Legislation: Bill giving AG more teeth finally ready for NCOP

Once in force, a Public Audit Amendment Bill prepared by the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on the Auditor-General will empower him to take the remedial action necessary to recover ‘financial losses suffered by the state’ and ‘incurred through unauthorised, irregular and fruitless and wasteful expenditure’. This is according to a report tabled on Wednesday in the National Assembly, reports Pam Saxby for Legalbrief Policy Watch. The proposed new statute also provides for the referral of ‘certain suspected material irregularities for investigation’; allows the Auditor-General to perform international audit work and conduct performance audits; and aligns governance arrangements to current best practice. If endorsed by the House, it will be referred to the NCOP for concurrence.

The statute reflects input received during three rounds of public hearings in March on a draft Bill prepared last year. Informed by briefings from National Treasury and the office of the Auditor-General, a fine-tuned version was eventually considered by the committee at the beginning of this month. As Legalbrief Today reported at the time, last November the ANC’s Chief Whip in Parliament, Jackson Mthembu, issued a media statement expressing confidence the Bill would be operational by the beginning of March – possibly overlooking the need for public hearings. This notwithstanding, given that the committee began discussing amendments to the Act in March 2017 and in view of the gravity of the situation, it is not clear why the committee took so long to produce the legislation required.