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 408: Annual report 2005-2006, together with executive minutes on reports Nos. 391, 395, 398, 399, 400, 402, 403 and 404.

Ordered that the report be made a parliamentary paper.

I am pleased to present the annual report of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit.  The report is an important accountability mechanism by which parliament, and through it the public, can conveniently assess the committee’s performance.

The duties of the committee are described in the Public Accounts and Audit Committee Act. In general terms, the duties are to: examine the financial affairs of authorities of the Commonwealth, and examine all reports of the Auditor-General; consider the operations and resources of the Audit Office; approve or reject the Prime Minister’s recommendation for appointment of the Auditor-General and the Independent Auditor; and increase parliamentary and public awareness of the financial and related operations of government.

During 2005-06 the committee has fulfilled each of these responsibilities. Unlike other committees, the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit can initiate its own policy inquiries without permission or reference to any minister, government or the parliament.  During 2005-06 the committee has undertaken three major policy inquiries.

The committee continued its reopened inquiry into aviation security in Australia and in November 2005 tabled Report 406: Developments in aviation security since the committee’s June 2004 ‘Report 400—Review of aviation security in Australia—an interim report’. The interim report builds on the recommendations made in An independent review of airport security and policing for the Australian government by the Rt Hon. Sir John Wheeler DL, which was released in September 2005.

The committee received 81 submissions and undertook public hearings and inspections in major capital cities and major regional areas right across Australia. The committee has now concluded taking evidence for the inquiry and will deliver its final report in the near future.

In December 2005 the committee resolved to inquire into a range of taxation matters. At September 2006 the inquiry had received 56 submissions and taken evidence at public hearings in Canberra, Sydney, Launceston and Melbourne. The committee expects to report in the first half of 2007.

In March 2006 the committee resolved to review the financial reporting and equipment acquisition of both the Department of Defence and Defence Materiel Organisation. As well, the committee has continued a very full schedule in fulfilling its responsibility to review Auditor-General’s reports, during 2005-06.

Report 407: Review of Auditor-General’s Reports tabled between 18 January and 18 April 2005 was tabled in August 2006. The report contains the committee’s findings and recommendations following three public hearings into five Auditor’s reports. The reports were selected for special consideration from the 21 Auditor-General reports that came before the committee.

The committee has concluded taking evidence on another 16 reports that it selected from the 59 which were tabled between 17 May 2005 and 16 March of this year. The committee took evidence on the selected reports at eight public hearings. It will table its considerations and recommendations in the near future.

In May 2006, the committee reviewed the Australian National Audit Office draft budget estimates for 2006-07, and received a briefing from the Audit Office. The Auditor-General advised the committee that the office would manage within the allocated budget for 2006-07 without compromising its financial auditing function.

Section 8A of the Public Accounts and Audit Committee Act provides for the committee to approve or reject the audit minister’s—currently the Prime Minister’s—recommendation for an appointment of the Auditor-General or Independent Auditor. On 29 March 2006 the committee unanimously agreed to endorse the nomination of Mr Geoff Wilson as Independent Auditor and wrote to the Prime Minister accordingly. On behalf of the committee, I thank the previous Independent Auditor, Mr Michael Coleman. I would also like to express appreciation on behalf of the committee for the high quality of support that the Auditor-General, Mr Ian McPhee, and his staff have provided to us in relation to our inquiries.

Finally, I wish to thank my colleagues on the committee for their hard work and commitment to the committee during the year. This is the first annual report that I present as Chair of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit. On behalf of the committee I would like to thank the previous chair, the Hon. Bob Baldwin. I commend the committee’s annual report to the House.

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

As Deputy Chair of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit I also commend our annual report to the House. I support the sentiments of the chair and thank him for his efforts on behalf of our committee. I think that democracy is strengthened by the work of this committee, and I acknowledge and thank all my parliamentary colleagues who are members of that committee for their participation and their very thoughtful contributions.

I think it needs to be remembered that in the federal sphere there is no equivalent to ICAC. There is no federal public corruption body. Hopefully, we will never need one, but corruption can occur in the executive arm of government as well as the bureaucratic arm of government. If it does occur, democracy and the Australian people will be the greatest losers. But fortunately the Australian National Audit Office and the work of the JCPAA provide very close and ongoing scrutiny of all government departments and agencies. In that way they are a very powerful tool of accountability.

This annual report outlines the major inquiries that have been undertaken in this calendar year. They have been very important ones focusing on areas of government activity such as taxation, aviation security and defence expenditure. They have very direct relevance to most Australians. Those inquiries have been ambitious in their workload and their purpose, but they all offer the opportunity to bring about improvements in performance, fairness and security. I particularly look forward to the aviation security report being tabled before the end of this year. I acknowledge the hard work of the secretariat, because we have given them a particularly long and difficult year with several major inquiries happening concurrently.

One of the other areas of investigation by our committee is the regular oversight and review of all audit reports undertaken by the ANAO. We have released our reports 404 and 407, and in those we looked at financial performance and the performance outcomes in a wide range of fields. Centrelink always comes up for mention, and so does Defence. But areas like the regulation of Commonwealth radiation in nuclear activities have great currency at the moment, as do some of our other projects such as those on therapeutic goods and defence.

There have been administrative issues that I think have been dealt with very well by the committee this year, but the one that always has greatest debate is the resourcing level of the Australian National Audit Office. I make the point that we felt this time that the resource level was sufficient, but there is an area of resourcing that has not been approved, and certainly because of that the Audit Office cannot take on that role. We were in agreement that we support in the future some annual oversight by the ANAO of major Defence projects. I think an annual report would be useful to the government and certainly useful to the Department of Defence, and I look forward to that being accepted in the future so that ANAO can assist efficiency in Defence spending.

We also achieved a positive involvement in the appointment of the Independent Auditor, and it is one task the committee were intent on being involved in and exercising their duty in very properly. We made the point that a delay in having an Independent Auditor is not a good look for probity, and I am pleased to see that covered in our annual report.

We also met this year with Dr Peter Shergold, the Secretary to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and Lynelle Briggs, the Public Service Commissioner. I hope that such meetings will become an ongoing feature of our committee, because there are issues that arise over and over again. It seems that those issues must be of interest and they certainly are of concern to those particular people in their roles. They go to rather important areas of government activity.

I want to raise a better-practice guide that has just been released by the Australian National Audit Office as something that I think shows that the committee has worked very well with the Audit Office towards overcoming some significant problem areas—areas that keep coming up, like risk management, governance, procurement and contract management, monitoring and review. This manual, ‘Implementation of Program and Policy Initiatives—Making Implementation Better’, comes with a pocket guide too, and I must say I have never seen such an excellent example of professional support and advice.

I have also enjoyed this year meeting with some Indonesian parliamentarians who were involved in governance. I think that the work that the audit committee, particularly the chair and the secretariat, do in working with governments from other countries wanting more help with governance is a great initiative. So I do congratulate all involved this year in the work of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit and look forward to further success and ongoing achievements by this important committee.