9 April 2024: Almost all government spending for the first six months of 2023/24 was properly authorised and within the law. The single confirmed instance of unappropriated expenditure relates to a provision of $494.5 million for government assistance to local councils after the North Island weather events.
2023/24
20 February 2024: The Ministry for Primary Industries doesn’t know how effective the safety system is for importing high-risk food. The Ministry has not been consistently monitoring whether importers are establishing the safety and suitability of high-risk food before it arrives in the country.
15 February 2024: Young people report the highest level of unmet need for mental health care of any age group in the population. We looked at how effectively government agencies work together to understand and meet the mental health needs of young people aged 12 to 24 years.
25 January 2024: This guidance is designed to help councils provide appropriate and meaningful performance information in their accountability documents, so that communities and ratepayers better understand what councils are doing for them in the short and longer terms.
21 December 2023: We asked Auckland Council, the Ministry of Transport, and the Treasury for an update on their response to recommendations we made in 2022 about the governance arrangements of the Auckland City Rail Link.
18 December 2023: This article sets out information about the results of the 2021/22 audits of councils.
14 December 2023: This report sets out the operating environment for central government, our observations about performance reporting across central government, the results of our audit of the Financial Statements of the Government of New Zealand for the year ended 30 June 2023, and our work carrying out the Controller function.
13 December 2023: Any spending of public money should deliver good value for New Zealanders. We carried out this audit to understand how consistent the decision-making processes for investments in the New Zealand Upgrade Programme and the Shovel-Ready Programme were with the Government’s guidelines and the public’s expectations that public money is well managed.
12 December 2023: This detailed information sets out the results of the school audits for 2022. We have provided this information, and a list of recommendations, to the Secretary for Education.
7 December 2023: Concerns were raised with us that Callaghan Innovation had not properly managed a conflict of interest nor natural justice process, and inappropriately shared confidential information with others. We decided to carry out an inquiry into whether the actions and procurement processes for the Start-up programme met good practice expectations.
16 November 2023: Good performance reporting is crucial to enabling the public and Parliament to determine whether public money is being spent appropriately. However, it has long been unclear what outcomes are being achieved with public spending. We looked at information in the 2023/24 Estimates and share examples of what public organisations are doing well when it comes to performance reporting and where they need to improve.
31 October 2023: Given Auckland’s significance and the public services that central and local government organisations deliver there, we wanted to understand whether there is clear reporting on how much public money is being spent in the region, where it is being spent, and what difference it is making.
26 October 2023: We wrote to Andy Shenk, the Chief Executive of Auckland UniServices Limited (UniServices) about how UniServices managed conflicts of interest for work it did for a government department in 2020 and 2021.
30 August 2023: Our country is facing significant housing and urban development challenges. Good leadership of our housing and urban development system is important to address these underlying challenges.
29 August 2023: In 2022, the Treasury produced a report on the state of New Zealand's well-being called Te Tai Waiora: Wellbeing in Aotearoa New Zealand. We looked at this report, as well as well-being reports from other countries, to provide observations that could help the Treasury’s future well-being reports.
24 August 2023: In this article, we share our findings on how effectively public organisations have ensured integrity in emergency procurements.
31 July 2023: We provided a submission to the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill.