September FRC meeting

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29 Sep 2011

The Australian Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has released draft minutes from its 61st meeting, held on 7 September 2011.

Of interest are the following observations:

  • ASIC paper on 'non-conforming financial information'. Mr Michael Dwyer (ASIC Commissioner) provided the meeting with a report on its consideration of submissions on Consultation Paper 150 Disclosing financial information other than in accordance with accounting standards. He indicated that ASIC is still in consultation with stakeholder groups. However, ASIC hopes to issue its guidance by the end of November 2011.
  • Water accounting and auditing. The Water Accounting Standards Board has issued an Exposure Draft of Australian Water Accounting Standard 1 Preparation and Presentation of General Purpose Water Accounting Reports (ED AWAS 1) and an agreement has been made between the Water Accounting Standards Board (WASB) and the AUASB to work jointly on the development of an assurance standard for water accounting
  • Mr McGregor, who retired as an Australian-based member of the IASB at the end of June 2011, made the following observations about his time as a member of the IASB and the role Australia can play in international standards-setting, including:
    • Australia is regarded as a thought leader on reporting by private sector for-profit companies and can provide good feedback on matters such as IFRS implementation
    • AOSSG is viewed as providing a valuable balance on IFRS issues to the views of the US and Europe
    • as no IASB member is now resident in Australia, Australia needs to give consideration to how to maintain or achieve a greater IASB presence in Australia
    • there continues to be a misconception (especially in Europe) that Australia is not fully compliant with IFRS, at least partly as a result of the decision to use the designation Australian Accounting Standards for what are essentially IFRS. As a consequence, Australia is not getting full value out of our decision to adopt IFRS
    • in the area of public sector reporting, Australia and New Zealand are world leaders. It would be a logical extension to the standards-setting arrangement s for the IPSASB to come under the umbrella of the IFRS Foundation. The FRC and XRB need to press this issue with the Trustees of the IFRS Foundation.

The next meeting of the FRC will be held in Melbourne on Wednesday, 14 December 2011. Click for the full draft FRC minutes (link to FRC website).

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