PPPs present unique challenges to governments and auditors-general. Governments justify their use on the basis of risk allocation which produces anticipated VFM. Accordingly, confirming the achievement of VFM savings in the operating stage would appear to be at the heart of PPP oversight, both by sponsoring agencies and auditors-general. The post-2000 focus in steering mechanisms on VFM outcomes, as opposed to the procurement of off-balance sheet assets, appears to indicate that most Australian PPP assets may be recognised on government balance sheets, ensuring that government debt is not understated.[48] However, there has been no independent research verifying the post-2000 accounting treatment of PPPs.
Similarly, there is little publicly available information about, and there has been no research into, the extent and outcomes of agency monitoring of the post-contractual stage of PPPs. Do agencies determine whether VFM has been achieved in the post-contractual stage, and, if so, what methodology do they use?
Confirming VFM in the operating stage is problematic and also does not appear to have been widely investigated by Australian auditors-general. The study into audit reports found that changes in anticipated risk allocations in the post-contractual (construction and operating) stage of PPPs had only been subject to investigation in four of 10 identified stand-alone performance audits. Three of those audits were classified as substantive and provided analysis of the effect of changes in risk premiums and their impact on returns to the state, on PPP term and tolls, and on the use of public money in toll road projects. The systems-based audit into a pre-2000 PPP hospital delivering core medical and other services merely noted that the effect of the identified change in risk premiums was marginal. That study also demonstrated that the pre-contractual stage had been the focus of eight of the 10 performance audits, suggesting that Australian auditors-general may need to put more resources into auditing PPP arrangements, and to focus their efforts on investigating the achievement of anticipated VFM to provide some assurance that government policy is being implemented effectively.
Not all PPP projects, or even all PPP categories, appear to have been subject to systematic performance auditing by Australia's auditors-general. A study conducted by English and Guthrie in 2003 suggested that auditors-general play a relatively insignificant role in PPP oversight.[49] Evidence presented by English in 2006[50] indicates that the record of Australian auditors-general is patchy. It appears that no audit office has consistently or strategically performance audited a range of PPP projects. If auditors-general are not performing a significant PPP oversight role, the question asked by English and Guthrie[51] as to who has taken responsibility for the oversight of PPPs remains unanswered.