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

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes:

(a) the importance of the Auditor-General, who is responsible for auditing Commonwealth entities and reporting to the Parliament, providing crucial accountability and transparency regarding Government administration, and scrutiny of the expenditure of public monies;

(b) that as an independent officer of the Parliament with responsibilities under the Auditor-General Act 1997, the Auditor-General reports not to a minister, but directly to the Parliament via the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit;

(c) that unlike similar entities such as the Parliamentary Budget Office, the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) sits within the Prime Minister and Cabinet portfolio, and the Prime Minister is responsible for administering the legislation and presenting budget bids for the ANAO, which is also subject to directions from the Minister for Finance as an entity under the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013; and

(d) the potential conflicts inherent in these arrangements, given the Auditor-General exists to scrutinise the performance and actions of the executive;

(2) declares that independent scrutiny of Government spending to get maximum value for every taxpayer dollar is more important now than ever, given:

(a) the Government is racking up one trillion dollars in debt;

(b) Australia's budget deficit is now at a record high; and

(c) Government spending has blown out to the highest percentage of gross domestic product since 1970, the earliest year that records are available in the budget papers;

(3) further notes that:

(a) the ANAO's budget has been in structural deficit for years because of this Government's cuts, recording unsustainable operating losses of $3 million in 2018-19 and $4 million in 2019-20;

(b) the Auditor-General wrote to the Prime Minister prior to the 2020-21 Budget requesting $6 million in new funding so he could continue to undertake his role, related to the accumulated budget pressures and COVID-19 cost pressures; and

(c) without new funding the Auditor-General is forced to reduce his program of performance audits which is projected to fall rapidly below the longstanding target of 48 performance audits per annum to around 38 per annum;

(4) condemns the Government for its ongoing efforts to hide rorts, waste and corruption from scrutiny and avoid accountability by:

(a) taking revenge on the Auditor-General and making further cuts to the ANAO's budget and staffing, with a $1 million cut to revenue, a reduction in resources of $14 million in 2020-21 and a reduction in the average staffing level allocation; and

(b) failing for years to introduce a National Integrity Commission; and

(5) calls on the Government to:

(a) immediately reverse its cuts to the ANAO's budget and provide the Auditor-General with the funds he has requested, by having the Minister for Finance provide an immediate advance, and making a commitment to boost funding over the forward estimates in the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook;

(b) apologise for the Prime Minister's failure to protect and support the independent Auditor General, as the Prime Minister has proven that he cannot be trusted to protect the integrity of the office;

(c) consider introducing legislation to remove the ANAO from the Prime Minister and Cabinet portfolio and establish the ANAO as a parliamentary department, cementing the Auditor General as a truly independent officer of the Parliament; and

(d) stop stalling and introduce legislation to establish a National Integrity Commission.

Scrutiny of government spending to get maximum value for every dollar is now more important than ever, given Australia's budget deficit is now at a record high and government spending has blown out under this mob to the highest percentage of GDP since 1970, which is as far back as you can go in the budget papers. So, while this motion might sound nerdy and niche, it really matters. Sticking up for the Auditor-General should not be controversial, and the motion simply reaffirms the importance of the Auditor-General and calls on the government to reverse its budget cuts and stop taking revenge on the Audit Office for doing their job well.

The Auditor-General is a critical part of the Commonwealth's integrity architecture. It turns the blowtorch on government expenditure and performance, and it's made even more important by the government's complete failure to introduce a national integrity commission. Indeed, the Audit Office is one of the few independent watchdogs with real teeth to scrutinise government performance.

It'll never be always comfortable for any government, but most audits are uncontroversial. Every now and again a scandal emerges, but, generally, that's not common, except under this Liberal government. They're rife with graft. There have been the sports rorts, where hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds were funnelled to Liberal Party marginal seats in a dodgy process in the minister's office. There have been airport land rorts. They paid $30 million for land worth $3 million. Liberal mates have run riot in ASIC, racking up bills and personal expenses. Billions of dollars have been wasted on consultant mates.

Taxpayers rely on the Auditor-General to uncover waste and misuse of public money, but to do his job the Auditor-General must be properly funded. The ANAO's budget has been in structural deficit for years because of this government's cuts, budget after budget. He recorded unsustainable losses over the last two years of $3.1 million and 4.8 million. So the Auditor-General wrote to the Prime Minister requesting $6.3 million in new funding in his budget just so he could keep doing his job. Disgracefully, instead of giving the Auditor-General the funding he needs, the Prime Minister took more revenge and made more cuts to the ANAO, getting his own back for sports rorts—a $1.28 million cut to revenue, a reduction in overall resources of $14 million and another cut to staffing.

The oldest trick in the book of governments worldwide who want to shut down scrutiny is to starve the integrity agencies of funds. The Prime Minister has the result he wanted: the number of performance audits will now fall well below the longstanding bipartisan target of about 48 per year, which has been there under successive governments, to about 38—a 20 per cent cut.

The Prime Minister, in question time, has tried to spin the issue and has said, 'Oh, well. It's not really a deliberate plan. His resourcing will be considered in the 10-year review by the JCPAA.' That is ridiculous and misleading. That's a 10-year review of the Auditor-General's legislation, not of his budget; that's the government's responsibility. Only the Prime Minister and the government can give the Audit Office more money. That's in the Constitution. The committee can't give him more money; only the government can.

But, make no mistake, this is just the latest attack on the ANAO. Since the Liberals were elected over seven years ago, the Auditor-General's budget, as of this year, has been cut by 18.3 per cent in real terms, and, shockingly, this latest nasty little budget bakes in more cuts. Four years from now, the ANAO's budget will have been cut by 22.1 per cent in real terms since the marketing department over there was elected to government. They're not my figures; that's the Parliamentary Library's analysis. But it's not a matter of money. They're racking up $1 trillion dollars of Liberal debt but they pretend they can't find $6.7 million for the Audit Office. That is a false economy if ever there was one.

This is a sustained attack on democracy. It is trying to avoid scrutiny and accountability for the Liberals own rorts, waste, pork-barrelling and graft. I call on the government to immediately reverse its cuts to the Auditor-General's budget. This should not be a partisan issue. If the government fails to restore funding to the ANAO before the next election, then I believe the opposition of which I am a member must commit to doing so, because integrity matters. I also call out Liberal government members of the JCPAA. I see the chair of the JCPAA here. I get on well with the chair, but I really call out the Liberal government members of the JCPAA for not standing up. Where have they been out there publicly defending the Auditor-General, doing their job as an audit committee, and sticking up for the independent Audit Office? It's just not good enough.

Given that the Prime Minister has proven that he can't be trusted to protect the Auditor-General, it's time that the parliament took the ANAO off him, took it out of his portfolio. We should legislate to establish the Audit Office as a parliamentary department, cementing the Auditor-General as a truly independent officer of the parliament, just like the Parliamentary Budget Officer or the Clerk. Frankly, I'd trust the Speaker and the President of the Senate more than I'd trust this Prime Minister to stick up for the Auditor-General.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bruce for the opportunity to discuss the role that the Auditor-General plays in our democracy. Despite a personal friendship, there are many areas on which the member for Bruce and I do not always agree, but the importance of the Auditor-General and the work of the Australian National Audit Office is one area on which we most certainly agree.

The ANAO's work in auditing Commonwealth entities assists in ensuring accountability and transparency, helping to improve public governance and administration. As chair of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit, I have seen firsthand the ANAO's valuable work in providing reports to the parliament that assist in improving the accountability, efficiency and effectiveness of government. I want to place on record my appreciation for the role that the Auditor-General and the ANAO play and the important work they do. The JCPAA has had a long tradition of operating as a bipartisan committee to support and protect the independence of the ANAO, and I take the activities of this committee seriously.

This motion also outlines issues regarding the ANAO's budget. Under the Public Accounts and Audit Committee Act, the JCPAA is required to consider the draft budget estimates of the ANAO and make recommendations to both houses of parliament. As the member for Bruce is aware, the committee made a statement on budget day expressing its view on the 2020-21draft budget estimates and made representations, as is appropriate, to advocate its position. However, this statement is not the end of the JCPAA's input into the ANAO's budget. On 2 September 2020, the committee began an inquiry into the Auditor-General Act, which includes consideration of resourcing arrangements.

I note that the Prime Minister referred specifically to this review in the House earlier this year and said that the government would consider future ANAO funding in the context of its response to that review. The Prime Minister said:

There is a 10-year review currently underway into the ANAO and what their resourcing requirements are.

… when the government receives the outcomes of that 10-year review, we will consider the resourcing for the ANAO.

The terms of reference for this inquiry will look at many of the issues and concerns raised by the member for Bruce in this motion, including the examination of governance frameworks, the independence of the ANAO, information gathering powers and the interaction of legislative frameworks. The review will also look at the Auditor-General's capacity to initiate audits, the accessibility and transparency of audits and audit conclusions, the audit priorities of the parliament and the role and appointment of the independent auditor.

This motion also argues that the ANAO should become a parliamentary department, inferring there could be potential conflicts created by the current structure. But the Auditor-General and the ANAO already have statutory independence from government in the work they conduct. The motion seems to suggest a connection between the ANAO operating within the Prime Minister and Cabinet portfolio and that the ANAO didn't receive the supplementary funding that it requested in the 2020-21 budget. This would also appear to conflate the issues. For instance, the Parliamentary Budget Office, which is a parliamentary department, also requested and also didn't receive the supplementary funding it requested as part of the recent budget. However, ultimately, these broader issues are matters for the JCPAA's 10-year review of the Auditor-General's Act to consider, and I would certainly welcome further consideration of these matters throughout the inquiry.

The member for Bruce raised the need for a national integrity commission in this motion. Preventing corrupt, criminal behaviour in the public sector is an important issue and one the government is taking strong action on. The Morrison government has released a consultation draft of legislation to create a Commonwealth integrity body for the federal public sector. This draft legislation will ensure the new body has appropriate resources and powers to investigate allegations of criminal conduct and will be led by an integrity commissioner. The model proposed builds on lessons learnt from state integrity bodies and strikes a balance between the need to protect individual rights, and the need to prevent and target wrongdoing at the Commonwealth level.

The Morrison government will continue to ensure the highest level of integrity within the Commonwealth public sector. I know that the JCPAA will also continue its work in upholding the independence of the ANAO and, through the 10-year review process, look to strengthen existing governance frameworks to facilitate the important work of the Auditor-General and the ANAO. I look forward to working with the member for Bruce on this very important inquiry.

Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bruce for moving this important motion. I was elected to represent the people of Dunkley with vigour and integrity. I'm proud to be a parliamentarian and I'm proud to represent the people of Dunkley. But like many, many people in my community, and I must say many people who are also privileged to be members of this parliament, I am deeply concerned about the state of politics and the way that politics has been played, eroding and corroding the community's trust in democracy and government.

Before this pandemic, fewer than half of all Australians were satisfied with the way democracy worked, and trust in government had suffered a 20-year slide from 48 per cent to 26 per cent. While it is true that some of that decline has been halted during the pandemic because of the way the opposition and the government have, in many instances, put cudgels aside and worked together for public health matters, we are only seeing green shoots.

Sadly, some of the growing belief in the public that perhaps politicians can work together for the greater good has been undermined over and over again because we have a Prime Minister and a government that not only continue to be embroiled in scandal after scandal but refuse to take responsibility for those scandals. We have a Prime Minister who has constantly denigrated and undermined this national parliament by calling it 'a bubble', who shuts down debate on topics he doesn't like, who refuses to release reports or answer questions that don't suit his agenda and who ignores long-held conventions and protocols. This is a government which has undermined the trust of the Australian people by treating the privilege of being elected to parliament and forming a government as a political plaything, where the interests that they serve are too often their own and not those of the Australian people.

Before the budget, the Auditor-General wrote to the government requesting $6.3 million in new funding so he could continue to undertake his essential role in scrutiny of government spending and programs. There are accumulated budget pressures and spending because of COVID-19, there is a trillion dollars in debt and this is one of the highest spending governments in history. We have seen the Auditor-General's work firsthand uncover the way this government has treated public money as its plaything. We have seen the sports rorts scandal, which is not over. We have seen the Leppington triangle. We know what allegations have been made about water buybacks on the Murray-Darling Basin. We know how important the Auditor-General is but, despite the fact that the ANAO has been in structural deficit for years because of the government's cuts and the Auditor-General has asked for more money, this Prime Minister, this Treasurer, this government have failed to deliver.

We also know that we have a government that has wanted to talk the talk about integrity but just simply hasn't delivered. The Australian public have been waiting for years for the Prime Minister's announcement about a national integrity commission to turn into delivery. We must have a national integrity commission, one with teeth, one which has the power to investigate sitting members of parliament, government agencies and government departments, if we are to even come close to restoring that 20-year decline in faith in the public sector. We have a government that apparently has decided that the Westminster system of responsibility doesn't apply to it anymore. Robodebt must be one of the greatest public policy failings ever seen in Australia, where, in order to fix the budget deficit, a government has preyed on the vulnerable in society that it is here to represent. In most other Western democracies that purport to follow the Westminster system, the government would have fallen over robodebt. But we don't even have one minister willing to put up his—because they are men—hand to take responsibility, including the Prime Minister, who started this entire shameful chapter in Australia's public policy history. We need integrity. We need it now more than ever, and the government needs to step up and deliver.

Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This has been a truly appalling year for transparency in this country, and the community is demanding to know: what else have politicians got to hide? For instance, we've had the Clover Moore fake document saga; sports rorts; the outrageous price paid for Leppington Triangle; Cartier watches; and the ASIC chairman's massive tax bill. Honestly, it's no wonder that the community's trust in the government and in our institutions is at an all-time low. And now, rather than addressing all this dodgy behaviour, the government has gone and cut the funding of the Australian National Audit Office even further, even though it's the very agency tasked to scrutinise government spending of taxpayers' money.

For heaven's sake, surely independent oversight of this nature is a fundamental pillar of a good democracy, and just as surely the ANAO has demonstrated time and time again the important work it does. Remember, it was the National Audit Office that uncovered the shameless pork-barrelling of coalition seats using community sports programs, and only last month the Auditor-General referred the Leppington Triangle deal to the Australian Federal Police after the Commonwealth paid a thumping $30 million for a piece of land worth just three million bucks. No wonder, I suppose, that the Audit Office is in the government's sights and has lost nearly a fifth of its funding since the coalition came to power. It seems secrecy is in their DNA, which also goes to explain the government's woefully inadequate federal integrity body.

Frankly, that will be a toothless tiger. For instance, it will not conduct public hearings into allegations of corruption and it won't be able to report or make public findings of corruption. Moreover, there is no remit to look at conflicts of interest and it will rely on self-referrals by MPs. Even worse, it will actively discourage whistleblowers, because Public Service whistleblowers would risk being turned away or even prosecuted for making allegations, even if they have a reasonable suspicion of corruption. Frankly, we'd be better off with nothing rather than this appallingly designed integrity agency. No. What we need is a powerful independent body that can hold public hearings, make findings of guilt, lean on a broad definition of corruption and accept referrals from any member of the community. In other words, we need an integrity agency that actually has the resources and powers to do its job and to do it properly.

I regret to add that, in my home state of Tasmania, things are just as bad. Indeed, the Tasmanian government has officially been named Australia's most secretive government, with the Tasmanian Ombudsman last week confirming Tasmania is the worst jurisdiction at releasing information. Indeed, approximately one-third of requests for information under the right-to-information law are refused by Tasmanian authorities, which is a rate of refusal 750 per cent higher than Australia's most open jurisdictions, Victoria and the Northern Territory.

And that's just the start of it, because, as revealed by an Australia Institute report released today, Tasmania has weaker political donation laws, less government transparency and more limited public accountability than the other jurisdictions. Indeed, the report finds that, as other states fix their accountability mechanisms following a public corruption scandal, Tasmania routinely does nothing to fix the problem and, if it does make an attempt, it's often unsuccessful. For example, you just need to look at the 2018 state election, where the Tasmanian Liberal Party spent a record $4 million to ensure its re-election, but we simply don't know where all that money came from. Then there's the refusal of the Premier to tell us which businesses shared in the $26 million COVID hardship grant program—nor can we be assured that Tasmania's so-called integrity commission will give us any answers, because, according to the Australia Institute report, since its establishment in 2009 the Tasmanian Integrity Commission has made no misconduct findings, held no public hearings and referred no cases to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

In closing, all of this secrecy is simply not good enough, and the community is sick of it. Instead we need effective national and state integrity bodies with teeth, and we need to end the culture of secrecy and impunity which has become so commonplace in our parliament. A good place to start would be a well-funded, independent and genuinely effective National Audit Office that can build on the good work its already done in the public interest time and time again.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of debate for the next day of sitting.