Lucy Wicks (Robertson, 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 480.1: annual report 2019-20, together with minutes of proceedings. The Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit is required to ensure the accountability and transparency of public administration and expenditure of the Commonwealth. The committee's annual report is presented to the parliament under section 8B of the Public Accounts and Audit Committee Act 1951 and summarises the work of the committee in the 2019-20 financial year. One of the committee's key roles is to examine the reports of the Auditor-General tabled in the parliament. The committee periodically selects several of these reports for further inquiry.

Like all committees, the work of the JCPAA was challenged by the circumstances of COVID-19. Despite this, the committee presented two reports in the parliament, containing 12 recommendations, and held six public hearings using a combination of face to face, video and teleconference. Four further inquiries were also underway as at 30 June.

The committee's report on efficiency and effectiveness reviewed seven Australian National Audit Office reports on matters such as the Farm Management Deposits scheme, small business tax debt and the operations of the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the deputy chair and all committee members and participants for their commitment and flexibility over this time in conducting this inquiry.

A highlight of the committee's activities during 2019-20 was hosting the 15th biennial Australasian Council of Public Accounts Committees conference, with the theme 'Changes and challenges over the last 30 years'. The conference presented an opportunity to strengthen existing intraparliamentary dialogue and discuss the workings of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit and its counterpart committees in each state and territory. International delegates from South Africa, Fiji and New Zealand also attended the conference.

I look forward to continuing the important work of the committee over the coming year. I commend the report to the House.

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

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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.