Copeland Gordon: Appointments — Deputy Controller and Auditor-General 
Copeland Gordon: Appointments — Deputy Controller and Auditor-General 
[Volume:627;Page:21813] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 A long time ago—in fact about 41 years or so ago—I set out to win the annual prize for the best audit student at Victoria University. I am rather glad I did not actually make the grade. There is a bit of a story about that which I will not trouble the House with. I subsequently went on to have a career in the corporate world and ended up as the chief financial officer of a large corporation. I must confess that I had rather a dim view of auditors at that stage; they seemed to me to be people who niggled and asked unnecessary questions who generally took up a disproportionate amount of time for very little positiveness in the way of outcomes and furthermore who charged megabucks to do it. That was of course until a few years later when I went to work for and advise an organisation that had not had an audit for many years. I very quickly discovered through that experience the value of having an annual audit. Believe you me they serve a very very necessary function in any organisation—certainly within the operation of Government. Without auditors we would find that anarchy would take over in terms of the financial arrangements of the Government and we would have all kinds of hidden costs and so on tucked away in all sorts of very very devious ways. 
I want to say in response to the speech from the Hon Richard Prebble that most of the points he made were about politics rather than about auditing. Although I have some sympathy with some of them I think it is a bit rich to blame the poor old Auditor-General for some of those outcomes. Really the thing I would say about the Audit Office—and I have said it previously I think in questions to Dr Michael Cullen and certainly at the Finance and Expenditure Committee—is that we ought just to be a little firmer in ensuring that all the expenditure of Government funds no matter how it is done should be subject to rigorous audit analysis. It should be a precondition. We have to get away from the idea of just handing money over to all sorts of little organisations that may be well-meaning and that may be delivering good things for the taxpayer—I do not know whether they are—because we have been bedevilled by many many scandals even since I have been in the House that could have been nipped in the bud if we had had a cast iron rule that if people or organisations get money then they will be subject to audit. The Lottery Grants Board has done that now for years. Those members who were around at the time will recall that it came about because the board was giving grants to ghost-busters. That hit the television screens and everyone said: “Hey! This has got to stop.” The board learnt the lesson and I think that the Government needs to learn the same lesson. 
A very interesting thing on the international stage is that the Commission for Africa—which as members know wants to see debt levels in Africa reduced dramatically through write-offs by wealthy nations and overseas development systems given to those countries so that they can rise out of poverty—has come up against the central issue of good governance. Debt write-offs have been put in place but as I read in a column in a newspaper recently it has later been found that the money written off from the debt actually ended up redecorating the presidential palace. Not a cent went to people who were looking to better themselves in terms of education health and so on. 
So that really does highlight the importance of the function we entrust to the Auditor-General and his staff. I do not know Philippa Catherine Smith personally. I have seen her CV. I know she is a lawyer which probably means that she has quite a bit to learn about the art of auditing. Nevertheless I am sure that from her legal perspective she can make a very important contribution and United Future is very happy to agree to this motion.