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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-05-01 Daily Xml
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HEALTH DEPARTMENT ANNUAL REPORT

The Hon. I.F. EVANS (Davenport) (14:46): My question is to the Minister for Health and Ageing. Why did the minister tell parliament on 28 March that the delay in the Department of Health's annual report was caused by the 'change in audit methodology' when the Auditor-General told the Economic and Finance Committee on 12 April that 'The delay wasn't caused as a result of the implementation of the audit methodology or indeed the audit process?'

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Ageing, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for the Arts) (14:46): I thank the member for his question. I read the member for Davenport's Q&A to the Auditor-General and I am not sure that it was plain from the questioning which delay he was referring to. However, let me explain it to the house.

The Department of Health is a separate legal entity to the various health regions which, in the 2010-11 year, included the Adelaide Health Service, Country Health SA, the Ambulance Service and the Women's and Children's Hospital. The Department of Health finalised its report and submitted it to the Auditor-General in the appropriate legislated time frame, whatever that date was (some time in August I gather). That was done appropriately.

If the sequence of audit that applied in the 2010-11 year was the same as had applied in previous years, then the Auditor would have gone through the process and I would have been able to table the audited Department of Health report in the normal time frame. However, the Auditor quite properly—and I am not criticising him for it—decided to audit all the health entities in one go. He had not done that before. Normally he would do the department and then he would do the hospital or the regions, or however they were configured, at a later date. That would ultimately be tabled by me, as I understand it, when I tabled their annual report (I remember the member for Bragg getting somewhat frustrated by this in previous Auditor-General investigations). That is the way it used to happen.

On this occasion he decided to do the audit of all the entities in one go. So when I said it to the house it was not blaming; I was explaining that the reason I could not table the health department's report was because Audit had not finished with it and Audit was dealing with it in a way that was different to the way it had dealt with it in previous years.

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