Chairperson, today the Presidential Review Committee on State-owned Entities released its report. It conceded that some state-owned entities may need to be privatised. The DA welcomes this development. Our position is that in order for real economic growth and job creation to take place, more entities need to enjoy the autonomy to operate without government interference, which has clearly compromised the effective operation of our economy. An economy cannot be centrally planned, no matter how much it is monitored and evaluated.
Last week Parliament held a snap debate on what has become known as Guptagate. There is no doubt that several systems failed spectacularly. A jet airliner entered our airspace and landed at the Waterkloof Air Force Base. Its guests were escorted under blue lights to Sun City for a wedding in the Gupta family, who are closely connected to the President.
Although government has conceded that these events were irregular, not one single member of the executive has stepped forward to accept responsibility or to be politically accountable for an incident that has exposed a rotten culture of favours for friends funded by the people. The collectively accountable Cabinet hasn't taken responsibility, and neither has the President.
The amount of R192 million is budgeted for 2013-14 to improve government service delivery through the Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation. Since its establishment in January 2010, the people have paid R314 million to fund it. The department's objectives, we would expect, are to hold to account those responsible for managing delivery of service to the people, to ensure that the people's money is effectively spent, and for the departments to learn from the information they receive.
The department's spending focus is to co-ordinate an integrated government- wide performance monitoring and evaluation system, and its strategic plan sets out a wide range of activities in pursuit of this objective. The question that comes to mind is: What is this for? What is the point of spending all of this money to build elaborate systems for evaluation, when we know that no one will be held to account when service isn't delivered and the people's money is wasted, stolen or increasingly looted?
The process to hold the executive to account has already failed. At every hearing the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, Scopa, exposes this failure. Ministers regularly fail to appear and don't send their deputies. Findings and recommendations from previous years are ignored in a culture of collective amnesia where no one knows anything or does anything as the people's money disappears down a drain into the trough from which bloated, politically connected cronies and tenderpreneurs feast, while everyone else gets left behind - without proper education, health care or employment prospects that an effective government would facilitate.
This wouldn't happen in an open opportunity society under a DA government. Where the DA governs, we govern well. We govern well because we know that a system cannot manage itself. We know that properly qualified people are needed to do a job. And we know that political affiliation or connectivity is irrelevant in the delivery of service to the people. We have demonstrated this in Midvaal and in the Western Cape.
Government departments can be well managed if they implement basic disciplines. Financial procedures need to be in place and properly managed. An internal audit function needs to monitor adherence to procedures and report to a competent audit committee that can advise management to make any necessary improvements. Quarterly financial statements should be prepared, so that any corrections can be made before the year end and before they reach the Auditor-General, who now spends much time on restating incorrectly prepared financial statements.
An effective monitoring and evaluation system would ensure that fruitless, wasteful and irregular expenditure decreased over time and that the R30 billion that the Special Investigating Unit says leaks from the public financial system every year wouldn't increase.
The Minister himself has stated that he is not concerned with punitive measures. This permits failing Ministers and departments to remain dysfunctional, without any repercussions, and also permits legislative provisions regarding the criminal liability of grossly negligent accounting officers to be ignored.
The Local Government: Municipal Finance Management Act, the Public Finance Management Act and the Public Audit Act were intended to ensure good governance, but are regarded by government as unnecessary guidelines. The Minister does not monitor adherence to these basic building blocks.
What is the point of monitoring departments in the name of good governance when no action is taken against perpetrators? We heard from the Minister of Public Works at a Scopa hearing that he had advised a poorly performing senior executive to resign, because the process for him to terminate her employment was too onerous!
Minister, our financial governance model is broken because there isn't any political will to keep it intact. No amount of performance monitoring and evaluation will fix this!
Departments already receive performance monitoring and evaluation from the findings of the Auditor-General. He also reports on service delivery objectives. His findings on municipalities, provinces and government departments do not inspire confidence. Fifty-six per cent of municipal audits were disclaimed or qualified last year, as were 23% of national and provincial audits. Does the Minister not agree with the Auditor-General that the pervasive root causes of poor audit outcomes are that key positions are vacant or key officials lack appropriate competencies; that there is a lack of consequences for poor performance and transgressions; and that there is a slow response by political leadership in addressing the root causes of poor performance outcomes? If you already know this, Minister, why do you not focus on the lack of political will to act and improve support for the Auditor-General from government?
Several government departments, most notably the National Treasury, publicly differed with the Auditor-General on his findings. The quality of work submitted to the Auditor-General would improve if departments produced quarterly reports as required. In his response to my question, the Minister said that this was not his responsibility. Twelve departments did not participate in the Treasury's 2012 Financial Management Capability Maturity Model Assessments. Why would their co-operation with the Minister be any different unless he acted as a praise singer contradicting other sources of performance data?
The National Development Plan advocates a government that is accountable and transparent. The DA agrees. It is clear from their silence that the plan is not embraced by everyone in government. It is hypocritical that ANC MPs who endorse the National Development Plan are also the members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions who reject it. The Minister's job is to ensure that government implements the NDP, and he needs to explain why several departments ignore it. Does the Minister agree with hon Trevor Manuel that the state is incapable of implementing the NDP?
To test whether the allocation of the people's money to this department has been wisely spent, we need to ask whether service delivery is improving and whether the people are getting value for their money. Unfortunately, the answer is no.