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The Production of Legitimacy in New Zealand Local Government Auditing

This paper expands our understanding of the introduction of new audit arrangements in the public sector by looking at three cases relating to the audit of local government. The first case saw the Audit Office replacing the elected auditors as the sole auditor of municipalities in 1886; the second case saw the Auditor-General fail to gain additional powers to control the financial management of local government; and the third case saw the introduction of operational audits in New Zealand local government. Following Power (2003, p.391), the paper illustrates how legitimacy was sought in these three cases by using the three stages of controversy, closure and credibility. All three stages can be separately identified in the two cases that succeed, with the failure point for the unsuccessful case being identified as the controversy stage. The use of Power (2003) is viewed as useful in accounting history and it avoids the use of terms associated with auditing, such as independence and objectivity, being used to evaluate auditing practice and arrangements.