Legislation: More hearings on Public Audit Bill

The NCOP’s Finance Committee has scheduled a second round of parliamentary hearings on the Public Audit Amendment Bill for 26 June, in anticipation of which interested and affected parties have until 22 June to make written submissions, notes Pam Saxby for Legalbrief Policy Watch.

As Legalbrief Today has already reported, the Bill was prepared by the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on the Auditor-General with the aim of empowering the office concerned to take ‘remedial action’ and, where possible, recover ‘financial losses suffered by the state’. This is according to a memorandum on the Bill’s objects, which also notes the ‘astronomical amounts of unauthorised, irregular and fruitless and wasteful expenditure’ reported by the Auditor-General year after year – and the ‘mixed results’ yielded by his attempts at assigning ‘consequences for poor financial and performance management’.

Against that backdrop, the proposed new statute also seeks to provide for ‘certainty regarding the discretion of the Auditor-General with regard to certain audits’; empower the Auditor-General to ‘refer suspected material irregularities arising from an audit … to a relevant public body for investigation’; allow the Auditor-General ‘to issue a certificate of debt where an accounting officer or accounting authority (has) failed to recover losses from a responsible person, and … instruct the relevant executive authority to collect the debt’; and to authorise the Auditor-General to undertake performance audits and provide audit or audit-related services to an international association, body, institution or organisation.

Regarding governance and administration, the Bill seeks to align existing arrangements with ‘current best practice’ among other things by providing for the establishment, powers and functions of a remuneration committee. Provision is also made for consultation between that committee and the Independent Commission for the Remuneration of Public Office-bearers; additional reporting requirements; the defrayment of ‘certain excess audit fees’ as a direct charge against the national revenue fund; the revision of provisions relating to the appointment of an audit committee for the Auditor-General; and for the Auditor-General to make regulations on specific issues.