Wednesday, 17 May 2023

Public Accounts and Estimates Committee

Report on the Appointment of a Person to Conduct the Financial Audit of the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office

Darren CHEESEMAN (South Barwon) (10:29): It is with some pleasure this morning that I rise to make my contribution on committee reports on a report undertaken by the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee into the appointment of a person to conduct a financial audit of the Victorian Auditor General’s Office. I do so as someone who grew up in the 1990s, who started to form my political beliefs in so many ways in terms of what the Kennett government was doing at that point in time around how this state ran and the functioning of the state of Victoria.

Of course one of the profound attacks undertaken by that government was to erode the responsibilities and the independence of a whole range of different entities, including the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office. I, like so many people in that period of time, was appalled by those attacks, because these types of bodies provide independent reporting on the financial obligations of various state governments and various departments, agencies et cetera. I formed at that point in time a very strong view that the Auditor-General’s office needs to have its independence so that it can report in a true way to the Parliament of Victoria the financial health of all of the various entities that it has responsibility for looking into.

With respect to this particular committee report, they looked into the requirements for this independent body itself to be subject to an appropriate audit, and that is of course completely appropriate – that a parliamentary committee on behalf of the Parliament has that carriage to make a recommendation to the Parliament and to the Auditor-General’s office about how those audits would be undertaken. And I think that is, whilst not necessarily a particularly sexy part of the work of the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee – it is certainly not necessarily its highest profile report – certainly an important function: that the Auditor-General’s office be subject from time to time to audit to make sure that its house is appropriately in order, that it has got its financial arrangements appropriately accounted for, consistent with accounting standards and other financial instruments that might sit in this place. The reason why that is important is because it is important that the Parliament and the Victorian community have confidence that the Auditor-General’s office have their own house in order so that they can go about then making sure that the houses of all of the other parts of government are appropriately financially in order as well.

This is not a long report. I do not imagine that this piece of work took that committee a particularly long period of time to do. It is just one of a number of reports that the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee do through the course of the year. It is certainly nowhere near as high profile as some of the other work that they do, but nevertheless in terms of the Parliament maintaining confidence and the Victorian community maintaining confidence in the Auditor-General’s office in doing its work, this is important work that they have done.