Auditor-General’s report reveals failures in Education, Transport and Political Campaigns
Last week, we reported that findings from the NSW Auditor-General has revealed the mismanagement of public funds across several State departments and agencies such as the Department of Corrective Services, the Attorney-General’s Department, the NSW Police Force, the Department of Environment and Climate Change, and the Department of Ageing, Disability and Home Care. Click here to read last week’s crossbench comment.
This week, a review of the Auditor-General has found that NSW funding for TAFE has decreased by 18.1 per cent per student hour since 2004. Although school retention rates in New South Wales remained stable at about 65 per cent, they are still below the national average. NSW continues to have the lowest school retention rates of any state apart from Tasmania.
Government-funded TAFE enrolments increased by 10.2 per cent to 429,181 over the period from 2004 to 2008. The average annual funding per student at Government schools increased by just over six per cent from – $10,162 to $10,816. NSW school students achieved higher literacy and numeracy results than the national average in the National Assessment Program. TAFE’s maintenance backlog has increased to $37.6 million from $27.7 million last year.
According to Mr Achterstraat, the NSW Department of Education is still faced with the loss of large numbers of retiring teachers and their associated skills. He stated: “While the overall impact of the ageing workforce is likely to be gradual, there is still a risk of teacher shortages.”
Over the last two weeks there have been negotiations with senior Government officials in order to attempt to resolve the TAFE dispute. Yesterday, NSW TAFE teachers and delegates from schools stopped work for three hours to discuss an industrial campaign over what the NSW Teachers Federation says is the serious deterioration of TAFE training and working conditions.
The dispute centres on the fact that as a result of the Department of Education and Training’s successful application in the Industrial Relations Commission, TAFE teachers can now be required to teach up to 35 hours face-to-face per week at any time between 6am and 10pm, Monday to Saturday. In addition, they will be required to attend for 35 hours per week and teach an additional 36 hours per year. If long service leave is taken before and after vacations, the whole period will be counted as long service leave.
The number of hours taught had increased by 14.2 million since 2004, even though the Government’s recurrent expenditure had been cut by $90 million.
In the transport portfolio, the Auditor-General found excessive overtime and reliance on contractors are key challenges for the RTA and RailCorp. In 2008-09, RTA spent $64.2 million on contractors. They had over 800 contractors, a substantial increase on the 600 for the previous year. The Roads and Traffic Authority continues to engage contractors for longer than one year, with some contractors engaged for over 20 years.
The highest overtime earners at RTA continue to earn substantial amounts of overtime, with one employee receiving $114,000 in overtime payments in 2008-09. RailCorp has about 690 contractors, with nearly a quarter costing more than $1,000 per day. Its overtime payments reached $126 million with more than 360 employees being paid 50 per cent or more of their annual salary in overtime.
Most of the recent rail fleet carriage acquisitions have been late or are running behind schedule. The largest contract for 626 new carriages is expected to start delivering carriages in 2010 through to February 2014. The delivery of the final carriages has already been delayed by five months. While loads on trains have recently trended downwards, crowding remains the biggest concern for the commuters with over 50 per cent of passengers not happy about crowding.
Furthermore, the Auditor-General yesterday called for stricter rules in publicly funded advertising. Mr Achterstraat is concerned that there is an unacceptable risk that a reasonable person could judge some recent campaigns as serving party political interests.
For instance, some members of the former Premier’s staff made key decisions in what were meant to be non-political campaigns. According to the Auditor-General, this level of involvement is not appropriate. In particular, proposed pictures of young people in a cadetship advertisement were replaced with photos of the former Premier.
He was also concerned about campaign budgets and claims made in advertisements.
“The $1.1 million spent on the Investing in Better Future Campaign could be considered excessive as it largely informed people about a building and jobs initiative – particularly when compared with recent NSW Health campaigns which cost far less. The same campaign claimed that the program supported up to 160,000 jobs. While these claims could be substantiated, they could also be misleading as not all these jobs would be in New South Wales,” Mr Achterstraat stated.
These were some of the findings that were released yesterday by the NSW Audit Office in a report into “Government Advertising”. This report examined whether recent campaigns were appropriate, properly approved, and whether statements made in one of the campaigns were substantiated.
With the State election coming up in 2011 and political campaigns becoming more costly, the Auditor General has called for a change. He suggested that more political campaigns should be subject to an independent peer review.
The Auditor-General concluded, “There are many publicly funded advertising campaigns that are a legitimate means of keeping the public informed. It is vital that all campaigns be transparent and accountable, and under no circumstances serve party political interests. This is the least we can do to ensure that public funds are being spent appropriately.”