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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-12-01 Daily Xml
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Question Time

SA Housing Authority

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Leader of the Opposition) (14:26): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Human Services regarding housing.

Leave granted.

The Hon. K.J. MAHER: The Auditor-General's Report this year identified that the Housing Authority had been making automatic payments of up to $5,000 instead of the legal threshold of $1,000. The Housing Authority itself admitted that this could have been occurring up to 89,000 times each year.

The transactions are subject to Treasurer's Instruction No. 8 made under section 41 of the Public Finance and Audit Act 1987. Every breach of this section is a criminal offence. In response to questions during the Auditor-General's examination on 28 October on this matter, the minister for Human Services said:

I think that goes outside the actual findings that are in the Auditor-General's Report. He is asking me a policy question, which he is more than welcome to ask me in question time.

The opposition has now been provided with a copy of an internal email from the SA Housing Authority, dated 26 November, that says:

…after an instruction by the Auditor-General the Authority is now required to give express approval for any variation to a work order which exceeds $1000 which is a change to the current threshold of $5000.

The email goes on to say, 'The Authority has been instructed to action changes as soon as possible.' My questions to the minister are:

1. When exactly was the minister first made aware of the Housing Authority's illegal conduct in this respect?

2. When exactly was the instruction given by the Auditor-General to change the illegal conduct?

3. Exactly what advice has the minister sought and been provided about the legality of transactions that breach the Public Finance and Audit Act, and what advice has the minister sought and been provided with about her own responsibilities and potential liabilities in this area?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (14:28): I thank the honourable member for his question.

The PRESIDENT: Order! I am sorry, there is too much conversation inside the chamber, and telephone conversations should not be conducted inside the chamber.

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK: I do recall that the honourable member at the time of the examination of audit reports was very excited about this particular item, which most of us find quite pedestrian, and I commend both the South Australian Housing Authority and the Department of Human Services for having some very pedestrian audit reports this year.

In relation to this particular report, I can update the chamber. I recall at the time that the honourable member referred to what was in the Auditor's report that estimated between 79,000 and 89,000 transactions required approval. My advice is that following an in-depth review of the data the revised estimate is 16,307 variations.

Furthermore, the report noted that the authority is automatically approving MTC variation requests for maintenance orders in excess of $1,000, which is contrary to the Treasurer's approved amendment to T1 8. The Treasurer has approved a variation to T1 8 that enables MTCs—that's multitrade contractors who do the maintenance work—to perform additional work on existing maintenance orders up to $1,000 per order without obtaining preapproval provided certain conditions are met.

The authority's connect system was programmed to facilitate the automatic approval of MTC variation requests up to $5,000. Under the T1 8 variation, the authority must continue to preapprove variations and that has unintentionally resulted in some incidents of noncompliance. The Auditor has provided a time frame of March 2022 by which time the authority needs to have remedied the identified breach.

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