Tolley Anne: Offices of Parliament—Address to Governor-General 
Tolley Anne: Offices of Parliament—Address to Governor-General 
[Volume:630;Page:2533] 
ANNE TOLLEY (National—East Coast) 
: 
 I will not take very long in speaking to this motion. I want to raise just two points that were the subject of much discussion in the preparation of the report by the Officers of Parliament Committee. The first issue is the increase in remuneration for Vote Audit. The second is the baseline flexibility request. 
Treasury spoke against the increase in remuneration that was sought but the main issue the Officers of Parliament Committee considered was the pressure on the Audit Office to maintain competitive remuneration. The office assured us that the majority of its staff were aligned with the average public sector market median. However it saw a risk of losing its current capability. The work of the office is of course highly specialised and requires highly trained staff. So the position of the parliamentarians was that if the office were unable to maintain a capable and competent staff then we would face the risk of losing services. The Audit Office reported that it had delivered 15 of the 17 performance audits required under the 2004-05 Budget and that it planned to meet the requirement of 19 performance audits in 2005-06. 
We considered the service the office provides to Parliament with these performance audits an extremely important function. As a result we agreed to the remuneration increases. However as will be seen in the report we specified that we felt as if we were operating in the dark a little in that we did not have adequate information on the current market rates. We have given the office 6 months to bring that information back to us to show us the movements in the market place and to align them with its own rates. It was pleasing to note that staff turnover was around 8 percent which shows that staff turnover is not a huge issue. But of course we want to maintain a highly specialised staff. 
The second issue is the request by the Audit Office for what was termed baseline flexibility. In fact the office was asking for a buffer of $500000 because it had difficulty in forecasting its audit fee increases and remuneration. One of the issues around the audit fee increases concerns me as an electorate MP. I am sure many of my colleagues—certainly my colleagues around the committee table—know that local authorities have expressed considerable concern particularly around the long-term council community plans about the amount they have to pay out in audit fees. In fact representatives of the Wairoa District Council met with me recently and complained that they were up for $70000 in audit fees—an enormous amount of money for a small council to find. Fortunately that is not required every year. As a representative in Parliament I need to be assured as there is no contestability regime around the Audit Office that the workings of the Audit Office and the way it sets its fees are done in a reasonable manner and that the fees that are charged to organisations are reasonable. The fees charged is one issue that we looked at as contributing to the need for the buffer. 
The second issue concerned the long-term council community plans themselves. It is all very well for us to pass legislation in this House but it has a huge effect on people throughout the country and the long-term council community plans have required a whole new separate audit regime. Again I go back to my own electorate and dealing with four different councils and four mayors. The overall cost to ratepayers of the long-term council community plans—let alone the audit fees—is enormous. Smaller poor communities like Wairoa Opotiki and a number of others around the country are really struggling with the requirements of the long-term council community plans. This also puts enormous pressure on the Audit Office to find good-quality staff on a temporary basis to complete these audits. In fact during the discussion we were told that the Audit Office had had to import from the UK on a temporary basis about 30 staff to work on the long-term council community plans. I hasten to assure members that those staff are only temporary. Because this is a cyclical process the Audit Office does not want to take on permanent staff. 
So the committee agreed to the request from the Audit Office for this recognition of baseline flexibility. But again we have directed the Audit Office to work with Treasury for the next year so that they are not to take it as read that this increase will remain. We are yet to be convinced that ways in which they could better forecast their needs cannot be found. We have asked that the work be done and brought back to the committee by I think October this year and we will consider it for the 2006-07 year. I have to say that this was a very amicable committee and I commend the work performed by the Audit Office the Ombudsman and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. National will support this motion.