Page 1965 - Week 06 - Thursday, 9 June 2016
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Public Accounts—Standing Committee
Report 28
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (4.30): I present the following report:
Public Accounts—Standing Committee—Report 28—Review of Auditor-General’s Report No. 2 of 2016: Maintenance of Public Housing,- dated 31 May 2016, together with a copy of the extracts of the relevant minutes of proceedings.
I move:
That the report be noted.
MR SMYTH: It is with some irony that I note that the minister has just delivered the government’s response to report No 2 on the maintenance of public housing. But as I explained to members earlier this morning, with both this report and the report on Calvary, the usual time frames, which are the now standard four months, would have meant we would have received in normal circumstances the government’s response in August. This prompted the committee to go ahead and conduct an inquiry. We have spoken with the Auditor-General, who briefed us on the contents of the report, and the committee felt it was important that we get something in to the Assembly as quickly as we could in an expectation that, had the government’s response arrived when it was due—having taken the full time frame—we would not have had time in the cycle to conduct a further or fuller inquiry. I thank the minister for getting the government’s response more quickly, but we actually beat you to the Assembly, I guess, in this case.
As I said, the committee received the report. We have had a briefing from the Auditor-General on this report, which was presented to the Assembly on 14 April 2016. In our consideration of it we thought there were a number of important issues we wanted to get onto the record before the end of this Assembly. This is why we are presenting the report today.
Recommendation No 1 is now superfluous. We recommend that the government table its response on the first sitting day in August 2016, but thank you minister for getting it here somewhat earlier. It will be interesting to read to see how much the response and the committee’s report match up.
Recommendation No 2—again this is because of the timing and the lateness in the term—is that by the last sitting day in August 2017 the then ACT government report on the progress of the implementation of the recommendations in report No 2. As the minister has said, the government has accepted all of the recommendations, so what we would like to see in August next year is a summary of actions to date, completed or in progress, and the proposed actions including the timetable for implementing recommendations and where recommendations have not been commenced.
Recommendation 3 is very important. Again, I have not had time to cross-reference it, but the committee recommends that the ACT government detail in its response how it
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