Audit Objective
This report summarises our financial audit results of the six main state and local government owned water entities, and two controlled entities. These include Seqwater, SunWater, Gladstone Area Water Board, Mount Isa Water Board, Queensland Urban Utilities, and Unitywater.
Overview
In Queensland, water is primarily used by households, agriculture, mining, electricity generation, tourism, and manufacturing industries. Queensland’s state and local government owned water entities provide water throughout the state, and comprise bulk water suppliers, distributor-retailers, local governments, and smaller water boards.
Seqwater sells treated bulk water to local council regions within South East Queensland. This water is sold either directly to councils or through Distributor-Retailer Authorities (Unitywater and Queensland Urban Utilities).
Outside of South East Queensland, SunWater operates much of the bulk water infrastructure that supplies irrigators and industrial customers. For retail customers, water is sourced, treated and distributed by local government owned infrastructure (water boards).
Audit results
Consistent with 2016–17, we issued unmodified audit opinions on all financial statements this year within the statutory deadline of 31 August 2018. In doing so, we confirm that readers can rely upon the audited financial statements of the water entities.
All but one of the water entities had good financial reporting practices. This enabled them to produce high quality financial statements in a timely manner for 2017–18.
