Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to respond to a couple of the—I am not sure if they were intentional or otherwise—inferences I took from Senator Bishop's comments in response to Senator Xenophon. In no way was I reflecting upon the integrity of the officials of the Auditor-General's office. That would be the last thing I intended. What I am suggesting is that this would be a very new space for them in which to operate. It is not something with which they have a great deal of experience. I am aware of the limitations of my own experiences, Senator Bishop, and I always try to take those into account. I am very reticent to go boots and all into an area where I do not have experience, particularly shared experiences with those in that area. This is an area where the ANAO do not have experience. You say that these audits will only happen as the exception, so the ANAO will not get any experience.

I mentioned earlier that I do not think a promise is good enough when we have parliamentary officials with this much power. I have always been a strong believer in checks and balances upon an executive power and this is akin to an executive power. The Auditor-General is accountable to this place, but lack of experience could make the audits traumatic. Senator Bishop asserted that there is no reason for these audits to be traumatic. If you are in a two-person business where your spouse does the books while you work and all of a sudden an auditor comes in to look at the books to the standard that we would demand in this place for anyone receiving public funds, if anything it is going to be a bit challenging for a lot of small businesses running a simple MYOB cash accounting system to be able to meet those requirements. On top of that, the official may not have any experience in dealing with small businesses. While there is no malfeasance or intention for this to be difficult, there is not going to be a first-instance meeting of minds on this case.

We are setting up a situation here where a legitimate audit done under this law for all the right reasons may be undertaken and may find that a small or medium sized business has done nothing wrong—great; I am sure everyone will be pleased by that—but I think you are undervaluing the trauma, the opportunity cost and the stress to the business or people's personal lives of the bit in between: the audit. For a lot of these people in receipt of government funds, if you are unwilling to draw a line under where the Auditor-General stops and where our responsibility begins, then I think you undervalue the impact that this could have on a small business operation. A promise is not enough. A statement is not enough. That is no reflection on someone's integrity—it is simply the fact that there may be a different person in office in the future. You have outlined that they do not have experience and you have outlined that they are not going to get experience because they intend to do it rarely, and therefore they are not going to have that knowledge which might make it a little bit easier, and I do not see why there is not some discussion if not on the opposition's amendment of drawing a line at the government's front door then at least of considering a threshold requirement. The Auditor-General cannot look into a $15,000 IT contract. That is a job for someone else, and I would suggest it is appropriate for the agency that let the contract to do it.

I say to the chamber that this government's form on contractors is not one to be trusted. We have budget items at the moment for going after contractors. The term 'sham contracting' has been thrown around both houses in this place and I know a lot of small business people and independent contractors who are very worried by that. There is, in my view, a lack of understanding, and I think Senator Bishop's speech just illustrated that, while there is no intention from the Auditor-General—and maybe not even from the government—to make life more difficult, it will do so, even if inadvertently.