Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak to report 419: Inquiry into the Auditor-General Act 1997. This report was completed by the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit in this 43rd parliament, chaired by Rob Oakeshott, the member for Lyne, but is in fact the conclusion of work undertaken by the committee of the same name in the 42nd parliament, which was chaired by Sharon Grierson, the member for Newcastle. I am a little alarmed that it seems this evening that because of developments prior to my entering the chamber the member for Mackellar has denied the chair of the committee, the member for Lyne, a chance to put on the record some of his important and, I would say, very informative observations about this report. However, it is important that we do acknowledge that the committee continues to do excellent work and the committee members are working very hard to ensure that the joint parliamentary committee undertakes its work with diligence.

I acknowledge the committee members of each parliament and applaud the excellent work of the committee secretariat—Mr Russell Chafer, Dr Kris Veenstra, Ms Pauline Cullen, Dr Narelle McGlusky and Dr Ian McDonald—for their work on the committee and in particular, for this excellent report. This in fact could be called the 'follow the money bill' because that is what it is really all about. There are so many terms that are bandied about in this chamber and I know that people out there who are listening are trying to figure out what on earth is actually going on.

The reality is that, as the member for Fraser has spoken of earlier, there has been rorting, particularly under the Howard government. The Auditor-General was unable with the powers that he had at that time to follow the money and to see what was going on. The functions performed by the Auditor-General are of great signifi­cance. They matter to this parliament and they matter to the Australian people. It is important that the Auditor-General has the appropriate powers to respond to the audit challenges of this day. As I said, this is about his capacity to follow the money—the money being that which Australian taxpayers invest with this government and expect us to be able to spend in the most effective and efficient way.

I hear from the member for Mackellar on the other side that she wants to protect the private sector from intrusion. If the private sector is the beneficiary of public money, we want to know if we are getting value for our dollar and, essentially, that is what this report is about. This is what we want to enable.

The intent of the Auditor-General Amend­ment Bill 2011 is clearly to implement the various recommendations of the report. These are quite significant. One of the concerns I have is that the Auditor-General Act currently provides that government business enterprises can only be audited by the Auditor-General at the request of the committee—the JCPAA, or the minister responsible for the government business enterprise, or the Minister for Finance and Deregulation. The report recommends that the act needs to be amended to give the Auditor-General the authority that he needs to initiate audits of government business enterprises. Successive governments have taken the view that he should not have that authority but it is clear from what we have seen from the committee that it is time that the Auditor-General was given those capacities.

I am going to cut my speech rather short to allow a little time for the member for Lyne to sum up at the end this debate. I commend him once again for his leadership of that committee, which is undertaking some heavy lifting, and I look forward to hearing his words on this bill. I commend the bill, as amended, to the House.

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