Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee, , 4:46:00 to 4:49:28
Senator McDonald questions the department on its response to Auditor-General findings regarding vague definitions in climate and green economy programs.
Topics: DCCEEW, Government spending
Speakers: Susan McDonald, Mr Mike Kaiser, Varun Ghosh
hand over to Senator McDonald, uh I'm now in a position to uh release the officials from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency or Arena uh for today. Um appreciate their attendance and the work that goes into preparing for these hearings and you go with the committees. Thanks. Uh, Senator McDonald.
>> Thanks very much, Chair, and good afternoon. Um I wrote to the auditor general in October earlier in October about a project they did in 2023 where they talked about auditing uh they identified I'm sorry in under their audit programs they identified 127 relevant programs across 42 entities involved in climate energy and the green I'm wondering would you be able to identify how many of those programs are
>> Not um not off the top of my head, Senator, but uh happy to take it on notice if you like.
>> Terrific. If you could take that on notice. Um, one of the comments that the AMO made in 2023 was that uh, it had limited ability to audit the number of programs uh, across government. Um, they had some things to be made around vague definitions and unknowns as one of its challenges in auditing these programs. Um, and so I'm seeking an understanding from DQ when you've identified how many of those programs, have you addressed the auditor general's concerns around vague definitions and unknowns um in relation to the programs relating to the green economy or climate change and the environment
>> from an ANO report from 2023, four years
ago. and and I'm assuming that by now there's going to be a bunch more programs. So I'm just starting with the in the so the ANO has done now in this in their annual report for 2526 it's it says that there's been a number of learning experiences delivered across priority areas and they had targeted emerging areas of strategic importance including foundational AI capabilities and climate reporting. reporting and auditing. So, I'm hoping that you're going to be able to tell me what changes you've made to the programs to assist with uh good audits from the ANAO.
>> Sure.
>> Does that make sense?
>> Yep. We we consistently take the ANO's feedback into account and where they make specific findings, we register those, keep a register of them and work on closing them out.
>> Okay?
>> So, we'll be able to do that. We're just not we're just not able to on the spot
at the moment. >> Yes. No. No. I appreciate that. Um they also the ANAO made a number of comments with regard to Snowy 2.0. How much oversight does the department have the expenditure of Snowy 2.0 as opposed to the Snowy Hydro Authority?