Issues in Accrual Accounting and Budgeting by Government

he adoption of accrual accounting and budgeting systems has been central to the program of Commonwealth Public Sector reforms over the past 20 years. The reforms are explained in publications such as Department of Finance (DOF, 1994a,b), National Commission of Audit (1996); Guthrie and Parker (1998); and Wanna, Kelly and Forster (2000). They were heralded with much praise and promise for improvements in the efficiency of resource management and effectiveness in policy delivery, and in enhanced transparency of information and accountability to Parliament and the public. However, while major improvements have been made in these matters, significant concerns remain about the new systems and they have created many problems. The fundamental features of the new financial measurement systems and the problems they have created are reviewed in the paper. The problems arise from the scrapping of the former cash accounting and budgeting system (CABS) upon the introduction of accrual accounting, and secondly, from the simultaneous introduction of two distinctly different accrual accounting and budgeting systems (AABS) — the Australian Accounting Standards (AAS) system and the Government Finance Statistics (GFS) system. It is contended that: