Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—As Deputy Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Public Accounts and Audit, I am pleased to join with my colleague the member for Boothby in commending the report into Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013 rules development to the House. The report recognises that there has been significant consultation with relevant stakeholders regarding the development of the rules, and this is welcomed by the committee.

I will not go into too much detail on the report as the chair has ably covered this off. However, I do want to cover two recommendations, the first around approving commitments of 'relevant money'. The report analysed the draft rule in relation to approving commitments of relevant money. The Australian National Audit Office noted that the draft rule was a substantive departure from existing obligations that explicitly require an approver to be satisfied, after making reasonable inquiries, that giving effect to the spending proposal would be a proper use of Commonwealth resources. The ANAO concluded that it did not consider the proposed rule would provide the government and the parliament with sufficient confidence that officials, in approving the commitment of relevant money, will be required in all cases to form a judgement that it represents the proper use of such money. Consequently, the committee was of the view that the draft rule should be amended to explicitly place an obligation on all individual officials to consider proper use before approving a commitment of relevant money, and recommendation 5 in chapter 3 addresses this.

The second issue I would like to cover is the dual coverage of PGPA Act and Public Service Act. This was highlighted by several submissions, most notably the Public Service Commission, which stated that the dual coverage of the two acts, with each of them setting out alternative statements seeking to regulate the behaviour and professional standards of public servants in the APS, adds complexity and the potential for confusion for APS employees. To address this potential confusion the committee proposed that the PGPA Act be amended to specify that the provisions of the act relating to the general duties of officials do not apply to those employed under the Public Service Act. In response to these concerns, the Department of Finance has indicated that they will continue to work with the Public Service Commission to ensure clarity around the way in which the two acts interact, and the committee recommended that they come back to parliament with a solution as soon as possible. I will finish by thanking the committee secretariat for their work in preparing the report, and I commend it to the House.

See this speech in context