Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I endorse the comments of the chair in relation to the annual report of the JCPAA. It's a pretty straightforward report. The committee, amongst other committees, does have a statutory basis and, I believe, an important role in the parliament. It's been around since the early 1900s, and by legislation we have a role in overseeing the work of the Auditor-General and the ANAO. By legislation we have to consider every report that the Auditor-General does. We oversee the Parliamentary Budget Office and also have a range of statutory responsibilities in the PGPA Act. I also want to thank the chair for her collegiate way of working and for continuing what has broadly been for many decades a bipartisan approach to the audit committee. Mr Speaker, I know you'd endorse some of those comments, as a former chair of the committee way back earlier this century!

I want to make three remarks. They're not meant to be partisan remarks, but there's a degree of frustration. Firstly, the committee this year has done less work than in any recent year, and that's a matter of concern to me. Our previous reports used to contain a little table that tracked across a number of years the number of reports, the number of inquiries and the number of recommendations made. That table's been removed—probably, I think, for good reason: because it would be quite embarrassing to the current committee if we had a look at what the table actually said. We've tabled two reports and made 12 recommendations. Over the last five years, that is by far the lowest, and that includes election years. I do think that we need to pick up the pace.

The second point I make is that it's not as if we're short of important work to do. The Auditor-General, for the first time in living memory, didn't get the money that he needed, and he's had his budget cut severely. We need to be spending more time on this. We should be making noise about this. I think there's a degree of urgency around some audit reports, and we haven't heard anything from the committee. On the $30 million land purchase, where the government paid $30 million to a Liberal Party donor for land that was worth, at best, $3 million, an audit report was handed down. That's the kind of thing that the committee should be looking at. On the Commonwealth contracting out, the Auditor-General tabled a report months ago into this ongoing privatisation and waste of taxpayer funds. This is the kind of thing that the audit committee should be looking at. And so I say with all sincerity: we need to pick up the pace, and I hope to see that in the coming year. We have commenced the 10-year review of the act, but there's also a backlog of many reports that we need to find the time for or be rightly criticised for failing our statutory duty.

The final point I make is to record a concern that I've had for some time with regard to the resourcing of the committee, in two senses. I think COVID revealed the parliament's serial underinvestment in technology. Having worked in other environments I'm stunned, as many members are—I know that the presiding officers have been working to try and correct this deficiency, but we're still nowhere near where we should be. The availability of videoconferencing technology—the ability of committees to actually get airtime, the ridiculous fight over which two committees, on any given day, are going to be allowed to videoconference and broadcast their hearings—is pathetic. This is the national parliament. Mid-sized corporations and every government department in a state or territory can do better than we can. The committee has suffered because of it, along with other committees.

The final point I would make is that I am deeply concerned by what I think has been the underresourcing of this committee by the House of Representatives. We've raised this with the assistant clerk. I know that there have been two positions filled, but they had been unfilled for months. I'm still waiting for a table tracking the FTE resourcing for the last 10 years for this committee, because I believe it has been underdone.

All of these factors together add up to what has been an underwhelming year, and I hope we can pick up the pace in the coming year.

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