SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND FINANCE

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Dr Christoph Thoenissen

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Dr Christoph Thoenissen to the position of Associate Professor, with specialisation in Macroeconomics. Dr Thoenissen is currently with the University of St Andrews in Fife, United Kingdom and gained his PhD from University of York. Dr Thoenissen will resume his position with the school on 1 February 2010.

Dr John Singleton

Academic publishes historical book on public sector auditing

Over the last two centuries, New Zealand's Audit Office has gone from being viewed as a 'timid creature' to advocating transparent and accountable government.

Dr John Singleton (Reader in Economic History, School of Economics and Finance) and David Green (Ministry for Culture and Heritage) have recently completed The Watchdog: New Zealand's Audit Office 1840-2008, which was published by Otago University Press in October 2009.

The book tells the story of public sector auditing in New Zealand from the 1840s until the present day, when, under the Public Audit Act 2001, the Auditor General's independence from the executive was assured.

The role of the Audit Office is to audit the accounts of the public sector including local government and other public entities. Since the 1970s it has also had powers to investigate the effectiveness and efficiency of the public sector and its component parts. Furthermore it is sometimes asked by the government or the public to investigate topical issues relating to the misuse or waste of public funds.

"In the mid-nineteenth century, government in New Zealand was amateurish and riddled with cronyism, and in so far as accounts were kept they were unreliable," says Dr Singleton.

Singleton and Green show how the work of the Audit Office to create and enforce accounting standards facilitated the emergence of modern bureaucratic government. According to Singleton, the job of the auditors was not always easy, often involving long stints away from home, auditing local authority accounts in remote places where they might be viewed with suspicion.

"Though the Audit Office foreshadowed some of the thinking behind the post-1984 public sector reforms, the Office was itself attacked in the late 1980s by reformers who dismissed it as a meddlesome and inefficient monopoly.

"Yet the Audit Office survived this challenge to continue its advocacy of transparent and accountable government into the twenty-first century."

John Singleton is now working on a comparative history of central banks which will be published in 2010 or 2011 by Cambridge University Press, and plans further work on how the public image of bankers has evolved since the early twentieth century.

Professor Lew Evans

Chair of Economics

Professor Lewis Evans has been appointed to a panel to review the New Zealand Press Council

The Press Council is a self-regulatory body, established in 1974 by the newspaper industry to provide a complaints service for readers. It is to be reviewed by an independent panel consisting of Sir Ian Barker Q.C. of Auckland and our very own, Professor Lewis Evans of Victoria University, Wellington. Further information on the review can be obtained on www.presscouncilreview.org.nz and information relating to the current work of the Press Council is available on the www.presscouncil.org.nz site.

Prof Evans has been on the Government's Electricity Taskforce and the Victoria University of Wellington Tax Taskforce in 2009.