Mr MILLS - 2007-08-29
Yesterday, the Auditor-General’s August Report was tabled. In it, many issues are raised regarding unnamed agencies not following your direction, as well as agencies that are actually breaching the laws of which you have carriage. Why did you fail to ensure that our Treasurer’s Directions were not followed and that the law was not obeyed?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I will be seeking a very early meeting with both Treasury and with the Auditor-General to go across the issues. I assume the member for Blain is going to page 10 of the Auditor-General’s Report, where he talks about an emerging theme of a weakness creeping into internal controls across a number of areas, in general accounting, information technology controls, expenditure and procurement, travel, banking, telephones and hospitality. Every one of those would be a concern to me. The Auditor-General in this report is simply pinpointing that he believes there is a creeping weakness across these areas. He does not name agencies at all. This is more something he is picking up by way of a general theme and trend, rather than, for example, pointing to specific weaknesses in specific agencies, which, of course, once identified can be rectified immediately.
So what we have from the Auditor-General is a very general thrust in terms of what he believes is a theme creeping in. The Auditor-General does go on to say however, that, given the nature of these issues, he intends to again examine the adequacy of the internal audit function in agencies in the coming months with a view to ensuring that the internal audit function is adequate and effective. That is his job, and he is doing his job, as we would expect him to do. He is an outstanding Auditor-General, and I have certainly taken note of this already, although, as I say, he has not specified in any way any one complaint nor any one agency.
He does say, in the last paragraph, and I believe it is worth quoting:
TIO has it right. As Treasurer, my job is to ensure every agency gets the same sort of comment that is made about TIO. I will be working with Treasury and I will be meeting with the Auditor-General to go across these issues.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I will be seeking a very early meeting with both Treasury and with the Auditor-General to go across the issues. I assume the member for Blain is going to page 10 of the Auditor-General’s Report, where he talks about an emerging theme of a weakness creeping into internal controls across a number of areas, in general accounting, information technology controls, expenditure and procurement, travel, banking, telephones and hospitality. Every one of those would be a concern to me. The Auditor-General in this report is simply pinpointing that he believes there is a creeping weakness across these areas. He does not name agencies at all. This is more something he is picking up by way of a general theme and trend, rather than, for example, pointing to specific weaknesses in specific agencies, which, of course, once identified can be rectified immediately.
So what we have from the Auditor-General is a very general thrust in terms of what he believes is a theme creeping in. The Auditor-General does go on to say however, that, given the nature of these issues, he intends to again examine the adequacy of the internal audit function in agencies in the coming months with a view to ensuring that the internal audit function is adequate and effective. That is his job, and he is doing his job, as we would expect him to do. He is an outstanding Auditor-General, and I have certainly taken note of this already, although, as I say, he has not specified in any way any one complaint nor any one agency.
He does say, in the last paragraph, and I believe it is worth quoting:
- A notable exception to the issues that I have set out here is the Territory Insurance Office where the recently completed interim financial audit highlighted the continuing improvement by that organisation to the point where the results of the audit were notable for the lack of critical comment by me.
TIO has it right. As Treasurer, my job is to ensure every agency gets the same sort of comment that is made about TIO. I will be working with Treasury and I will be meeting with the Auditor-General to go across these issues.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016