Auditors Front Up To Risk And Assurance Meeting

Audit New Zealand directors Derek Ollsson and Chris Genet turned up to council’s Risk and Assurance Committee this morning in person.

The Invercargill City Council felt blindsided by auditors late last year and disagreed with its opinion on its financial performance.

When the risk and assurance committee got involved it also felt that the audit process had been inadequate, and formerly wrote to Ollsson, asking to meeting him in person.

Mayor Nobby Clark was understood to be the only person the director had one-on-one with, and at the time said he no longer trusted him and had zero tolerance moving forward.

Council’s former finance manager and now CEO Michael Day also wrote to Ollsson expressing his disappointment about the feedback and the auditing process.

Nobby was not present at the meeting today as he was one of main guest speakers of the Regeneration Expo this week.

Council’s Acting Group Manager – Finance and Assurance Patricia Christie told the meeting that this year there would be a slightly different approach to how the three audits were carried out.

Last year council was annoyed at having to deal with many auditors by email so this year there would be 8-10 at council most weeks from September.

“That’s more than we have accountants.”   Patricia warned the committee that there would be pressure on staff involved, “but this is not unusual, it’s just that we’re right at the end of the year.”

Audit New Zealand said that time frames for auditing have been affected in the past couple of years, because of Covid-19 and the resulting global shortage of auditors.

Committee chair Bruce Robertson said the theme that lacked last time is “work with us,” and said the critical thing about doing an audit well is the timing, “but I’m hearing good things today.”