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Administered Performance

Revenue and expenses

The department administers programmes on behalf of its ministers with an expense budget of $3 317.2 million in 2002-03.

Table 2: Summary of actual expenses in comparison with the budget

	Result $'000	Budget $'000	Variation on budget %
Non-appropriation revenue	427 286	423 051	+1
Grants	2 966 563	3 120 321	-5
Subsidies	147 945	145 301	+2
Other	38 684	51 572	-25
Total expenses	3 153 192	3 317 194	-5

Non-appropriation revenue was $4.2 million above budget mostly due to increased collections of the Air Passenger Ticket Levy.

Total non-appropriation revenue for 2002-03 was $427.3 million, an increase of $4.2 million from budget. The increase is primarily due to increased collections of the Air Passenger Ticket Levy ($31.5 million) and proceeds from the sale of assets ($5.3 million).

The increase in revenue was partially offset by a reduction in reimbursements for the Dairy Regional Assistance Programme ($21.8 million) and collections of the Aircraft Noise Levies at Adelaide and Sydney Airports ($7.3million).

Total expenses were $164 million below budget, primarily due to programme underspends.

Total expenses of $3153.2 million represented a $164 million decrease against budget due mainly to underspends in grant programmes ($153.8 million). The underspends are primarily attributable to the Natural Disaster Relief Arrangements ($49 million), Sustainable Regions ($33.9 million), Federation Fund projects ($21.7million), Dairy Regional Assistance ($17.7 million), Rural Transaction Centres ($17.5 million) and upgrade of the Mainline Interstate Railway Track ($15 million) programmes.

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Assets and liabilities

Total assets were $232.2 million below budget due to a decrease in receivables and investments.

Total administered assets of $883.4 million were $232.2 million below budget. The decrease primarily reflects a change in the level of investments due to the deferral of an equity injection to the Australian Rail Track Corporation ($111 million) and a decrease in receivables associated with a change in the accounting treatment of appropriation receivable.

Figure 3: Administered assets as at 30 June 2003

Total liabilities of $114.1 million were marginally above budget.

Total administered liabilities were $114.1 million, representing a marginal increase of $0.9 million against budget. The liability continues to relate to payables for administered programmes.

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Asset management

Total non-financial assets total $85.9 million.

The total value of administered non-financial assets is $85.9 million. The majority of the assets relate to land and buildings, held by the Commonwealth at Badgerys Creek as the proposed site of a second Sydney airport, and freehold land and heritage assets on Norfolk Island.

Specific asset management activities undertaken during the year included:

• performance of the annual asset stocktake
• performance of the annual asset revaluation.

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Financial audits

Cross-agency financial audits.

The department was involved in two cross-agency financial audits, details of which follow.

Audit Report No. 45 - Reporting of financial statements and audit reports in annual reports - across APS

This report identified four errors in the publication of the department's financial statements on the internet and in the published statements. Two of these related to omission of pages on the internet and two related to insignificant numerical errors, one in the printed version of the statements and one on the internet. These errors arose during the transcription of information from the audited accounts to other media. New publishing arrangements will be introduced to avoid re-occurrence in 2002-03.

Audit Report No. 61 - Control structure as part of the audit of financial statements of major Commonwealth entities for the year ending 30 June 2003

This report identified one 'B' category finding by the ANAO for the department. A 'B' finding denotes a control weakness which in the ANAO's view poses a moderate financial or business risk.

At the time of audit a small number of staff had access privileges in the department's financial management system (SAP) in excess of those ANAO considered necessary to ensure segregation of duties. The controls were temporarily relaxed due to operational difficulties and alternate 'manual' segregation of duties procedures were implemented during these periods to manage the risk of unauthorised transactions. The SAP based segregation access regime was reinstated within a short period.

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