Matters of Interest

Auditor-General's Report

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (15:04): I want to address some comments today about the Auditor-General's Report that members received yesterday afternoon. In making the comments, I hasten to say that I make no personal criticisms of the Auditor-General, but as shadow treasurer I did want to place on the record my general view, I guess, of the disappointing nature of the amount of detail that is provided on key issues in the Auditor-General's Report that we received.

In doing so I make the comments when comparing the output of the audit office here in South Australia compared to the type of audit reports that we commonly see from other jurisdictions, in particular New South Wales and Victoria, but some of the other state jurisdictions as well. Also I have the particular perspective of comparing the shape and nature of the audit reports we received now compared to the sort of audit reports we saw back in the 1980s when I was first a member of the state parliament.

Back in that particular period, and certainly in the other states, the receipt of the Auditor-General's Report was something of great importance to individual ministers. It was then a Labor administration in the 1980s and the audit reports highlighted significant examples of financial waste or mismanagement in particular areas.

They were not necessarily always in the big, multi-billion dollar or multi-hundred million dollar-type projects, but were sometimes as short and succinct as the level of wasted money on vacancy rentals within government employee housing, for example, or the waste of money that might have been expended on particular leasehold arrangements with government accommodation contracts.

That sort of detail was commonplace in the audit reports. They were specific details and newsworthy, from that extent, for members of the media and members of parliament. Indeed, ministers and chief executives knew that the sharp focus of the audit report may well mean that there was public pressure on both the minister and the chief executive officer in terms of why money was being wasted in a particular area.

I refer to a couple of aspects of the current audit reports, just to give some examples. EPAS, the major IT project of more than $400 million in SA Health, is a project that has attracted public scrutiny and some media scrutiny for more than a couple of years now. There has been some media focus on EPAS in recent weeks and months, but members will know that the issue has been raised by myself and other members in this house for at least two or three years, in terms of wastage of public expenditure in this particular area.

I had hoped that in this particular report, given that there was not much in last year's report, there would have been some detailed information provided by the audit office in this particular area. The audit office has indicated that they are doing a separate report, and that at some stage in the future there will be a report on this and on RISTEC, Oracle Corporate Systems and CASIS, which are three other examples of IT projects.

I think that one of the problems with the current operations of the audit office is that sometimes the excessive periods in terms of coming to a reporting timetable on some of these particular projects may well mean that it is long gone in terms of effectiveness and in terms of public scrutiny, media focus and parliamentary debate on the particular issues, in terms of bringing about change. These issues have been prosecuted through the Budget and Finance Committee and other parliamentary committees. They have been well ventilated; copies of minutes and board papers have been highlighted and published, and all of this would be available to the audit office.

Mr President, I think it is time to start a conversation—and I will address this on another occasion—in terms of options for potential reform of the audit office. We spend $15 million a year on the audit office and I think the questions that we need to start to address are: are we getting maximum value from it, and are there other ways that we can sharpen our audit function, in the public interest, to ensure a public focus and scrutiny is placed on the operations of whoever happens to be in government at any particular point in time?