Cost of NSW LPAB's PLT scandal must be disclosed as a separate item, and notes provided to explain clearly how the scandal came to be; cost must include provision for contingent liabilities

 by Ganesh Sahathevan 

                                                                                 

NSW LPAB's 23-24 Annual Report has additonal defeciencies 

The  NSW LPAB's PLT scandal is not cost free, and so far included the expemse of the URBIS survey, and the internal PLT working group review. It is likely that other costs have and will be incurred, in the course of unravelling a scandal that the NSW LPAB would have been aware of since at least 2006. 

There is also a paper trail to show  that the  NSW LPAB Executive Officer at the time, Louise Pritchard,  had personal knowledge of governance matters which concerned the PLT, but were however excluded from the NSW LPAB Annual Report 2018 (see story below).

Given the NSW LPAB's role as a regulator and given the evidence of LPAB complicity in covering up problems in the PLT which its chairman, the Chief Justice NSW Andrew Bell has so comprehensively rubbished, in public, the likelihood of legal action by current and pastPLT students  to recover costs suffered in undertaking the PLT, which Bell himself has described as excessive, cannot be dismissed. Consequently, the costs that must be disclosed should include provisions for contingent liabilities. 

It is normal practise for costs such as these to be disclosed as a separate line item, and notes provided to explain clearly how the scandal came to be.


 NSW Auditor General Bola Oyetunji GAICD of the Audit Office of New South Wales  has been queried with regards the exlusions mentioned above (and explianed in detail below) and  insists that the misrepresentations in the NSW LPAB and related NSW Department of Communities and Justice annual reports (for the NSW LAPB is part of the NSW Department of Communities and Justice) is not the concern of the Audit Office of New South Wales for the errors are not contained in the financial statements concerned. 

The Auditor General's response ought to concern NSW voters and the Premier's Department NSW for the errors can, as demonstrated abov, have the effect of not recognising related expenses in the relevant accounting periods, or worse, of having the related expenses held in suspense accounts until the officers concerned feel they can safely have the expenses concerned brought onto the books.
These are fairly basic accounting issues so it is hard to understand why NSW Auditor General Bola Oyetunji GAICD refuses to undertake a full and complete audit of the NSW LPAB's books, as the law requires him to.

TO BE READ WITH 

 by Ganesh Sahathevan


                     Pritchard's signature on page 22 of the NSW LPAB Annual Report, 2017-2018

Between January and June 2018 Louise Pritchard, then Executive Officer of the NSW Legal Profession Admission Board, was informed by this writer via a number of emails about problems at the College of Law.  Some of these issues were subsequently made public in Malaysia., after the College Of Law  closed its regional office located in Malaysia suddenly and without explanation. 

The complaints against the College were not disclosed in the NSW LPAB Annual Report 2017-2018, despite the NSW LPAB being required to provide information in its annual reports about complaints against institutions like the College Of Law which it oversees and accredits,  ,and despite Pritchard having personal knowledge of the complaints.  

Pritchard was responsible for attesting that the NSW LPAB Annual Reports complied with disclosure and other requirements that concerned the NSW LPAB's operations. Pritchard left the NSW LPAB sometime in 2019, for a position at the Office Of General Counsel, Sydney University.

END 


SEE ALSO 






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