Infrastructure assets are very important for the functioning of a society or community. In Australia, local government authorities (LGAs) have responsibility for the provision and maintenance of their community public assets such as public buildings, local roads, bridges, footpaths, recreation facilities, parks, water and sewerage assets. As at the end of financial year 2012, LGAs in New South Wales (NSW) are the custodians of approximately $81 billion in net value of infrastructure assets. The Australian accounting profession has encouraged local governments to account for and report on infrastructure using written-down current cost in order to provide stakeholders with relevant information. While the accounting standards have been focusing on asset valuation, the NSW Government has gone further by promulgating reporting requirements anchored in the NSW Local Government Act 1993 and Local Government Amendment (Planning and Reporting) Act 2009. The former requires LGAs to disclose information about asset condition, calculate the projected amount of money to bring the assets to a satisfactory condition and calculate the amount of annual cost to maintain assets at that condition, while the latter requires LGAs to follow the new Integrated Planning and Reporting Framework (IPRF) when planning for and reporting on infrastructure assets. NSW LGAs have recently reported on infrastructure assets in compliance with local government statutes. However, such compliance does not resolve some uncertainties and anomalies in the concept of satisfactory condition, does not affect the poor quality of councilsǃ infrastructure reports and does not prescribe a standard format for infrastructure asset disclosure. Accordingly, annual asset reporting continues to be problematic. The purpose of this thesis in its first part is to provide evidence on the quantity and quality of infrastructure asset disclosure under the new IPRF recently introduced by the NSW Government. In the second part, the thesis is aimed at proposing a definition of 'satisfactory condition' of infrastructure and examining the different factors influencing the contents of asset reporting. It then evaluates the adequacy and effectiveness of current asset disclosure in serving the information needs of local communities and proposes a list of the most important criteria for infrastructure asset disclosure in councils' annual reports. Finally, the thesis discusses and presents a proposed model of infrastructure maintenance for NSW local governments.
Date of Award | 2015 |
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Original language | English |
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- local government
- infrastructure (economics)
- local finance
- assets (accounting)
- New South Wales
Infrastructure reporting by New South Wales local government authorities
Pham, T. H. (Author). 2015
Western Sydney University thesis: Doctoral thesis