New South Wales has a lower rate of foodborne illness than the national average. This reflects some good practices in the NSW Food Authority’s approach to monitoring food safety standards. It also is a factor of the long-standing commitment by local councils’ to ensuring retail food businesses meet these standards.

To ensure foodborne illness remains low, the Authority needs to better monitor its arrangements with councils which inspect retail food businesses on its behalf, and receive additional and more timely information from councils on compliance with food safety standards.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #274 - released 15 September 2016

Overall, NSW Government initiatives and processes to prevent and reduce red tape were not effective, according to a report released today by the NSW Auditor-General.

In 2015, the Government reported that its red tape reduction initiatives, implemented between 2011 and 2015, had resulted in $896 million in savings. While these initiatives resulted in some savings, the total value of savings is unknown because estimates for some initiatives were based on unverified assumptions, cost transfers or unrealised projections.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #272 - released 25 August 2016

Overall, the governance arrangements for unsolicited proposals are adequate. However, there needs to be greater transparency and public reporting on unsolicited proposals received by government, according to a report released today by the NSW Acting Auditor-General, Tony Whitfield.

'Unsolicited proposals warrant more disclosure as they pose a greater risk to value for money than procurements done through open, competitive and transparent processes,” said Mr Whitfield. “This could include aggregate information about why proposals are declined, as well as more extensive information about proposals that have progressed beyond the preliminary and strategic assessment stages', he added.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #268 - released 10 March 2016

Serious system limitations prevented TAFE NSW from providing sufficient and appropriate evidence to support recorded student revenue of $477 million, student receivables and accrued income of $47.6 million and unearned revenue of $398 million.
 
These limitations resulted in: 

• a qualified audit opinion being issued for TAFE NSW;
• delays in enrolling students;
• inability to fully reconcile cash balances;
• difficulties in reconciling student enrolments with revenues recorded in the financial statements;
• large volumes of manual processing.

The distributions to the NSW Government increased from $690 million in 2013-14 to $1.0 billion in 2014-15. The increase was largely due to a higher dividend from Sydney Water Corporation.

Volume Five 2015 covered Premier and Cabinet agencies such as the Department of Premier and Cabinet, Office of Sport, Venues NSW, Barangaroo Delivery Authority and Infrastructure NSW.

For the third consecutive year, the General Government and Total State Sector Accounts received an unqualified auditor’s opinion following more than a decade of qualifications.
 
Errors in agencies’ financial statements and the Total State Sector Accounts were corrected as necessary to ensure compliance with Australian Accounting Standards and the requirements of the Public Finance and Audit Act 1983.
 
Improvements to year-end financial reporting processes have enabled the Audit Office to issue 229 audit opinions by 2 October 2015, compared to only 67 by the same time in 2011.

Generally, NSW universities are in a sound financial position, but average operating margins are falling and operating expenditure is growing faster than operative revenue.
 
The university sector’s average operating margin fell from 6.6 per cent in 2013 to 4.8 per cent in 2014 and combined operating expenditure grew 0.9 per cent more than operating revenue. Employee expenses in 2014 increased by an average of 5.1 per cent and other expenses by 5.8 per cent.
 
Operating expenditure grew at a faster pace than operating revenue at six of the ten NSW universities.

There are 63 agencies in the DTIRIS cluster. These agencies include nine electricity and eight water agencies that were reported in the NSW Auditor-General’s report to Parliament Volume Five 2014 on 11 November 2014. Commentary in this volume is on the remaining 46 DTIRIS cluster agencies. The findings found the quality of financial statements in the trade and investment cluster needs to improve.