The petition of former Auditor-General Martin Matthews is before a select committee, but there are limits to what the committee can do writes Irra Lee.
Martin Matthews speaks to the Officers of Parliament Committee about his petition to Parliament Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
While MPs debated the Prime Minister’s statement in the House yesterday, six MPs on the Officers of Parliament Committee left the chamber to consider a petition.
The petition relates to events around the resignation of former Auditor-General Martin Matthews in 2017 under the previous Parliament.
Some of the petition’s requests included that the Officers of Parliament Committee hold an independent review of the way Mr Matthews was treated and that they consider whether any changes to the rules of Parliament - its Standing Orders - were required to protect Officers in the future.
Chair of the Officers of Parliament Committee and Speaker of the House Trevor Mallard listens to petitioner Martin Matthews Photo: VNP / Daniela Maoate-Cox
The Officers of Parliament Committee chairperson Trevor Mallard outlined the limits of what the committee could do.
“The only thing a committee can do is to make a recommendation to the Parliament on any decision,” he said.
“The committee in itself has control over the inquiry it does … in the end, any recommendations would only be recommendations to the Parliament to do something, if it so chooses.”
The Officers of Parliament are politically neutral. They carry out inquiries and reviews on Government activity on behalf of the Parliament through a number of roles: the Ombudsman, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and the Auditor-General.
Mr Mallard said one of the Auditor-General’s roles was “to make sure the Government is spending money in the way it was meant to”.
“The other thing that the Auditor-General has been doing more of in recent years is what we call performance reviews,” he said. “It looks at issues a government is or should be dealing with … and issues a report.”
The Governor-General appoints the officers based on the recommendation of the entire House. The House, in turn, bases its decision on recommendations from the Officers of Parliament Committee.
The committee's primary functions include overseeing new officers, determining the funding for each officer per Budget cycle, and reviewing codes of practice.
It hardly ever meets and when it does meet, it is often behind closed doors.
Mr Matthews’ resignation in 2017 followed a report commissioned by the previous iteration of the Officers of Parliament Committee into his time as the Ministry of Transport’s chief executive, which was immediately before he became Auditor-General.
His time at the Ministry coincided with criminal actions of the convicted fraudster Joanne Harrison.
The current committee is being asked to determine whether the earlier committee acted appropriately.
Mr Mallard said it was “going to be really hard to tell” when an outcome from the committee could be expected in response to the petition.
The author of the report Sir Maarten Wevers and former Speaker of the House David Carter, who was the chairperson of the previous Officers of Parliament Committee, also appeared in front of yesterday’s committee.
Mr Mallard said the committee would meet again in about three weeks and would likely hear from other witnesses including former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer.
