One in three ambulance crews were delayed for longer than 30 minutes at hospital. Over the year these delays totalled 84,680 hours of lost time, up from 78,224 last year and 58,399 the year before. The longer ambulance crews are at hospitals the less time they are available to respond to the next emergency.

Since the Victims’ Compensation Scheme started in 1989, $1.6 billion has been paid to victims of crime, but only $57.4 million or nearly four per cent has been recovered from convicted offenders. The remaining 96 per cent has been funded by the taxpayer.

The NSW Government’s defined benefit superannuation funds have had positive returns for the last three years. However, the returns fell significantly in 2011-12. Global economic conditions led to substantial volatility and uncertainty in markets creating challenges for superannuation funds’ trustees.

The following overview of audits from 2011 found agency restructures significantly impacted agency financial reporting processes, agencies are having difficulty establishing and enforcing compliance with their own policies and procedures, agencies experienced problems complying with regulations and providing adequate documentation to support their financial statements, the poor quality of some financial statements with 1,256 misstatements identified, 540 so significant they had to be corrected, deficiencies in information security exist across many agencies, computer system disaster recovery plans for financial systems not existing or outdated, do not align with agencies’ business recovery requirements, do not properly identify and assess critical systems and processes and testing is incomplete.

Neither agency (NSW Ministry of Health and NSW Police Force) demonstrated that they continued to get value for money over the life of these long term contracts or that they had effectively managed all critical elements of the three contracts we reviewed post award. This is because both agencies treated contract extensions or renewals as simply continuing previous contractual arrangements, rather than as establishing a new contract and financial commitment. Consequently, there was not a robust analysis of the continuing need for the mix and quantity of services being provided or an assessment of value for money in terms of the prices being paid.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #220 - released 1 February 2012

The report includes comments on his financial audits of NSW Government emergency services and law and order agencies for 2009-10. The audits of these agencies’ financial reports for the year ended 30 June 2010 each resulted in an unqualified Independent Auditor’s Report. Significant backlog in victims’ compensation claims The Department of Justice and Attorney General paid $63 million in compensation to victims of crimes but only received $4.2 million from offenders in 2009-10. Over $222 million worth of victims’ compensation claims are to be processed by the Department. The number of outstanding claims increased thirty-five per cent from 13,384 to 18,118 in 2009-10.

The report includes comments on his financial audits of NSW Government human services and technology agencies. The audits of these agencies’ financial reports for the year ended 30 June 2010 each resulted in an unqualified Independent Auditor’s Report. The number of supported accommodation places for people with a disability has increased by 517 during 2009-10.

The report includes comments on NSW Treasury and agencies in the finance and superannuation sectors. The New South Wales public sector superannuation funds’ investments were $42.2 billion at 30 June 2010, up from $38.5 billion in 2009. Investment returns reached 14.5 per cent in 2009-10. This is a significant improvement on the investment returns of up to negative 18.4 per cent at the peak of the global financial crisis in 2008.
 

The report includes comments on his annual audit of entitlements paid to Members of NSW Parliament and financial audits of WorkCover, Justice Health, Waste Recycling Processing Corporation and some other NSW Government agencies.
 
In his audit the Auditor-General had called for a system to be developed to ensure accrued loyalty/reward benefits are used to reduce Members’ parliamentary business travel expenditure, rather than be forfeited when a Member leaves Parliament. He also called for better controls over the Logistic Support Allocation used for transport, communications, printing, stationery, office supplies and equipment.