Hindmarsh Soccer Stadium: Inquiry by Auditor-General gets Parliamentary support

Extract from Hansard

Legislative Council
17 November 1999

Mike Elliott
Leader Australian Democrats
Member of the Legislative Council

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That the Legislative Council requests that the Treasurer, under section 32 of the Public Finance and Audit Act 1987, requests that the Auditor-General examines and reports on dealings related to the Hindmarsh Soccer Stadium Redevelopment Project and, in particular-

I. Whether there was due diligence by government representatives prior to the signing of agreements for construction of stages 1 and 2 of the project.

II. Whether due diligence was applied subsequent to the commitment to stages 1 and 2, including whether the Crown Solicitor's advice as described on page 12 of the thirty-third report of the Public Works Committee, August 1996, was adhered to.

III. (a) Whether undue pressure was placed on individuals leading to legal commitment by them on behalf of sporting clubs or associations.

(b) The present status of all relevant deeds of guarantee or other legal documents, the financial status of the signatories and whether the legal agreements have created financial difficulty for any non-government persons or organisations.

IV. Whether there were any conflicts of interest or other imprudent or improper behaviour by any person or persons, government or non-government, involved with the project, and whether the appropriate processes were followed in relation to-

V. The Auditor-General be requested to include in his report recommendations for government and the parliament where appropriate.

The Hon. NICK XENOPHON: In relation to the motion moved by the Hon. Mike Elliott that this Council requests the Treasurer, under section 32 of the Public Finance and Audit Act, to request that the Auditor-General examine and report on the dealings related to the Hindmarsh Soccer Stadium redevelopment project, I can indicate that I support the motion for a number of reasons. Before I set those out I should indicate that earlier today I spoke to the minister concerned, the Hon. Iain Evans, and, whilst the minister did put a number of salient points to me, I am not persuaded ultimately that this motion should not be supported.

This is an issue that has caused a great deal of concern in the community in terms of the expenditure of public funds, the mode of expenditure, and the whole process involved in this particular project. It seems to me that, notwithstanding the minister's view that these matters have been dealt with sufficiently, it would be imprudent if there were not a recommendation that the Auditor- General look into these matters.

The Hon. K.T. GRIFFIN (Attorney-General): The government opposes the motion. If I had spoken I would also have opposed the establishment of a joint committee, under Notices of Motion: Private Business No. 7.

The Hon. K.T. GRIFFIN: Ultimately it will be a matter for the Council to determine what happens. But the government does not believe that it is necessary to have either a separate joint committee inquiry into the issue of the Hindmarsh Soccer Stadium or an inquiry by the Auditor-General.

The Hon. J.F. STEFANI: I wish to indicate my support for the motion on the basis that I do not favour this Council's embarking on a joint select committee into the Hindmarsh stadium debacle, but I do feel that the Council has complete confidence in the one officer of this parliament, and that is the Auditor- General.

The Hon. J.F. STEFANI: I have been listening to the somewhat slanderous comments made about the Auditor-General and the conduct of the Auditor-General, when the Auditor-General has always-

The Hon. J.F. STEFANI: -acted under the charter of this parliament and reported to parliament-not, as the honourable member who interjected suggested, responsible to a minister but always to parliament.

The Hon. T.G. Cameron: You can't even hear the interjections correctly. I didn't mention-

The Hon. J.F. STEFANI: Yes, you did. In your speech, you did. As I said, in his speech, the member who was interjecting suggested that the Auditor-General was responsible to a minister.

The Hon. J.F. STEFANI: I wish to refer to what I was about to say. We have before us a motion that I strongly endorse because I have faith in the Auditor-General. He is a person who has the utmost respect from all sides of politics. In fact, we had the Auditor-General, under instructions and with the support of this chamber, investigate the flower farm: it was under the direction of this parliament that the Auditor-General embarked on that investigation. I think that we as a parliament had the confidence to give him the task, knowing that the farm had lost millions of dollars, and we all endorsed his approach to the matter.

In this instance, I feel very strongly that the Auditor-General be given the task, because he will conduct an inquiry which will be less disruptive to the game of soccer, and it will be conducted in a professional and very quiet manner. The Auditor-General will have access to documents that a select committee would not have. The Auditor-General will be able to give an independent-

The Hon. J.F. STEFANI: He will have access to cabinet documents that the select committee will not have.

The Hon. J.F. STEFANI: I said documents, and that includes cabinet documents. Quite frankly, I think it is high time that this whole debacle be investigated and put to bed, because the soccer fraternity has been suffering under enormous pressure from the mismanagement of the stadium and the actions of certain parties which quite clearly have not complied with the conditions of the funding deed. In an answer that I have received from a minister, I have been told that the South Australian Soccer Federation was requested to formulate a management committee on 4 September 1997, 19 December 1997, 7 July 1998, and 3 September 1998, and the committee was not formulated until January 1999.

So, I guess what I am saying is that we need a clear indication, a full investigation into the whole issue, and we need to know the facts so that the parliament is satisfied that the matter has been properly scrutinised and that the decisions that have been made are in fact decisions based on a report from an officer of the parliament who will give us an unbiased and accurate assessment. I could go on and speak for hours, because I have been working on the soccer stadium issue for 11 months, and the files of documents that I have contain some rather interesting information. But I will not detain the Council to spell out all the information that I have researched, read and obtained through questions raised in this chamber. Suffice to say that, as far as I am concerned, I have the utmost confidence in the Auditor-General to do a very good job in leading an inquiry that will hopefully put the whole thing to bed.

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: I note that two members in this place actually spoke against this motion. First, the Hon. Terry Cameron, who I do not think disagreed with the issues that were being raised within the motion but disagreed with the fact that this motion was requesting an inquiry by the Auditor-General rather than a parliamentary inquiry. I said in introducing this motion that I believed that an Auditor-General's inquiry had a number of advantages. First, the Auditor-General already has looked at the matter to some extent, so he would not be starting from base one, which he would have done with respect to the flower farm, where he had no prior involvement at all with the issue. In this case he should understand the broad parameters of what is going on, if not the detail, as I understand the evidence he gave in public session indicated when he appeared before the Public Works Committee.

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: I think the taxpayers also need to be protected when governments get things horribly wrong, and sometimes you have to spend a penny to save a penny, and more. The likelihood here is that we are not talking about pennies going west but about millions of dollars going west, and it is only when you have proper scrutiny of these sorts of processes that eventually you will get the sort of diligence that we would hope and expect. So, the question in my mind was between the Auditor-General and a committee.

A committee has a couple of disadvantages. In public session a number of people who have information would not speak up. There would be senior public servants whose very jobs would be at risk if they spoke up, and I saw that-

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: I am sorry, but I know of public servants who have gone before parliamentary committees and had instruction before going, so I can only say that government departments do interfere with the processes of committees, and I have had plenty of direct evidence of that and spoken with people-

The Hon. K.T. Griffin: That's rubbish. It really is rubbish. Committees don't honour the protocols that have been in place for the last 20 years; that is the problem.

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: It will not be just those. I suspect that there may be people involved in the Soccer Federation, with a lot of sensitivities within that organisation and linked organisations that are not likely to be aired in the public arena. If they are, they may prove to be terribly destructive. Of course, the committee inevitably would be rather political by its nature. Sometimes you cannot help that, but there is an option available in this case, and that option is the use of the Auditor-General.

It had been suggested to me at one stage that we should be seeking some sort of judicial or quasi-judicial inquiry. Frankly, having looked at some of those that have been carried out, that is likely to be more expensive than the Auditor-General, and you would have more QCs than you could poke a stick at hanging around something like that, so that was dismissed fairly quickly. The other voice of dissent was that of the Attorney-General. Of course, as Christine Keeler said, `He would say that, wouldn't he.' One would always expect that the government would have protested against such an inquiry, whether it was justified or not. The government would have said that it was not, and there is no surprise. But there is clearly enough evidence on the public record to justify such an inquiry.

In relation to specific issues raised as to the meaning of due diligence and also as to questions of undue pressure, I expect that the Auditor-General can and should read that in both the broad and narrow senses of those words and, indeed, make comment in both senses. On matters of criminal or improper behaviour, it may be that the Auditor-General will identify places where criminal or other improper behaviour may occur but would clearly make a decision that he would report that there are matters that may need further investigation. I do not expect him to carry out a criminal investigation, but he may identify areas in which such things may have occurred. I see no problem there.

The final issue raised by the Attorney-General was: why give a specific instruction to the Auditor- General when he can do this anyway? I suppose the fact is that the Auditor- General, given enough resources, could chase a lot of rabbits down a lot of burrows in a lot of directions. Frankly, the Auditor-General and his department would be stretched to the absolute limit now. He raises matters in reports and he has raised matters about this, and I think that the parliament is now responding by saying, `Yes, we would like you to take a further look at this, because we think that there are matters of sufficient significance for you to do so.'

That is really the effect of this motion, and I urge members to support it. With the passage of this motion, we will not need to establish a select committee, which does have a number of disadvantages, which I identified.