Unqualified audit opinions were issued on the above corporations’ 30 June 2013 financial statements. During the year, Treasury issued TC 13/01 ‘Mandatory early close procedures for 2013’. This Circular aimed to improve the quality and timeliness of agencies’ annual financial statements. In 2012-13, application of the circular was made mandatory for State owned corporations. As a result, the port corporations were required to perform the early close procedures. All the port corporations were successful in performing the procedures, which helped them submit financial statements by an earlier due date. The early close procedures also resulted in general improvements to the quality of most financial statements.

The report recommends all transport entities should do more to reduce excessive annual leave balances to ensure they will comply with new targets set by the Premier, RailCorp, Sydney Trains and NSW Trains should minimise the amount of overtime bonuses paid to train drivers and that Transport for NSW should set targets to measure the overall satisfaction of train users.

During the year, Treasury issued TC 13/01 ‘Mandatory early close procedures for 2013’. This circular aimed to improve the quality and timeliness of agencies’ annual financial statements. In 2012-13, application of the circular was made mandatory for State owned corporations. As a result, the NSW Generators, Distributors and Transgrid were required to perform the early close procedures. All the electricity entities were broadly successful in performing the procedures, which helped them submit financial statements by an earlier due date.

This in turn enabled the financial statement audits to be finalised within an earlier timeframe of eight weeks (nine weeks in 2011-12), with the exception of Eraring Energy’s audit, which is yet to be finalised. The early close procedures also resulted in improvements to the quality of the financial statements, as evidenced by fewer reported misstatements in 2012-13 compared to 2011-12.

The ClubGRANTS scheme gives tax rebates to clubs for supporting their local community. Since 2002, $417 million of ClubGRANTS tax rebates have been given to clubs. The scheme recognises the valuable role played by registered clubs in their local communities. However, the public must have confidence that the scheme is delivering genuine services to the community.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #229 - released 2 May 2013

We issued unqualified audit opinions on the transport entities’ 30 June 2012 financial statements.

Some of the findings of the report include:

• government funding to the public transport operators totalled $4.4 billion in 2011-12 ($3.7 billion in 2010-11)

• passenger services revenue only covered 20 per cent of RailCorp's operating costs

• Transport for NSW has formalised a protocol to mitigate the risk of potential conflicts of interests

• At present, no sustainability framework exists for the transport agencies around environment and sustainability. Transport for NSW should complete its Environment and Sustainability Policy Framework by June 2013 and should publicly report its results annually

• Transport patronage continued to grow with 510 million journeys on train, bus and ferry services

• CityRail had two peak hour periods where only 36 per cent and 39 per cent of services were on time

• On-time running performance for Sydney Ferries was above the NSW 2021 plan target of 98.5 per cent for most routes in 2011-12

• Customer surveys by transport agencies no longer specifically address crowding on public transport. Transport for NSW should observe and report on crowding on all transport modes

• Over 2,500 transport staff, or 8.3 per cent of the workforce, have excessive leave balances. All transport entities should do more to reduce excessive annual leave balances to ensure they will comply with new targets set by the Premier.

The audits of the seven State owned electricity corporations resulted in unqualified audit opinions. The electricity corporations’ end-of-year financial reporting is sound and well established, he added. After tax profits rose to $1.2 billion, up from $1.1 billion in 2010-11 and contributions to Government rose to $1.4 billion, up from $1.2 billion in 2010-11. These figures exclude profits and special dividends from the 2010-11 electricity sale transactions.

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.

The RTA (Roads and Traffic Authority) approach to detecting and enforcing heavy vehicle safety has produced mixed results. There have been overall decreases in the number of crashes and people killed and injured in crashes involving heavy vehicles between 2002 and 2007. However, the number of crashes and the number of people injured have increased between 2006 and 2007.

We recognise that the RTA is unable to prevent all crashes. However, we consider that the RTA could do more to improve its ability to detect and respond to high risk heavy vehicles travelling on our roads.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #187 - released 13 May 2009