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

On behalf of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit, I present Report 486: Regulatory activities: Inquiry into Auditor-General's reports 33, 47 and 48 (2019-20) and 5 and 8 (2020-21)—report, August 2021, incorporating not a dissenting report, but some additional comments.

Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e).

by leave—I know this is the highlight of the House's afternoon: a Public Accounts and Audit Committee report! I'll just say at the outset—I'll reassure you—that I'm not going to cover all five Auditor-General's reports that this relates to in my remarks. But I do commend the report to the House. It continues the bipartisan tradition where, overwhelmingly, government and opposition members agree on the reports. I thank the chair in particular for her collegiate work on the committee.

This report looks at a number of Auditor-General's inquiry reports into regulation. It turns the blowtorch, if you like, on the regulatory activities of departments. I would like to remark on three aspects of our report—firstly, with regard to the EPBC Act and environmental protection. That was a damning audit report. I read most of the audit reports that the Auditor-General issues—it's a fun life!—and he does terrific work on behalf of the parliament. But this is a damning audit report that calls out the government's maladministration in environmental laws. The committee's report is an unusually strong, unanimous and bipartisan condemnation of the department's performance. It is unacceptable to the committee—words that are not often used in these kinds of reports—that the audit found deficiencies in proper arrangements for conflict-of-interest risks, appropriate performance management practices and good quality assurance.

There are numerous failures. Indeed, the department—and, therefore, the government—had no idea if hundreds of permits were even being followed. They had no ability to explain to the Audit Office, and therefore to the parliament, whether approvals given for development and works in protection in some of Australia's most significant environmental places were even followed. It's also very concerning that the committee found there's a lack of records for so much of the department's work. This creates numerous risks, with the inability to deal with probity and conflict-of-interest matters and the inability to substantiate decisions.

This has gone on for years and there have been years of similarly critical reports. But I would note particularly that 95 per cent of decisions made under this government were outside statutory time frames. It's no coincidence, as came out in the public hearings, that when Tony Abbott was elected and cut 40 per cent of staff from the environment department approval times went up. The Public Service is not a magic pudding and there's a direct correlation here, as we saw when the government finally, under pressure, tipped in a bit of extra bandaid money a year ago—funnily enough, approval times started going down. So it's an important report, and I commend the committee on the thoroughness of its work.

The second thing I'd just remark on briefly is: there's an audit on TEQSA, the tertiary education quality assurance regulator. Overall, it was a reasonable audit, with mixed findings. But I'd just record the committee's particular concerns regarding TEQSA's treatment of private higher education providers. There was a clear disparity in the stakeholder surveys between the views of the public higher education providers and private higher education providers. This wasn't a major focus of the inquiry, unfortunately, because of the reluctance of private providers to be able to give evidence to the committee, because, frankly, as they told me privately, they were scared of TEQSA's random vengeance and their anti-private-provider culture.

So the committee has made unanimous recommendations, and the committee made clear that we expect, on behalf of the parliament, positive relationships by TEQSA with all types of providers, whether universities, other public higher education providers, TAFEs in some instances, or private providers, who have a legitimate place in the spectrum. We've asked to be kept up to date on the results of the next annual stakeholder survey and obviously reserve the right to turn further attention to the matter. We've made recommendations regarding changes so that TEQSA has the ability to give a bit more time to providers to comply with conditions, to avoid seemingly unnecessary appeals to the AAT, where TEQSA just about always seems to lose, and also recommendations in relation to cybersecurity.

The third and final matter I just want to note relates to the Lobbying Code of Conduct. This regulates the activity of lobbying across the Australian government. In my time as deputy chair of the committee, it's only the second time in five years that I recall that we've made additional comments, but we felt, on this matter, we needed to. The Lobbying Code of Conduct, which regulates lobbyist activity, comprises a register and the code. Overall, the Auditor-General—this is the second audit he's done—found that a more proactive approach was needed. It used to be in the Prime Minister's department; that got a little bit red-hot, so they passed it over to the Attorney-General's Department—not very well, as the audit found.

The view of Labor members is that it's now time to legislate. We need legislation to provide a stronger statutory basis for this code. We've seen numerous problems with transparency, honesty and integrity in this government that have been frequently and prominently aired in the media over recent years, and a great deal more needs to be done to restore and improve the faith and trust of the Australian public in the integrity of their national government. Now, this is no magic fix—no silver bullet—but Labor members do think that this would be a small but tangible step to helping to restore public trust, and that a legislative basis for the lobbyist code would improve compliance and indeed could provide penalties for serious or deliberate breaches of the code. Currently, there are no penalties; it's just an 'Oh well, you know, she'll be right' approach. The department says they're going to do some more stuff, but there's really no certainty.

Lobbying, of course, I'll just say, is a legitimate activity, but it has to be undertaken transparently to enhance integrity and prevent corruption. The government's refusal, so far, to legislate a basis for the lobbyist code is accompanied by their failure to introduce a national anticorruption commission, allowing their rorts—as we just heard for an hour in the debate on the MPI preceding this tabling—their waste and their corruption to go unchecked. Now, this government has shown repeatedly that it cannot be trusted to govern with respect for long-established conventions and standards; hence, in our view, a legislative approach is required. The stacking of the AAT, the breaching of all conventions and norms—they're a debate for another time. But Labor members consider that an all-out effort is now required to improve integrity in national public administration and arrest this decline in public trust in democracy and institutions. So legislating a lobbyist code would complement our commitment to a national anticorruption commission.

We know, from the Auditor-General's work and indeed the inquiry and the responses from the department, that the former, the previous, Attorney-General was actually asked for advice on this very matter, legislating the lobbyist code, by the Prime Minister, some years ago. It disappeared into the mysterious black box that is the Morrison government's work on integrity. We've still no anticorruption commission, and, it seems, still no agreement to legislate for the lobbyist code.

So thank you, Deputy Speaker. I do commend the report to the House and again thank the chair and the committee for our constructive work on this report—if I do say so myself!

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