Page 2654 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 23 June 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
New South Wales fund their Auditor-General’s office, and I think there are some issues for us there, as well as for the Auditor-General, and it is probably time we had a look at that.” I wonder what he meant by “we had a look at that”.
We have got the Auditor-General running a lean operation; we only see a small number of performance audits able to be conducted every year. Only a small number of performance audits are able to be conducted currently on the budget. Jon Stanhope says: “Well, let’s use New South Wales as a model. Let’s go to New South Wales as the model on auditing, openness and accountability in government.” The clear implication in what he said there is: “Well, look, we don’t like what we’re getting from the Auditor-General. The Auditor-General gets too much money as it is and in the future, once we have conducted our audit, I think we will have to look at cutting the budget of the Auditor-General.” We have not heard that ruled out from this government. We have not heard it ruled out that they are going to cut funding, and in fact in real terms they are cutting funding in this budget.
Ms Gallagher: No—wrong.
MR SESELJA: Well, you are. We see the growth in all the other agencies. Ms Gallagher says, “Well, we can probably get it down to 4½ per cent in the outyears,” but it is far less than that for the Auditor-General’s office. So we do see a real cut in funding, and we in fact heard the Auditor-General address this point in estimates:
… since 2007, the percentage of funding allocated to our budget, to our appropriation, has declined as a percentage of total government spending. In 2006-07, the government appropriation to our office was 0.06 per cent of the total government spending. In 2009-10, it will be 0.053 per cent of total government spending. So we are not keeping pace with the government’s increased spending, even though our work and the demand for our work link very closely with the government’s spending and activities.
Ms Gallagher interjecting—
MR SESELJA: Apparently what the Auditor-General is saying there is wrong, according to the government; according to the interjections, that is wrong. Well, I will back the Auditor-General on numbers over this Treasurer or over this government.
But we do have this extraordinary attack. The Auditor-General goes on and makes quite a coherent case about the importance of the role. She talks about the $9 for every $1 and she says:
… I know that number has been used by a number of audit offices. As far as we are concerned, we regularly review the outcome of our performance audits and see how it impacts on government activities in terms of recommendations implemented by government agencies. It is not possible to quantify in terms of dollar return but we can say with certainty that a number of recommendations in our performance audits when implemented will lead to savings and efficiencies.
I do not think there would be anyone—I look forward to someone in this debate standing up and doing so—challenging that very reasonable conclusion from the
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .