Page 2651 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 23 June 2009
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Minister. It was very interesting what happened over the weekend on occasions when I was out in the community. Two or three people whom I know fairly well and for whom ACT politics does not have very much cut-through commented on the outrageous attack by the Chief Minister on the Auditor-General. The questions were: “Has he really lost it? Where did this attack come from?” Let us just look at some of the words that the Chief Minister said the other day. This was, as Mr Rattenbury said, a case of shooting the messenger.
The Chief Minister was asked to stand up and talk about an unfavourable audit report in relation to the ACT Ambulance Service. It was an unfavourable report and there are a number of quite alarming things in that. But the really interesting thing is that the audited agency did not attack the Auditor-General. The audited agency took on board, for the most part, the comments made by the Auditor-General. This was not the case with the Chief Minister, who said:
We are currently funding the Auditor-General four times more than New South Wales fund their Auditor-General’s office and I think that there are some issues for us there, as well as for the Auditor-General and it’s probably time we had a look at that.
In the context of “I don’t like the report the Auditor-General has just brought down”, I consider that a threat. He went on to say—and this is a direct quote:
I think there’s potential for a very hard look at efficiencies within the Auditor-General’s office. I think perhaps it’s time for the Auditor-General’s office to be audited—
that sounds like a threat to me—
so we can have a look at the appropriateness of the level of her funding.
He went on to say that they would get an external auditor to do that. In response to being asked whether the Auditor-General could face funding cuts, he said:
Most certainly. I wouldn’t anticipate that but when we have a situation where the ACT’s Auditor-General’s office on early advice to me receives 400 per cent more funding than the NSW’s Auditor-General’s office, then that’s an issue I want to look at.
Madam Deputy Speaker, that was a threat. That was a threat because the Chief Minister did not like being put under pressure by an adverse report from an independent arbiter.
It is very interesting to look at the history of the Auditor-General’s Office, not just here but in other states. I remember two years ago I attended the Australian Study of Parliament Group conference about accountability. I think members of the Clerk’s office attended that conference. There was an extensive exposition on the role of the Auditor-General by the then recently retired South Australian Auditor-General and the importance of that role. There was somebody who was essentially forced out of office by a Labor Party in South Australia and who had spent a lot of time extolling
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