Latest reports, articles, and letters

The Auditor-General publishes 40-50 reports, articles, and letters each year. Here are the 10 most recent.
Monitoring importers of specified high-risk foods

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.

Meeting the mental health needs of young New Zealanders

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.

Observations from our central government work in 2022/23

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.

Making infrastructure investment decisions quickly

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.

Results of the 2022 school audits

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.

Inquiry into Callaghan Innovation’s procurement process

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.

Freshwater planning, farmers, and financial interests

21 November 2023: This note is about one of our recent decisions under the Local Authorities (Members’ Interests) Act 1968. It will be helpful for councillors with financial interests in plans under the Resource Management Act 1991.

Do your measures measure up?

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.