Executive coercion and state audit: A processual analysis of the responses' of the Australian audit office to the dilemmas of efficiency auditing 1978-84.

This article presents information on a processual analysis of the responses of the Australian audit office to the dilemmas of efficiency auditing 1978-84. Audit reports, which have been highly critical of executive decisions and operating methods have alienated governments and made them determined to limit the activities of their outspoken auditors. Increasingly, governments see it as their right to transact business with the private sector without answering to the auditor-general or even to parliament. They protest that their negotiations for the construction and management of roads, hospitals and tunnels give them access to commercially sensitive information, which should not find its way into the public domain. The secrecy of the executive in its dealings with the private sector has not received a sympathetic hearing from auditors-general in Australia. By examining the responses of the state auditor under stress during the introduction of efficiency auditing by the Commonwealth Auditor-General between 1978-1984, the aim of this article is to expose some of the methods used by the executive to limit state audit and to maintain the executive's hegemony in state audit which has been carefully and strategically crafted over many a years.