Page 2798 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 24 June 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
I have been working on this bill for some time, to respond to a longstanding issue over the provision of adequate funding of the functions of the Office of the ACT Auditor-General. It is coincidental that I had planned to introduce this bill in an environment where the Chief Minister has just threatened the Auditor-General with a reduction in funding.
As if the concerns that were highlighted by evidence that has been presented to the estimates committee inquiry into the ACT budget for 2009-2010 are not bad enough, we now face a Chief Minister who is intent on suppressing any form of opposition to him and his form of government, to reducing scrutiny of his government’s actions. It is something more appropriate to a totalitarian regime in, say, Burma or Iran, to name but two.
But the current Auditor-General, Tu Pham, in her evidence to the committee painted a very bleak picture for her office. When she appeared before the estimates committee on 25 May 2009, she immediately set out the disturbing scenario for her office:
The government’s proposed funding for the audit office, of $2.1 million in 2009-10, will not be sufficient for us to maintain the current audit capacity, nor will it be sufficient to increase our capacity to respond to the increase in government spending.
In 2009-10, without any additional funding, the office will seek to reduce employee costs to return to a balanced budget, because … this year, 2008-09—we are operating at a deficit of $199,000.
In a small office, we have very little capacity to cut costs elsewhere, so we had to forgo some employee costs. This is the biggest cost pressure on our office and, ultimately, it will lead to a reduction in our capacity to conduct our work, especially in performing audits.
Ms Pham continued:
I believe that it would be prudent for the Assembly to ensure that we receive additional funding to provide independent advice to the Assembly on the delivery of government services, especially given the large amount of new and increased government spending under both local and commonwealth stimulus packages in the next year and the years to come.
At the end of the day, I will deliver to the best of our office capacity within our allocated budget, but the lack of adequate resources for our office will affect our ability to provide independent advice to the Assembly to assist the Assembly to do its job.
Is this the Chief Minister’s intent? You can only assume that it is. What we have is an Auditor-General who, in this financial year, will run at a $200,000 deficit and, next year, what we will do is make it even harder for her to operate, even harder for her to expand what she should be doing and do more performance audits, particularly of this government.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .