Commentary: Performance Audit of PPPs - Getting the Basics Right

Performance auditing (PA) is an important vehicle for assessing Value for Money (VFM) of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), as well as providing assurance to the Parliament and to the public about the accountability for the supporting strategic and operational frameworks. Experience to date with PPPs in Australia has been limited and mixed in terms of results. Few projects have reached the mature stage, let alone been completed. It has been suggested that we can learn from the audit approaches and systems developed by the National Audit Office in the UK. Australian Audit Offices need to ensure that they have robust PA/VFM auditing systems, analytical methodologies and tools in place to undertake quality evaluations at various stages of a PPP, but experience to date at federal and state levels also indicates that there is still a lot to do to get the basis elements of PPPs "right".