Photo: Controller and Auditor General
Poor performance reporting, difficulty tracing what government spending actually achieves and the erosion of trust in the public sector have been key concerns of Auditor-General John Ryan.
He will retire from the role of public spending watchdog on 1 July after a seven-year term. In that time he has overseen thousands of audits of Crown entities, including nearly 2500 schools.
The office has also investigated huge public spending projects from post-Covid subsidies and the Provincial Growth Fund to how the government is achieving its climate goals.
In other words - are taxpayers getting bang for buck?
With the government spending more than $160 billion a year, Ryan says whoever is in power should be able to say what they want to achieve, how they are going to do so, how much it will cost and what progress is being made.
"I think that it's very difficult for anybody - parliament or the public and in fact, sometimes I think even for ministers - to be clear on quite what's been achieved with the with public spending," he told RNZ's Nine to Noon on Tuesday.
"I think we can be quite comfortable that we account for the money well, but actually does it create value? Does it get the outcomes we're looking for? That's a lot less clear."
He said reporting on outcomes overall saw "good practice", but there had been "very little change" that he could see in his seven-year tenure - with reports often boiling down to "I drew the money down in accordance with Cabinet guidance" or "we've delivered projects according to project milestones", instead of outlining achievements.
"I think being accountable is always a tricky position for public servants to be in. They are honest, they work hard, they do good work.
"But, you know, when they're in that crucible of a select committee being held to account for their performance, then having good information… is really critical, and select committees don't get that information…
"They get some good measures, but they also get some measures as I talked about that really don't give them any insight into what was expected to be achieved."
Ryan believed the law should require improved reporting, and welcomed the finance and expenditure committee's recently started inquiry into performance reporting and public accountability.
Sometimes, he said, outcomes were difficult to measure against spending - and cost-benefit analyses often did not tell the full story.
A key area Ryan looked at was spending aimed at softening the economic blow of Covid-19, such as the $18b wages subsidy and the $12b New Zealand Upgrade Programme (NZUP).
He said while the public sector did "incredibly good work" to get funds out to people quickly, that "high-trust model" sometimes was not followed up with a "high verification model".
"Some decisions, it was very unclear how they were made - particularly in the shovel-ready project, and then in the NZUP, there were decisions made which subsequently required further investment to ensure they delivered.
"Reporting on that at the time… wasn't at a level that I thought would give us the answers."
As for the billions poured into the Provincial Growth Fund, Ryan said reports on how spending decisions were made were often inadequate.
When his term was over, Ryan said he was "looking forward to not being the auditor general for a while".
"I borrowed time from many people in my life, and I think it's time to return some of that - I don't know, micromanage the lawn, and do some things people do in retirement."
'Truth to power'
The man nominated to replace him, Grant Taylor, was a chartered accountant and licensed auditor, with experience in the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General and as a managing partner for Ernst & Young.
Ryan said his message to Taylor would be that "we're independent, we do quality work".
"You'll have lots of challenges in your job, but you need the courage or ways to speak truth to power."
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