New Zealand's Parliament buildings, Wellington

Improving trust, promoting value: We give New Zealanders an independent view of public sector spending and performance

Our recent work

Local government 2023

Insights into local government: 2023

Councils are facing rising inflation and interest rates, workforce shortages, and climate change. Some are still affected by recent severe weather events that caused significant damage and disruption throughout the North Island. How councils respond to these challenges depends on what they and their communities can afford...

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blog posts

Latest blog post

Workplace bullying and harassment are issues that no organisation can afford to overlook, as they fundamentally undermine organisational integrity. From incivility to integrity: Addressing the hidden costs of workplace bullying covers  the most recent Leaders Integrity Forum. 

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Auckland disaster preparedness

Improving Auckland Council’s emergency preparedness: A follow-up report

Auckland Council has made significant progress towards setting up a well-functioning emergency response system, in line with review recommendations. It now needs to focus on testing and practising with its new systems and processes, and making sure that everybody involved in responding to an emergency is aware of and supported to carry out their role.

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What we do

The Controller and Auditor-General is an Officer of Parliament. This means he is independent of the Government and can't be directed by whichever political party is holding power. 

The Auditor-General has two business units – the Office of the Auditor-General (this site) and Audit New Zealand (auditnz.parliament.nz)

Together, our work gives Parliament and the public an independent view of how public organisations are operating. That independence, along with watching the spending, is why the Auditor-General is sometimes called the public's watchdog.

Here's the video transcript, and there's more information in the About us section.

Read about our priorities

Strengthening our core assurance role

We want to ensure that the public audit system is sustainable in the long term, that we can continue to deliver our mandatory audit and assurance services, and that we can modernise our audit function and respond to changes affecting the audit profession.

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Increasing our impact with public organisations

We want to increase our impact by increasing our focus on topics that are important to public accountability. There are key stakeholders in the public accountability system who can influence change, so we will consider how we continue to engage with, support, and build relationships with them to maximise the impact of our work.

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Enhancing our impact in te ao Māori

We want to continue to build trust and confidence among Māori in our role, and for our work to have increased relevance to, and impact for, Māori. We also want to influence the public sector to improve the public accountability system to reflect the uniqueness of New Zealand.

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Building on our reputation as a source of trusted information

We want to build on our reputation as a source of trusted information about public sector performance and accountability, which the public and Parliament can use to help hold public organisations to account.

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What does an auditor do?

An auditor checks that information organisations report annually is reliable, and lets us know if it isn’t. (Here’s the video transcript.)

What is the Controller function?

The Controller checks that money is spent lawfully, and can "turn off the money tap" if it isn't. (Here's the video transcript.)

blog posts

Our blog posts

Our staff are regularly blogging about the interesting and thought-provoking aspects of their work... 

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Data Home page

Data (including fraud notifications and school audit results)

We're working to make some of our data available online. We welcome your feedback. 

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school resources

Resources for students and teachers

We've turned some of our reports into teaching resources, mainly for social studies. Check them out!

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