Page 892 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 29 March 2011
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Prior to her appointment as ACT Auditor-General in March 2004, Tu held a number of senior roles in the ACT public service, including Deputy Chief Executive of the Department of Treasury and the Commissioner for ACT Revenue. Before joining the ACT government, Tu worked with the Queensland government and the Commonwealth Grants Commission.
As many of you will know, Tu came to Australia from Vietnam under an Australian government scholarship program. Under this program she completed a Bachelor of Economics at the University of Queensland. Her career in public service has included a range of roles with the Queensland, commonwealth and ACT governments. Tu received an Australia Day honour in 1988—the Public Service Medal—for “outstanding services in public administration”. More recently, she was awarded the 2008 ACT Telstra Business Women’s Award in the government and community category.
Tu’s term as Auditor-General has spanned the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Assemblies and three public accounts committees. The relationship between an Auditor-General and a parliament’s public accounts committee is an important one. Undoubtedly, the relationship is a two-way process and, to some extent, the public accounts committee and the Auditor-General can be seen as complementary bodies in parliament’s oversight functions.
The committee acknowledges the good working relationship it has had with Tu as Auditor-General, a relationship that has been, on the one hand, cooperative, open and frank, but, on the other hand, a relationship which has respected and maintained appropriate independence.
On behalf of the committee, I wish to acknowledge and thank Tu for her professionalism, dedication, hard work and commitment, not only during her term as Auditor-General but also in the other roles in which she has served public administration in the Australian Capital Territory. We wish her well in what lies ahead and for her future plans and endeavours.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella), by leave: The chairperson of the public accounts committee has given a nice formal statement about Ms Tu Pham and her efforts. I thought I would throw in some of my perspective. I am probably the only person here who actually worked with her in Treasury—Jon, maybe you worked with her in Treasury as well; yes, of course you would have.
It is interesting to see the two sides of Tu Pham—and there are not just two sides to Tu Pham. Certainly, as a public servant, I always found her to be fantastic to work with. If you needed something clarified, Tu Pham was the person to go to. I think her grasp of economics and how Treasury worked was an enormous asset, certainly to us as a government, at a time when the economy was not that crash hot. To have somebody in the Treasury actually explaining what was going on, in the form of Tu, was very good. As the Commissioner for Revenue, she actually understood where the revenue was coming from and how little of it there was. She was quite forthright in telling cabinet meetings—I do not think I am breaking a confidence—that we did not
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