abbot is right to deny costings, page-25

Abbott - gone

The Coalition will be praying that the Independents don't read Peter Martins blog.

THE COALITION FARCE UNRAVELS
The firm the Coalition says audited its election costings has been accused of breaching both auditing and ethical standards in a complaint to be lodged with the Institute of Chartered Accountants.

Professor Bob Walker of Sydney University, a 40-year member of the Institute, will lodge a private complaint because he says it is "in the public interest that auditing standards be respected".

Australian Auditing Standard 804 requires an auditor to "obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence as to whether management's best-estimate assumptions on which the prospective financial information is based are reasonable".

The one-page letter from WHK Horwath attached to the Coalition's costings released Wednesday explicitly states it relied "on the assumptions provided".

The standard requires auditors to instead investigate whether "all material assumptions are adequately disclosed, including a clear indication as to whether they are best-estimate assumptions or hypothetical assumptions."

The costings document discloses no assumptions...

The firm did not assert that it had in fact conducted an audit in the one-page letter released Wednesday. Instead it said it had been engaged "to review the costings estimates prepared by the Coalition".

However in spruiking the document on radio and television yesterday Coalition Treasury spokesman Joe Hockey repeatedly described it as an audit.