Public assets play a major role in the municipal services delivered by local government councils. Effective management of these assets is thus critical to the sustainable operations of local authorities and thereby the well-being of the local community. To manage assets effectively, councils need to be able to account and report reliably on the performance of their assets. However, the quality of asset performance reports in Australian local government is mixed. This thesis examines various dimensions of asset reporting by New South Wales (NSW) councils and offers feasible solutions to remedying existing problems.
The thesis is presented in an article style format. It comprises an introductory chapter, followed by four related substantive papers and it ends with a brief concluding chapter. In the first two substantive papers, discussion focuses on the longstanding local infrastructure backlog in NSW and difficulties involved in its recording. The third paper considers the technical question of accounting for the assets owned by the NSW Government, which are compulsorily vested with local councils, as in Crown land. This foreshadows the fourth substantive chapter which covers the problem of cost-shifting in local government through the administrative burden of dealing with the NSW state auditors.
The value of the thesis to policy makers is that each substantive chapter provides practical solutions to many of the problems besetting municipal asset reporting in NSW local government. For example, the thesis offers recommendations for improving the existing framework for local infrastructure reporting. It also proposes technical solutions to the ongoing dispute over the concept of control over public assets, such as Crown land. Finally, the thesis suggests possible ways of dealing with the increased costs of auditing caused, in part, by various interpretations of the concept of control over NSW Government assets.