Page 3415 - Week 08 - Thursday, 23 August 2012
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MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Chief Minister, Minister for Health and Minister for Territory and Municipal Services) (4.09): As the minister responsible for the ACT executive I will briefly respond to those comments. I point out that I believe the ACT executive is the only line item in this budget that has actually returned money back into Treasury coffers that has been underspent due to the very close eye we keep on the executive budget. We have answered a question on notice, I believe, about this, but it shows that a substantial amount of money was returned to Treasury because of how closely we monitor and manage our entitlements. The machine in the executive area is lean. Our staff work very hard. They are on call 24/7 and they require the use of technology such as mobile phones. There is policy guidance around not only mobile phones but a whole range of entitlements. It is appropriate that there is a very clear level of transparency around this line item as well.
Mr Smyth: Except you’re not tabling the guidelines.
MS GALLAGHER: We keep a very close eye on this, Mr Smyth. We actually return money to the budget, unlike the first floor of the Assembly, which does not. Our offices have returned money. We have made sure that where we can save money we do, and when we save that money we return it to Treasury. I look forward to the non-executive members taking the same approach.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Proposed expenditure—Part 1.2—Auditor-General—$2,545,000 (net cost of outputs), totalling $2,545,000.
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (4.12): I am very pleased to speak about this, because in my job as chair of the public accounts committee I have been arguing for the last four years that the Auditor-General should have an increase in funding. I and the public accounts committee have been strongly arguing for increasing the funding for the Auditor-General’s functions to ensure that we have more performance audits.
Members would be aware that the Auditor-General has basically two functions—a financial auditing function, which is financed by the Auditor-General charging fees from the people she audits, and a performance audit function, which is basically where the Auditor-General is reporting to the Assembly about the performance audits she does of various bits of ACT administration. This is an incredibly important function and it is one that the public accounts committee has been arguing for a long time that we should have more of.
I am very pleased that finally, at last, we have an increase in funding. The expectation is that we will have an increase in performance audits from six in 2011-12 to eight in 2012-13. There is also a small increase for indexation costs. I think the ACT gets value for money out of Auditor-General, and I support this increase in funding.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (4.13): When members look at the section concerning the Auditor-General’s presentation to the estimates committee, they will find no recommendations. I think it is the first time in many an estimates report where the
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