Transport 2018

The Auditor-General for New South Wales, Margaret Crawford released her report today on key observations and findings from the 30 June 2018 financial statement audits of agencies in the Transport cluster.

Unqualified audit opinions were issued for all agencies' financial statements. However, assessing the fair value of the broad range of transport related assets creates challenges.

The total number of Opal cards with negative balances increased from 776,771 to 1.1 million with $3.8 million in revenue not collected during 2017-18. A total of $7.8 million of revenue remains uncollected from negative balance cards. Transport for NSW advise it is liaising with the ticketing vendor to implement system changes and are investigating other ways to reduce the occurrences.

There was also an increase in audit findings on internal controls across the Transport cluster. Almost one in five of these were repeat issues and have been drawn to management’s attention.

The report notes Transport manages eight out of ten major infrastructure projects of the state. A number of projects have experienced delays in planned completion as well as increases to original budget.

Further information

Barry Underwood, Director, Office of the Auditor-General, on 0403 073 664 and email barry.underwood@audit.nsw.gov.au.