Robert Oakeshott (Lyne, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I note the contribution of the previous speaker, the member for Flinders, about the Home Insulation Program and I would hope that he also recognises the opportunity for future programs, regardless of who the government is, in this Auditor-General Amendment Bill 2011. The bill allows for a broadening of the scope and jurisdiction of the Auditor-General to follow the money trail through to all areas of taxpayer expenditure—including areas of business such as contractors—which would have allowed the Auditor-General to go through in detail the Home Insulation Program and related programs to establish fact from fiction in the debate. I would hope that is a signal of support for this important amendment to the Auditor-General Act that allows the Auditor-General to do his or her job on behalf of all Commonwealth taxpayers.

Any business in this country knows that they would be letting themselves down as a business if they did not allow audits to be done of all areas of their business. The Commonwealth cannot say that today. We have restrictions and boundaries placed on the scope and jurisdiction of the Auditor-General and their ability to follow the money trail—from taxpayer money collected through to taxpayer money distributed to various programs on the ground. This bill tries to address that. It is based on the work of the Joint Standing Committee of Public Accounts and Audit, in its report 419, which made a very strong and unanimous recommendation to expand the jurisdiction of the Auditor-General to allow the money trail to be followed.

There are three areas that I think are of particular interest to this parliament in a political context. The first is government business enterprises. Currently, the Auditor-General is limited in their scope to conduct audits within and around GBEs, government business enterprises. This is at a time when we are about to do the biggest rollout of information and communication technology that I am aware of in this country through the establishment of a GBE in NBN Co. Parliament would not be doing its duty if it did not allow the Auditor-General to regularly and freely audit all aspects of the NBN rollout and in particular NBN Co. Likewise, as I mentioned before, there are currently limits placed on the Auditor-General’s ability to audit government contractors. The Home Insulation Program, which the member for Flinders just discussed, is a very good example of where the Auditor-General’s inability to do basic audits led to, arguably, lesser outcomes in program delivery.

I would also mention, though, regardless of the current parliament, the ongoing work and the ongoing problems of defence contracting. DMO, for example, has an annual budget of roughly $9 billion a year. It is a problematic area of government program delivery, and allowing the Auditor-General to explore in an unfettered way all aspects of contracting in that area would lead to much greater value for money and much greater efficiency outcomes for taxpayers’ dollars, something I hope all members of this parliament would strongly support.

The other area, which I think will surprise many people, is in regard to agreements reached with state agencies and other levels of government. Building the Education Revolution has been a topic in this parliament for some time. Allowing the Auditor-General to distinguish fact from fiction and go into state agencies, such as the New South Wales Department of Education and Training, to establish just what has gone on, where and why would be an important change in law for taxpayers.

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