Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, , 30:05 to 33:25
Detailed inquiry into the $20.1 million write-down for computer software, focusing on the accounting standards and indicators that led to the assessment of obsolescence.
Topics: Government IT systems, Government spending
Speakers: Senator Paul Scarr, Erin Cockram, Ben Sladic, Catherine Rule, Unknown Speaker
Morning, Senator Catherine Rule, Deputy Secretary Culprit and Enabling Group. In the process of preparing our annual financial statements was when these impairments were quantified and therefore that was after 30 June 2026.
Okay. So that's when they were quantified. When were you aware that there was an issue with respect to possible impairments, right?
I'd have I'd have to take on notice the exact date. Our CFO may be able to shed a bit more light on whether that um awareness was prior to 30 June.
Your CFO is rushing to the table to provide us with granularity with respect to the timeline.
The CFOs are good at granularity, Senator.
Hopefully Ben Sladic First Assistant Secretary, thanks for your question, Senator. I think just to follow on from what Ms Rule said and the Secretary during the audit process with the ANAO they do a lot of their testing towards the end of the financial year and into July and August. And as far as specifics Ms Cochran might be able to share when it was quantified but certainly a lot of that work was happening post 30 June and leading into the final signing of the financial statements. So I might hand to you for any other information.
Hi Aaron Cochram Assistant Secretary Finance Branch. The a requirement under the accounting standard is that the assessment actually be done at balance date. So generally we will start the processes kind of May June of going through and making sure that identifying any of the indicators of impairment I don't have the exact date that the final kind of assessment a minute was signed off but I do believe it was in July.
Okay. Thank you. So the you might just stay there I've got some further questions on this. So the report cites $26.6 million of write downs including $20.1 million dollars of computer software being written down Okay. Can you walk us uh through the process by which it was decided to write down the software by 20 point one million? Which is quite significant.
So the accounting standards have very specific indicators of impairment that come to the economic value of assessing the economic value and it has to do it's often driven by whether an asset is going to be used for the same period that it was originally going it intended for use. So chain uh changes to the asset that make parts of the asset obsolete so it was decisions around those sort of indicators across a couple of different systems.
Okay can you can you give us a bit of context in terms of the specifics so which systems and and why those decisions were made. You don't have to and to the extent that you can give us a bit of insight with respect to what those systems cost originally and why they had to be abandoned effectively.
Yeah I'll update that on notice I don't have that detail breakdown.