Abstract:
The nature of financial reporting in the public sector in Australia has undergone
substantial change in the last twenty years. One result has been the promulgation of
public sector accounting standards based on the private sector conceptual framework for
general purpose financial reports. A central key to this framework is the existence of
users and their needs. This framework emphasises the provision of information for users
for the purpose of decision making. Critics of the framework as it applies to the public
sector claim that it lacks empirical substantiation and ignores the complexity and
diversity of public sector institutions. This paper examines and analyses the annual report
distribution lists for local government authorities within Queensland and provides
empirical evidence on distribution patterns. The study finds that there are user groups
which fall outside the categories identified by the conceptual framework. Further, there
is a wide variety in the dissemination lists of local government authorities and cross
sectional differences in the distribution patterns for urban and rural local government
authorities. The results of this research raise important questions for public sector
accounting regulators regarding the appropriateness of assuming that there exists a
homogeneous set of users for all public sector entity types.
