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Audit Report

To the readers of the Residential Tenancies Trust Account’s financial statements for the year ended 30 June 2009

The Auditor General is the auditor of the Residential Tenancies Trust Account (the Trust). The Auditor General has appointed me, John O’Connell, using the staff and resources of Audit New Zealand, to carry out the audit on his behalf. The audit covers the financial statements included in the annual report of the Department of Building and Housing for the year ended 30 June 2009.

Unqualified Opinion

In our opinion:

The financial statements of the Trust comprising the Statement of Financial Performance, Reconciliation of Movements in Bondholders’ Funds, Statement of Financial Position, Statement of Cash Flows, Notes 1 to 8 to the Financial Statements:

  • comply with generally accepted accounting practice in New Zealand; and
  • fairly reflect:
    •  the Trust’s financial position as at 30 June 2009; and
    • the results of its operations and cash flows for the year ended on that date.

The audit was completed on 30 September 2009, and is the date at which our opinion is expressed.

The basis of the opinion is explained below. In addition, we outline the responsibilities of the Chief Executive of the Department of Building and Housing and the Auditor, and explain our independence.

Basis of Opinion

We carried out the audit in accordance with the Auditor General’s Auditing Standards, which incorporate the New Zealand Auditing Standards.

We planned and performed our audit to obtain all the information and explanations we considered necessary in order to obtain reasonable assurance that the financial statements did not have material misstatements, whether caused by fraud or error.

Material misstatements are differences or omissions of amounts and disclosures that would affect a reader’s overall understanding of the financial statements. If we had found material misstatements that were not corrected, we would have referred to them in the opinion.

The audit involved performing procedures to test the information presented in the financial statements. We assessed the results of those procedures in forming our opinion.

Audit procedures generally include:

  • determining whether significant financial and management controls are working and can be relied on to produce complete and accurate data;
  •  verifying samples of transactions and account balances;
  • performing analyses to identify anomalies in the reported data;
  • reviewing significant estimates and judgements made by the Chief Executive of the Department of Building and Housing;
  • confirming year-end balances; 
  • determining whether accounting policies are appropriate and consistently applied; and
  • determining whether all financial statement disclosures are adequate.

We did not examine every transaction, nor do we guarantee complete accuracy of the financial statements.

We evaluated the overall adequacy of the presentation of information in the financial statements. We obtained all the information and explanations we required to support the opinion above.

Responsibilities of the Chief Executive and the Auditor

The Chief Executive of the Department of Building and Housing is responsible for preparing the financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting practice in New Zealand. The financial statements must fairly reflect the financial position of the Trust as at 30 June 2009 and the results of its operations and cash flows for the year ended on that date. The Chief Executive’s responsibilities arise from section 126 of the Residential Tenancies Act 1986.

We are responsible for expressing an independent opinion on the financial statements and reporting that opinion to you. This responsibility arises from section 15 of the Public Audit Act 2001 and section 45d (2) of the Public Finance Act 1989.

Independence

When carrying out the audit we followed the independence requirements of the Auditor General, which incorporate the independence requirements of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of New Zealand.

Other than the audit, we have no relationship with or interests in the Trust.

John O’Connell
Audit New Zealand
On behalf of the Auditor-General
Wellington, New Zealand 
 

Matters relating to the electronic presentation of the audited financial statements

This audit report relates to the financial statements of the Residential Tenancies Trust Account for the year ended 30 June 2009 included on the Department of Building and Housing’s web site. The Chief Executive is responsible for the maintenance and integrity of the Department of Building and Housing’s web site. We have not been engaged to report on the integrity of the Department of Building and Housing’s web site. We accept no responsibility for any changes that may have occurred to the financial statements since they were initially presented on the web site.

The audit report refers only to the financial statements named above. It does not provide an opinion on any other information which may have been hyperlinked to/from these financial statements. If readers of this report are concerned with the inherent risks arising from electronic data communication they should refer to the published hard copy of the audited financial statements and related audit report dated 30 September 2009 to confirm the information included in the audited financial statements presented on this web site.

Legislation in New Zealand governing the preparation and dissemination of financial statements may differ from legislation in other jurisdictions.