Public sector perspectives
Advancing budget transparency for Victoria’s core integrity agencies (February 2026)
This joint paper sets out practical reforms to improve budget transparency for Victoria’s core integrity agencies.
As Independent Officers of Parliament, the Ombudsman, IBAC Commissioner and Auditor-General (and their supporting offices) play a vital role in holding government and public authorities to account. While their statutory independence is well established, the processes by which their funding is determined remain opaque, with limited visibility to or input from Parliament.
The paper outlines 12 practical reforms across three key areas:
- improving information access
- strengthening parliamentary oversight
- introducing clear administrative safeguards.
This builds on the agencies’ 2022 joint paper, which proposed a structurally independent funding model via a statutory commission or tribunal.
Read the 2026 paper Advancing budget transparency for Victoria’s core integrity agencies
Read the 2022 paper Budget independence for Victoria’s Independent Officers of Parliament;
Independence of the Australasian Auditors General Report 2025
This Australasian Council of Auditors-General report reviews and updates a survey and analysis of legislation, jurisdictional context and better practice in Australia, Fiji, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea first conducted in 2013. Based on 8 principles it shows the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), which was the highest-ranked jurisdiction in 2020, has been joined by Queensland in 2025. Victoria is third-placed.
Read the Independence of the Australasian Auditors General Report 2025
Access to and Disclosure of Information by Australian and New Zealand Auditors-General (July 2024)
This Australasian Council of Auditors-General paper focuses on international principles, International Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI) Principle 4: ‘unrestricted access to information’, and to a lesser extent INTOSAI Principle 5: ‘a right and obligation to report on audit work’, and how these operate in practice across Australia and New Zealand.
Budget independence for Victoria’s Independent Officers of Parliament (October 2022)
Victoria’s integrity agencies: Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission, Victorian Auditor-General’s Office and the Victorian Ombudsman, have come together to present an evidence based paper outlining the need for greater budgetary independence. The intention is to remove the politics from the debate, so that governments of whatever stripe cannot be accused, fairly or otherwise, of interfering with the independence of those agencies whose job it is to hold them to account.
Improving public sector financial reporting: Power of streamlining (April 2021)
Does your organisation's financial report tell its story effectively? Streamlining can help an entity tell its story in a simple and concise manner while complying with relevant laws, regulations and accounting standards. This article provides you with practical tips and insights on how to approach and overcome some of the practical challenges of streamlining.
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