effective and efficient ACT public sector”? I think not. However, it certainly must be a cause of much frustration for the Auditor-General. Imagine investing all those resources in undertaking financial and performance audits, compiling recommendations and writing and delivering reports, only to see them put in the bottom drawer and forgotten, sometimes for up to three years.
How can the Auditor-General possibly deliver on that strategic outcome about having an accountable, effective and efficient ACT public sector when the attitude of this government is to treat her reports with such contempt? Again, can we sheet home the blame for this inaction on the public servants? Is it they who are ignoring the Auditor-General’s recommendations? I suggest that the five ministers sitting over there and looking smug would answer a resounding yes to that question. They would answer yes because it is their entrenched culture to blame someone else, and it has become easy for them because they are practised in the art.
We had ministers blaming someone else over the myriad issues that came out of the bushfires; ministers blaming someone else over the failed FireLink; ministers blaming someone else, even each other, over the busway; ministers blaming someone else over their performance in the delivery of health services; ministers blaming someone else, mainly each other, over the Al Grassby statue; and ministers blaming someone else for the government’s failure on Rhodium. We even had ministers blaming the people
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