Legislative Council, Tuesday 6 September 2022
Ms FORREST (Murchison) - Mr President, I move -
That the Council -
(1) notes the 160-year history of Public Accounts Committees in Tasmania; and
(2) recognises the key role of Public Accounts Committees in public sector accountability, ensuring transparency in the scrutiny of government expenditure, service delivery and performance.
I wish to speak about an important part of Tasmanian parliamentary history and reiterate the importance of the ongoing work of our Tasmanian Joint Standing Committee of Public Accounts.
I particularly take this opportunity to share with you an important event worthy of celebration in this place and the Tasmanian Parliament in general. I seek your indulgence to go back to the year of 1862. In 1862 - a full 100 years before I was born - in that year, explorer, John McDougall Stuart successfully returns from crossing the Australian continent from north to south, on his third attempt.
Our future Australian prime ministers, Andrew Fisher and Billy Hughes are born in the UK. Taxpaying women of legal majority - unmarried women, divorced women and widows are granted the right to vote in municipal elections making Sweden the first country in the world to grant women the right to vote. The American Civil War continues to rage in North America. The age of sail makes way for the age of steam and the Tasmanian Colonial Treasurer cannot account for whether the public coffers were short £25 000, about $2.9 million in today's dollars, or at four pence a quart of milk, enough milk spilt to have kept the entire 1862 population of 81 492 satisfied for over a month. There are some important statistics there for members.
Before I highlight this seminal event, I note that William Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer, moved for the appointment of a Select Committee on Public Accounts to be established in the UK House of Commons on 8 April 1861. It was not until 3 April 1862 that the motion by Gladstone on 31 March 1862 was resolved to be a Standing Order of the House. This read:
That there shall be a Standing Committee, to be designated to 'The Committee of Public Accounts' for the Examination of the Accounts showing the appropriation of the sums granted by Parliament to meet the Public Expenditure, to consist of nine members, who shall be nominated by the commencement of every Session, and of whom five shall be a quorum.
According to the literature, authors Kate Jones and Kerry Jake asserted:
It has generally been assumed that the first Australian public accounts committee was that established in the colony of Victoria in 1895. However, recent research suggests that a six-member public accounts committee was established in the Tasmanian parliament as early as 1862 and continued to operate throughout the nineteenth century and beyond.
Based on recent research conducted by the committee secretary - and I thank him for his great efforts in preparing this for me - it would not appear this is quite the case. The records show that only four months on from the commencement of the permanent UK Public Accounts Committee, on 28 August 1862, on the motion of Mr John Balfe, the MHA member for Franklin, a House of Assembly select committee was appointed to inquire into the system of keeping and auditing public accounts with the following members: Mr John Perkins MHA, member for Kingborough; Mr Charles Henty MHA, member for George Town; Mr Frederick Innes, Colonial Treasurer; Mr William Sharland MHA, member for New Norfolk; Mr John Crookes MHA, member for Launceston; and Mr John Balfe MHA, member for Franklin. All male, I might add; probably because there were no women here anyway.
Mr President, the Mercury reported on the occasion that it was not until a new clerk from the Post Office had gone to work, presumably for Treasury, that the amount of the £25 000 could not be accounted for. Whether the amount was lost or a mistake could not be ascertained. The Colonial Treasurer, through Mr Balfe, said:
… he was free to confess, he could not understand, for he really could not imagine how such a mistake could occur in the profit and loss account.
He had been informed on inquiry that the system of keeping public accounts at the present time was different from that pursued some seven or eight years ago and, judging only from the acknowledgement of the honourable Colonial Treasurer, the present system was open to great objection, for the fact of such error escaping the auditor was manifest.
He did not wish to impugn the officer or assert that the money had been lost, but what he could say was that he had paid great attention to the public accounts, and never yet been able to understand them.
He was not wholly unacquainted with accounts presented in an intelligible way, but in the details now laid before the public he defied any man of even more than ordinary arithmetical knowledge to obtain a clear understanding.
It sounds just as complicated back then as it probably is now for many people. Curiously, after all the fanfare, no meeting was ever held after the appointment of the said committee, and no similar select committee was established by the House again until 29 October 1875. This was the first meeting where a PAC report was tabled, but not printed, on 2 November 1875. Such was the gravity of the report that it was simply recorded in the Tasmanian Tribune as:
Committee of Public Accounts.
The TREASURER brought up a report of the Public Accounts Committee, and moved it to be read. Agreed to.
In reality, whilst there was an appointment of a PAC select committees for the periods of 1876-1881, and 1887-1916, no PAC over that period met during their respective terms. I might add, things are different now.
There was a scurry of activity from the 1916 17 financial year to the 1920 21 financial year periods, with a total of 18 meetings but no reports were recorded and unusually, from 1921 22 to 1924 25 the House of Assembly select committees tabled 14 reports but there was no record of meetings. I am glad things are slightly different today.
Mr Willie - - No Hansard back then either.
Ms FORREST - Yes, probably all handwritten notes. The glory period between 1925 26 to 1930, saw a total of 16 meetings and 19 reports being tabled. The period from 1931-1943 only managed one meeting and a single report in 1934. The 1943 44 session had the select committee met 11 times, but no reports; and from 1944 45 through to 1958 there were no meetings recorded. Not a terribly active committee.
It was nearly a century later, since the advent of the first appointed PAC in 1862, that the Tasmanian Parliament started to see consistent meetings, and eventually more reporting from the Public Accounts Committee. Of note, whilst there were no recorded meetings of the House of Assembly Public Accounts Committee over the period, the first woman member to be appointed was for the term 1955-59, Mrs - then Dame - Mabel Miller MHA, member for Franklin. The Legislative Council's short-lived Public Accounts and Finance Committee appointed Mrs Phyllis Benjamin MLC, member for Hobart, between 1968 and 1969.
On 17 December 1960, the House of Assembly Standing Orders Committee, in its report back to the House, recommended a new standing order No. 408A to be included in the Standing Orders. The standing order read: "
Public Accounts Committee
408A
(1) A Committee of Public Accounts, to consist of seven Members, of whom four shall be a Quorum, shall be appointed when this Standing Order becomes effective and thereafter at the commencement of each Parliament, for the examination of the accounts showing the appropriation of the sum granted by Parliament to meet public expenditure, and of such other accounts laid before Parliament as the Committee may think fit.
(2) The Committee shall have the power to send for Persons, Papers, and Records, to report from time to time, and to sit during any adjournment exceeding Fourteen days and any recess of Parliament.
This was the first time that a Tasmanian Public Accounts Committee became a standing committee in parliament. A similar amendment in the Legislative Council Standing Orders saw, for the first time, the establishment of a Select Committee of Public Accounts and Finance in that Chamber, under the authority of standing order No. 248A. This was agreed on 11 November 1965. That standing order stated:
At the beginning of every Session a Select Committee on Public Accounts and Finance shall be appointed.
Tthe Parliamentary Committee of Public Accounts Report on the Review of the Public Accounts Act 1970 (No. 34 of 2017), conveniently contains an annotated extract from the Public Accounts Committee Bill 1970 second reading notes. In those second reading notes, it is noted that the bill was designed to give effect to the following resolution which was agreed to by both Houses of Parliament on Tuesday 4 November 1968. This motion was: "
That the Legislative Council and House of Assembly jointly recognise the autonomous role and independence of each House to the other, but in the matter of appointment of Committees of Public Accounts, accept the proposition that interests generally would be better served if both houses were represented on a single Committee of Public Accounts.
The Public Accounts Committee Act 1970 - the PAC act - finally commenced on 15 December 1970. The resultant Joint Standing Committee on Public Accounts has blossomed accordingly, albeit with ongoing, very gendered language, assuming all members and committee secretariat will be male. I still have not been able to fix that. I think it is time for some gender-neutralising language in this committee's act, and for other joint committees and the acts that they sit under.
Since 1971 the PAC has consistently tabled a rich and varied range of reports on the topical issues of the day, including but not limited to:
• Stores control: Hydro-Electric Commission and Education Department (No. 26) 20 July 1971;
• Tasmanian Public Hospitals: Outstanding Fees (No. 68) 28 October 1971;
• Travel by State Employees (No. 5) 9 March 1972;
• Rental Accommodation in Savings Bank of Tasmania: Delay in moving in (No. 54) 20 September 1979;
• Report on Purchase of Imported Wooden Benches for the Kingston Police Station (No. 92) 10 December 1986 - this is a really important one;
• Report on Prison Officers Absenteeism (No. 16) 1 April 1987;
• Report on Accrual Accounting in 1988 (No. 31) 25 August 1988;
• Independent Review of the Tasmanian Government Redundancy Program (No. 18) 20 August 1991;
• Cost of Fire Protection in Schools (No. 5) 24 April 1996;
• Inquiry into certain matters related to the Skills Development Fund: Intelligent Island Program (No. 7) 31 May 2001.
We start to see some recurring themes as we move toward our current time:
• Ambulance Services in Tasmania (No. 20) 4 December 2003;
• Inquiry into Television Advertisements by the Tasmanian Greens (No 20) 26 August 2008;
The former chair, the Honourable Ivan Dean's passion, I might add:
• an Inquiry into the Efficiency and Effectiveness of the Fox Eradication Program in Tasmania (No 53) 24 December 2009;
• Review of Special Report No 72 of the Auditor-General into Public Sector Performance Information (No 13) 27 June 2013;
• The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) Inquiry (No 23) 14 November 2013.
That is a little of the history of various things that have been covered and I have picked out some of the interesting ones. However, more recently the committee has undertaken an increased number of follow-up inquiries of:
• Auditor-General's reports to assess the compliance and uptake of recommendations made in the Auditor-General's Performance Audits, and we have been noting a number of those in the Chamber here more recently;
• Follow-up reviews of public works as assessed and recommended by the Joint Standing Committee on Public Works;
• Another one we will be dealing with later today - inquiries of its own motion.
These inquiries include, but this is not an exhaustive list, since 2019 of follow-up reviews of the Auditor-General's reports:
• Fraud Control in Local Government, 18 October 2019;
• Quality of Metro Services, 26 June 2020;
• Motor Vehicle Fleet Management in Government Departments, 26 June 2020;
• Compliance with the Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs Plan, 2008-2013, 26 June 2020;
• Provision of Social Housing, 26 June 2020;
• Compliance with Legislation, 26 June 2020;
• Event Funding, 8 November 2021;
• Student Attendance and Engagement Year 7-10, 19 November 2021; and
• Performance of Tasmania's Four Major Hospitals in Their Delivery of Emergency Department Services, 23 February 2022, which takes us up to the current time.
Also the committee has undertaken follow-up work reviews of the public works recommended by the Joint Standing Committee on Public Works and these have included:
• Construction of the Dunalley Primary School;
• George Town Hub;
• Colebrook Main Road, Richmond - Heavy Vehicle Link Road;
• Midland Highway Works including Mangalore to Bagdad Stage 1; and Midland Highway, Kempton to Melton Mowbray Stage 1; and Perth to Breadalbane Duplication;
• Progress of the Sorell Emergency Services Hub and Major Redevelopment of Sorell School, which you will note is on the Notice Paper today for further debate.
Regarding the inquiries undertaken by its own motion of the Public Accounts Committee, or referral by another member of parliament, which is sometimes the way these own motions come to the committee, areas that have been considered include:
• Review into the Office of the Ombudsman and Health Complaints Commissioner, 27 March 2020;
• Review of Tasmanian Government Fiscal Sustainability Report 2016, 29 September 2020; and again, the Tasmanian Government Fiscal Sustainability Report 2021, 25 August 2021 - and that led to the Treasury as it is a Treasury report, recognising in that first report that there were errors and they reissued the report in line with the errors that were identified during that initial inquiry.
We also have undertaken an inquiry into the Government's economic and health expenditure related to the COVID-19 pandemic and that was tabled in 13 August 2021. There is a current inquiry underway into Hydro Tasmania and the termination of the Basslink Services Agreement and there is another ongoing inquiry into the Tasmanian Government's Continuing Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic focused on the time since the last report was finalised and particularly, focused around the reopening of the Tasmanian border.
PAC has significant powers under the act, including the PAC may summon witnesses to appear before it and give evidence and to produce documents. A witness who is summoned to appear or who appears before the committee has the same protection and privileges as a witness in an action tried in a Supreme Court. Except where it considers there is good and sufficient reason to take evidence in private, all evidence shall be taken by the committee in public. When requested to do so by a witness, the committee will take in private any evidence that in the opinion of the committee relates to a secret or a confidential matter. Any person who discloses or publishes any evidence contrary to these provisions of this section is guilty of an offence that is liable to a fine not exceeding 100 penalty units, or $17 300, or imprisonment for a term of up to 12 months, or to both such fine and imprisonment. The committee does take this responsibility very seriously, the preservation of confidential information.
This very important work and a vital aspect of public accountability of government and expenditure of public funds. The PAC also has a special relationship with the Auditor General that is cooperative, open and frank and also respects and maintains the independence of both parties as complementary bodies to the parliament's oversight function. Many aspects of this relationship are described in the statement of understanding, which is published on the Public Accounts Committee website. If anyone is interested in knowing how that relationship works, it is worth having a look at that statement of understanding. It was originally brought in by the former Auditor General Mike Blake and then our current Auditor General Rod Whitehead reviewed that with the committee and updated it. This relationship is important as PAC relies on the work of the Auditor-General to assist the parliament in holding executive government to account. The Auditor General also relies on the work of the committee to raise awareness and promote corrective action in response to audit findings. A key role of the Public Accounts Committee is to hold government to account for the audit findings and the recommendations the Auditor General has made in his work.
I have been a member of PAC almost continuously since 2010, about 12 years of service to this important committee. I was privileged to be elected as the Chair in 2021. I acknowledge the commitment of previous Chairs I have worked with on the PAC, including the honourable Jim Wilkinson and the honourable Ivan Dean. As have previous Chairs, I have focused on working in a consensus driven way in order to add to the strength and impact of the decisions of the committee and the impact of its reports. With respect to the crisis including the long outage of Basslink and low water storages and the Government's COVID-19 pandemic response, the Public Accounts Committee has an important role to play in overseeing governance, response and recovery to a crisis through the examination of government spending and administrative aspects underpinning the expenditure at such times.
With particularly complex matters, the committee has engaged expert advice to provide necessary support to the committee. This was particularly the case with our inquiry into the financial position of the energy entities around the time of the extended Basslink outage and the drought that saw a range of measures to be taken to ensure we did not need to have power brown outs or black outs. As members in that particular case did not have deep knowledge of the area under investigation - we had not worked in the energy sector - we sought energy sector advice and engaged an expert in the field to assist us. A number of the members of the committee on this occassion undertook the Australian Energy Market Operator training package, which is a really useful package to do if you are really interested in how the energy market works. As confusing as it can appear from the outside, this better equipped us to understand the market and how it worked.
The Public Accounts Committee can hold the Government to account with respect to its report findings and recommendations through debate. It would be remiss of me not to mention the three special reports the PAC has tabled in the past five years. This goes to the heart of the matter I raised earlier about confidentiality. There were three special reports released by the committee in 2017 and one in 2020. One was the Failure to Comply with a Summons, March 2017; the second was the Unauthorised Disclosure of Committee Deliberations, March 2017; and the third, the Failure of a Minister to Agree to Publicly Release Documents, 20 November 2020. Those were all related to that inquiry on the energy entities.
In many respects, the committee got to a bit of a standoff around those matters. There was a document provided to the committee that was redacted as it had been provided to an external party in a redacted form under and RTI. A battle began as to whether parliamentary committees have more rights than an average member of the public. We could not really break through, there was a summons issued to the Treasurer to appear before the committee and produce an unredacted version of the document. Members who were here at the time will remember the Treasurer turned up for the meeting but he did not produce the document. He said he complied with the summons but not to the full extent. These matters led to these three reports as well as the Treasurer's and government's concern at the time that some matters had been allegedly leaked from the committee. The excuse was that, 'oh, we cannot trust the committee, so we are not going to give you anything'. That is why it is really important that those confidentiality provisions are maintained vigorously.
These three special reports that were tabled in parliament related to alleged leaks from the committee related to confidential information and committee deliberations. The other one, as I said, was the failure of the Treasurer to comply in full with the summons. Members who were in parliament at the time will recall these special reports. They related to matters raised in the PAC inquiry into the financial performance of the state-owned energy entities. The government did claim the committee had leaked information related to the letter I referred to, that had been provided to the committee in a redacted form.
Even though we went through the process of releasing those three reports, there was no further action taken in the end. The committee reported, and the unredacted version of the letter was never provided to the committee.
That did lead to the decision that I took to put a notice on the motion paper here to establish a select committee inquiry into the production of documents to look at the issue more broadly. It had been a problem for other committees as well. It reached a crisis point in this particular instance. I commend that report to all members who may not have read it, particularly new members to the place, because it very clearly outlines what responsible government looks like, what powers the parliament has, what powers committees have, and it is a really comprehensive report full of valuable information, particularly for new members.
Through these experiences, particularly the experience on the PAC at that time, it has provided us with a number of important learnings. From my perspective as the current Chair, but former member for 12 years, I will summarise these, as I think they are relevant to all the work we do in this place, not just on the Public Accounts Committee. It is important to ensure that relevant acts and parliamentary Standing Orders can provide clear guidance and requirements related to the management of confidential information; that all members are aware of the statutory and Standing Order provisions related to committee proceedings and confidentiality; and that all committee deliberations should remain confidential. All media communications should be dealt with according to Standing Orders and other agreed mechanisms, with a clear resolution if that is to be outside the Standing Orders' provisions. In matters under consideration by a committee, where matters are complex, engage expert advice to support the committee, if that is needed. The use of special and final committee reports to inform the parliament are really important to the public, as well to the media, to highlight the work and the value of the work the Public Accounts Committees undertake.
As we have done quite frequently in recent sitting weeks, we list all Public Accounts Committee reports for debate in parliament, and this assists in two ways: it enhances public awareness of our work; it holds the government or government-owned businesses to account, and also often evokes a bit of media interest and engagement with members and the government. This is assisted by regularly informing the media of upcoming public hearings and the release of any reports.
As the Tasmanian Public Accounts Committee has been doing for some time now, we regularly review previous committee and Auditor-General reports to assess the progress and adoption of recommendations. That helps to focus the attention of the departments to whom the recommendations relate. We often see a flurry of activity when we send the first questionnaire to them. Without that follow-up, a lot of these Auditor-General's reports would sit on the shelf.
When a committee is not provided with documents or information without reasonable excuse, consider what coercive and punitive measures are available, and can be utilised if the requested documents are not produced. They are outlined in that Production of Documents report, all the various measures.
However, I digress slightly from the key focus of the motion, so back to celebrating 160 years of history of PACs in Tasmania, and the importance of PACs generally. You may ask, where to from here? I draw from the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association's material on the parliamentary mechanisms of public financial accountability, and I read:
Today, Public Accounts Committees and Auditors-General operate in a very different context in the public sector environment to that of 'Gladstonian' times. However, the founding principles on which the parliamentary mechanism of public financial accountability … established over 150 years ago have not changed.
The founding principles of ex post oversight (oversight after the event) are that taxpayers rightly expect the Parliament should oversee and scrutinise the spending of monies collected from them in the form of taxes and the activities on which it is spent.
Parliament appoints a specialised audit committee - the Public Accounts Committee (or equivalent) - to assist it with its ex-post oversight of the budget.
Using the independent work of the Auditor-General (or similar), PACs review the audit reports and findings to hold to account those charged with the use of public funds; and 'looking back' seeks to identify appropriate steps to address any shortcomings or underlying problems.
While established PACs all function with varying degrees of success, the Committee as an institutional model is considered to be one of the most effective oversight mechanisms available to the legislature or parliament.
It is for these reasons that the PAC is regarded as a vital committee of Parliament and why legislatures in Commonwealth and non Commonwealth countries have established PACs to oversee the spending of public funds.
On that note, as the current Chair of the PAC, I commend to you all the good scrutiny and oversight efforts of past and present members of the committee, in all its varied forms, even though historically they did not report many meetings or even table many reports over the last 160 years. I look forward to serving the same into the future.
Who knows what the next 40 years will entail when the committee meets our bicentenary in 2062. I will not be here then.
Mr PRESIDENT - You will be 100.
Ms FORREST - Yes, but I will not be here then. The predicted advent of the small nuclear reactor design perhaps, we may see that. Autonomous drones delivering parcels - we are likely to see that. Health tracking hearing aids, we are already seeing that, and the age of the brain computer interface, that is already happening in parts too. Apparently, there are no jetpacks at this stage, but it would be helpful for travelling down the highway at the moment.
I thank all the current members of the PAC for their collective good governance and oversight efforts and their willingness to work in a consensus-driven way to achieve good outcomes on behalf of the Tasmanian community. The other two members in this place at the moment are the member for Nelson and the member for Elwick and I appreciate their contribution and work on the committee.
On behalf of the PAC, I also look forward to tabling well-considered and outcome focused reports in parliament on any matter related to the management, administration or use of public sector finances or the accounts of any public authority or other organisation controlled by the state or in which the state has an interest. I particularly acknowledge the efforts of the current committee secretary, Simon Scott, in researching the committee's 160 year history. Hopefully, this narrative will be made public as part of the parliament's website review in the fullness of time. It is always good to record history.
I also note the secretary, in turn, acknowledges the assistance of other people in this place, the Parliamentary Library and Parliamentary Research Service, in their collective assistance in locating key documents and evidence from the records.
I welcome members' contributions to this motion, as we celebrate and recognise the long history and important work of the Public Accounts Committees over the last 160 years.
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