Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit I present the committee’s report entitled Report 407—review of Auditor-General’s reports tabled between 18 January and 18 April 2005.

Ordered that the report be made a parliamentary paper.

The Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit, as prescribed by the Public Accounts and Audit Committee Act 1951, examines all reports of the Auditor-General, and reports the results of the committee’s deliberations to the parliament.

This report details the findings of the committee’s detailed examination of five performance audits tabled in early 2005. These five reports were selected for further scrutiny from the 21 audit reports presented to the parliament between 12 January and 19 April 2005.

The reviews undertaken by the committee covered a number of government agencies and included subjects such as customer service, regulatory functions and contract management. The committee has made recommendations within these reviews to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the agencies and to ensure that the Auditor-General’s recommendations are implemented.

In conducting these reviews, the committee has remained aware of the themes it has previously stated it will pursue, including agencies’ financial management, accountability and reporting responsibilities under the Constitution and under the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997. We hope to see continued improvement in agencies’ understanding of and adherence to these responsibilities.

As a result of our review of an audit into the investment of public funds, we believe there may be some benefit from a central register of information about investments being undertaken by government agencies. This would enable interested parties, including the parliament, to keep track of the investment of public moneys and could also facilitate further information sharing between agencies on investment practices.

The review of the regulation of Commonwealth radiation and nuclear activities by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, ARPANSA, covered a number of issues including regulatory business processes, licensing, conflict of interest, cost recovery and the identification and enforcement of unlicensed activity. We have made several recommendations aimed at improving the standards and procedures for regulatory functions within the organisation including transparency in the formulation of national policies codes and standards and facilitating greater sharing of information on uniform national standards for licensing and compliance and for monitoring of radiation sources and nuclear facilities.

In addition, we have emphasised the importance of the Department of Health and Ageing providing an adequate level of monitoring of and support to its portfolio agencies. This was in response to similar issues being raised in this audit as were previously examined for the regulation of non-prescription medicinal products by the Therapeutic Goods Administration, another agency within the Health and Ageing portfolio. Agencies such as ARPANSA and TGA have significant roles in terms of the health and safety of the Australian public.

Centrelink has again been a focus of the committee’s activities, with two areas subject to review. The first was the Edge project. The software system which was to incorporate thousands of family tax benefit system rules in order to improve the accuracy of the assessment of customer entitlements was terminated before completion. The committee is disappointed that a system which appeared to hold such promise was developed but never fully implemented. The committee believes Centrelink should maintain its momentum to improve the systems in place overall to reduce the rate of errors in its data. The review also highlighted the impact that large numbers of rapid legislative changes have on program implementation by agencies such as Centrelink.

The second Centrelink review examined a series of audit reports into Centrelink’s major individual customer feedback systems. The committee report has highlighted such issues as sample selection processes which may lead to bias and ultimately unreliable data, the reporting of such data without transparent reporting of all the source of the data and its limitations, the lack of comprehensive costings across all systems examined and the possible underparticipation of Centrelink’s more vulnerable customers in processes such as value creation workshops. The committee is concerned that, for Centrelink’s customers, their rights are less well understood than their obligations, and it would like to see this imbalance rectified by Centrelink over time.

I acknowledge the valuable work of the Auditor-General and his staff at the Audit Office. Finally, I thank my colleagues on the committee of the 41st parliament for the work they have undertaken in completing this review of the Auditor-General’s reports. In particular, I acknowledge the work of Mr Bob Baldwin, who was chair of the committee at the time of these reviews, for initiating the review prior to his appointment as parliamentary secretary. I commend the report to the House.

Sharon Grierson (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also endorse the comments that you made, Mr Speaker, and the member for Corio made regarding the delegation to Malaysia and Japan. In speaking to Report 407—review of Auditor-General’s reports tabled between 18 January and 18 April 2005 of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit, it is always important to remember that holding government departments to account is a worthy task. It brings great benefits to the Australian people, and the work of the ANAO—the Audit Office—must be praised. It is independent and it certainly is rigorous. I also register my thanks to the secretariat. They have had a major load in catching up after an election, and I think we have done that well together.

The report looks at five separate audit reports. They are an interesting group and they certainly are important. The first one was on the investment of public funds and Commonwealth debt management. It deals with over $20 billion of Australian funds: $20 billion held by the Australian Office of Financial Management and $6 billion held under authorities under the Financial Management and Accountability Act. So we are talking about a lot of money that is held in a one-year period, that is surplus when departments are managing their budgets and that needs to be invested. Unfortunately, there were shortcomings found by the Audit Office. There were shortcomings in compliance and in record keeping. The Audit Office also found that records were inaccurate and incomplete and that agencies were still lacking in sound governance and reporting processes.

The committee followed up on that work and made several recommendations. Those recommendations went to having absolutely defined investment strategies and to making sure there was value for money. Those recommendations mean that government departments should have an investment strategy, a risk strategy and a report that goes to parliament that says what those strategies are, what the value and return is for those moneys, whether they are managed in house or by external agencies and what fee schedules apply. It is only correct, when we are talking about $26 billion of taxpayers’ money at the end of 2004, that it is managed properly, and I congratulate the committee on their recommendations.

The section on regulation of Commonwealth radiation and nuclear activities by ARPANSA has absolute currency, and it is certainly one area on which we need to give the public great assurances. Most importantly, we followed up the Audit Office’s findings that things could be improved a great deal and recommendations were made that I am sure will do that, particularly when the Department of Health and Ageing take their responsibility more seriously in managing those processes and in supporting ARPANSA.

It is important to mention that we have recommended that ARPANSA provide a quarterly report to the parliament on any licence breaches, including incidences of noncompliance. The Australian public would like to see those annually reported to parliament and not to read about them in the press. That does nobody any good. This requirement should include a short statement to the parliament even when no breaches have occurred. That would give us confidence that some rigour and professionalism exists in such an important agency.

We also looked at Centrelink complaints procedures and the management of them. A third of Australians deal in their daily lives with Centrelink, so it is extremely important that if things are not going well people have a chance to say so. Unfortunately, the Audit Office found that there was no nationally mandated framework for complaints. It found there was no cultural approach; it was up to individual Centrelink programs and officers. It also found that there was no cost framework and that customers were not aware of their rights in making complaints or, if they were, that there was still some fear of retribution. It was a fear that they would be punished in some way—that their moneys would be diminished.

Our recommendations went to reforming the system. Certainly it made sure again that there was a public report to this parliament on all the surveys that Centrelink run, what they find in them and how they respond to them. We did find that a lot of activity was happening but that there was not a lot of guided response. We also realised that there are very vulnerable people in our society, such as the mentally ill and the homeless, who are at times not even able to be accessed. We suggested that there have to be ways to put those people into focus groups to make sure that their needs are understood and responded to.

The other report we looked at was The Edge Project, which is terribly important at this time when the government is considering some sort of identification card for people across the Centrelink and social security framework. We found that the IT project certainly failed in that case. (Time expired)