Bills

Public Finance and Audit (Auditor-General Access to Cabinet Submissions) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Mr COWDREY (Colton) (10:31): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I rise today as the lead speaker for the opposition and indicate the unequivocal support on this side of the house for the Public Finance and Audit (Auditor-General Access to Cabinet Submissions) Amendment Bill 2022. The bill will provide the Auditor-General additional powers to access cabinet submissions in order to complete their audit and fulfill their statutory responsibilities to this parliament to ensure that financial approval and delegation, as well as proper administrative processes, have been adhered to.

The bill will clear up issues raised by the Auditor-General in the 2022 annual report, whereby the Auditor-General was impeded from doing their job because this government and this Premier refused to provide access to cabinet submissions requested by the Auditor-General. I think it is important to take the opportunity to look back at how we have reached this point and how it has become necessary for the opposition to take the lead as a result of the Malinauskas government failing to be open and honest with the people of South Australia.

Since the election of the Malinauskas government in March 2022, the Premier has refused to provide the Auditor-General with access to any of his government's cabinet submissions. This shocking lack of transparency and accountability led the Auditor-General himself to declare that the change of government has certainly changed the scenario for access. That is right: the change of government has hindered the ability of the Auditor-General to do his job.

This was not an issue that was raised during the four years of the Marshall Liberal government, where cabinet submissions were provided to the Auditor-General on request. Since the March 2022 election, the opposition has provided all eight cabinet submissions that the Auditor-General has requested of us in full.

There is an arrogance of this Premier and this government. The Premier has confirmed time and time again that he does not intend to give the Auditor-General any cabinet submissions that he requests into the future. The Premier and the Labor Party have continued to make statements defending these actions, statements that without context are true but could only be interpreted by any rational or logical person as being just plain misleading.

Statement No. 1, and I quote: 'The government operates on exactly the same framework as its predecessor'—technically true. Premier's circular No. 47 still exists and provides the Premier with the ability to release requested cabinet documents to the Auditor-General. Under the last government, requested cabinet submissions were approved for release. Under Labor, the Premier has released none—rejected every request. So, yes, while the same framework exists, the practical outcome is completely different.

The secrecy is down to one person: the Premier of this state. If the Premier's intent is just to reject every request, why even keep the framework at all? What purpose does it serve if there is no intent whatsoever from this government to allow the release of any cabinet submission documents? The circular is there so that the Auditor-General can do his job and avoid having to provide qualified opinions as he was forced to do in relation to the Labor Party's sports and infrastructure election grants program.

Statement No. 2, and I again quote: 'The only people in South Australia who are entitled to cabinet documents are members of cabinet themselves'—again, technically true. Leaving aside the long list of political staffers, departmental staff and others who have access outside of cabinet members themselves, it ignores the convention of providing requested documents to the Auditor-General that existed prior to 2016. It also ignores the fact that the Premier need only follow our lead and introduce a bill to this parliament should he wish to provide that entitlement to the Auditor-General. The Auditor-General must feel like he has gone back to the future, because this lack of transparency is in the DNA of the Labor Party. This may be a different government, but it is certainly the same old Labor.

When the Auditor-General was asked in a Budget and Finance Committee hearing whether powers to access cabinet submissions would help him undertake his functions, he quite simply replied yes. Why would any reasonable member of any government seek to obstruct an independent authority such as the Auditor-General from doing their job? It lacks transparency, accountability and integrity. It is not responsible government and it begs one question: what does the Premier know and what is he trying to hide? That is how we got to this point, and it is time for members opposite to stop the obstruction and join us in supporting this bill.

This bill is designed as a first step towards broader reform. For this reason, and to avoid the need for an assessment to be undertaken as part of the process, the bill only provides access to cabinet submissions. This avoids the potential issue of releasing sensitive cabinet documents that are not relevant to providing the Auditor-General with the necessary information around spending decisions that are contained in the cabinet submission itself. In practice, provisions in the bill would allow the Auditor-General to request a cabinet submission document from the department responsible for the submission or from the Department of the Premier and Cabinet or the Cabinet Office.

The bill provides relevant legal protections to cover the individuals who provide the document. It also outlines the strict requirements of the Auditor-General in maintaining confidentiality of a document provided to them only for the purposes of an audit. Further, the bill sets out the requirements around any necessary disclosure in a report that must be followed by the Auditor-General. The bill also requires that the Premier or the opposition leader, depending on the cabinet submission sought, must be notified when a request is made. The bill will act retrospectively.

In the preparation of this bill, the opposition looked at other jurisdictions and what they are doing. The federal Auditor-General can access necessary cabinet submissions. In Western Australia, the Labor government introduced a bill to provide express legislative right of access to their Auditor-General. In the words of the former WA Premier McGowan, 'The Auditor-General serves a critical role in public integrity.' In New South Wales, the former Perrottet Liberal government introduced a bill also to provide their Auditor-General with access to cabinet submissions necessary to undertake their obligations.

It is time for all of us in this place to step up and to act. Every member of this place has a responsibility to their constituents to ensure that government is honest and that it is accountable. It is sad that the opposition has had to act and to introduce this bill, because this should not be a matter for debate. This should be a debate that is actually taking place in government business, as it has done interstate.

This bill has already passed with the support of the entire crossbench through the Legislative Council. The only opposition to its passage is the Labor Party. It should be part of any responsible government to ensure that the Auditor-General can fulfil their statutory responsibilities to this parliament. This is what this bill will achieve and I commend it to the house.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (10:40): I am pleased to rise to support the Public Finance and Audit (Auditor-General Access to Cabinet Submissions) Amendment Bill. I commend the shadow treasurer, the member for Colton, for bringing this bill to the house and for the work that he did, along with our colleague the Hon. Heidi Girolamo in the other place, to prepare this bill. The member for Colton and the shadow treasurer has already outlined some of the work that went into the preparation for this bill and noted that when introduced to the Legislative Council, the Greens, SA-Best, One Nation—the entire crossbench of the Legislative Council—joined with the Liberal Party in supporting this bill and bringing it to this place.

The only roadblock to its advancement now is the government, but I fear that they are reluctant to support the bill because the reason for its very existence lies in their inability to open themselves up to the scrutiny of the Auditor-General by providing cabinet submissions such as the former Liberal government did, such as former Labor governments did prior to 2016. We do not know why they are so reluctant to open themselves up to the scrutiny of the Auditor-General, but it is that fear of transparency and accountability that has created the reason for the bill in the first place, and I fear they are going to take that fear of the sunlight to the vote on this bill.

The Auditor-General is not some scary bogeyman figure the government should fear. The Auditor-General is a statutory officer who, on behalf of the people of South Australia, conducts inquiries into the integrity and the accounts of government departments and, indeed, should be able to provide that scrutiny to cabinet documents. It is an integrity and accountability measure that the former Liberal government did not fear. The only documents I ever recall being denied to the Auditor-General on their request were those that required the permission of the Premier now, as opposition leader as was then, the Labor Party from previous cabinet decisions prior to 2018, required the Labor Party's permission to release them. Those are the only ones I recall.

Since the election, I should also say that the Leader of the Opposition has been asked on a number of occasions by the Auditor-General, by Cabinet Office, whether we would allow cabinet submissions undertaken during our time in government to be released to the Auditor-General. They are the only cabinet submissions the Auditor-General has seen since the election, as I understand it. We have said yes when the Auditor-General has provided that request while the government says no.

The Premier in this house on a number of occasions, when asked why this government is not releasing cabinet documents to the Auditor-General, has used the excuse of cabinet confidentiality. That confidentiality, as the shadow treasurer identified before—well, the way the Premier talks about it you would think that the only 15 people in the land who had ever seen any of these cabinet documents were the members of the cabinet itself. But we know that there are senior public servants, there are people in the Cabinet Office, there are people in the departments, there are chief executives of the departments who have access to those documents. There are political appointees in ministers' offices and, indeed, in the Premier's office who have access to those documents.

The Auditor-General does not. That the Auditor-General does not when so many others do—and I have no problem with those people having access because they are part of the machinery of government that enables cabinet to function—the idea that cabinet confidentiality should be used as a shield against the Auditor-General being able to use their full purpose with access to those documents to apply proper integrity and scrutiny on the government, is a complete nonsense. It is a farce. It is unsustainable.

It is a farce that the Premier, Peter Malinauskas, has been using since 2018, when he was appointed as opposition leader and he started at that point—elected by the Labor Party, against a full field of candidates no doubt. At that point, in 2018, he commenced his campaign, his continued and intentional obstruction of the Auditor-General accessing those documents.

He was not the first; Jay Weatherill was the first. The former Premier introduced this approach in 2016 and the Auditor-General complained and expressed concern then. We in the opposition, as we were then, said, 'We wouldn't behave like that in government,' and we did not. But this is a government, this is a party, that since 2016 has not provided scrutiny for the people of South Australia.

This is not for cabinet documents to be seen by everybody and it is not for cabinet documents to be released to the entire world: this is to the Auditor-General, a man of significant integrity who has had no questions placed on his integrity in any way that I am aware of—who has had no questions over his capacity to perform his duties or to handle sensitive documents or sensitive government information—other than that this government does not want him to have the opportunity to observe the decision-making process behind these cabinet documents.

Several years ago, a significant inquiry was undertaken into the schools building program. It found many good things happening in the schools building program, but it did raise the question of how the choices were made in the initial $692 million worth of projects that were chosen when the Weatherill government was in place and the lands titles office was sold. This became the basis for many of the about 97 projects selected. They were announced by the Labor Party in 2017. The Liberal Party, wanting to give certainty to these schools very soon, announced that if we were elected in 2018 we would match every one of those commitments, which we did. Indeed, many of those commitments have now been completed and have significantly improved schools.

But there are 500 public schools, and we have identified dozens and dozens of them, potentially well over 100, that do need some further work. Ninety or so were chosen by the Labor Party, and the amount of money that was spent on each of them was determined by the Labor Party. There were some controversial decisions in that. For example, at Norwood Morialta, which was seen to be the beneficiary of a $30 million project, the Labor Party never told anyone before the election that $15 million of that was predicated on the sale of land at Rostrevor for housing.

That decision was overturned, thankfully, and that land is now going towards building a new school. The purpose in raising this example is that the Auditor-General would have loved to see the cabinet submission that went into the cabinet to make those decisions about the $692 million, the 97 or so choices. I have not been told this officially, but my understanding is that there were many suggestions that did not make the cut.

Whether those suggestions were in the cabinet paper or not, prepared by the education department, we will not know until the expiry of time for those cabinet papers to be revealed comes up. The Auditor-General would have liked to know. The Auditor-General would have liked to know if there were suggestions made by the education department about schools that should get funding or whether the amounts of money that were provided in those suggestions were sufficient.

When we did the assessment through 2018, and announced it in early 2019, of how much money would be necessary to deliver our commitment of year 7 to high school, it took into account works for upgrades that were already planned. Indeed, a number of schools were identified that not only needed new infrastructure for the year 7s but needed new infrastructure for the kids who were already there.

These schools were not unknown to the education department in 2017 when the Labor government determined how much money should go into that schools building program, yet that cabinet did not provide money to those schools as part of that $692 million and there were funds provided to other schools. There was an interesting geographical mix that did not necessarily align perfectly with need. We had made those commitments and those schools were all worthy, but were they the most worthy? Well, we will not know because the Auditor-General did not have access to that cabinet document.

Even though we were in government, the Labor Party did not allow access to that cabinet document to be provided to any integrity body—the Auditor-General is the one I am thinking of in particular—to allay any doubt. So the purpose for this bill should not be necessary because it should just be the convention that was maintained up to 2016, and observed from 2018 to 2022, that governments provide the Auditor-General with access to cabinet documents. The fact that the Labor Party refuses to provide any of them has created this need.

It is not that there is an excuse that in one particular case or on one particular cabinet submission the Labor Party have identified a specific need why this information is so sensitive, so secure, that the Auditor-General cannot see this one. No, they applied a blanket rule: they do not believe the Auditor-General ought be entitled to see these documents.

Well, we disagree, and we believe that they have nothing to fear so long as they are acting with integrity. They should support this bill and demonstrate that they have nothing to fear from the transparency measure, which is so confined that the Auditor-General alone can see the documents rather than their being released to the general public. On behalf of the general public, on behalf of the people of South Australia, the Auditor-General can apply themselves and their scrutiny and their consideration to whether these cabinet decisions were taken appropriately. I commend the bill to the house.

Mr ODENWALDER (Elizabeth) (10:50): I move:

That the debate be adjourned.

The house divided on the motion:

Ayes 22

Noes 15

Majority 7

AYES

NOES

PAIRS

Motion thus carried; debate adjourned.