EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

NOTE: “The executive summary usually appears before the table of contents and is given a lower-case Roman numeral page number (for example, i).” – from the guide on accounting writing methods on BB. The collapse of Enron in 2001 has alerted the financial standard-setters worldwide for the need to develop a single set of global high quality accounting standards in order to achieve greater transparency, clarity, consistency and comparability of the financial reports. This is important for achieving more efficient global financial markets while benefiting users of financial reports such as the investors, creditors, multi-national companies and auditors. In additions, it is evident that the financial standard setters are reconsidering the merits of group accounting and its criteria for control to a large extent. In particular, it is indicated that the application of reviewed group accounting standards such as the FIN46 could also be subjective and easily manipulated. This contrasts with the criteria of Australia’s basis for group consolidation, namely, “effective control” which is determined by control over the entity's board and the proportion of potential and current voting rights. The observations call for the principle-based accounting system instead of the insufficient and easily manipulated rules-based system. In sum, the abovementioned suggests that the financial reporting standard-setting process is largely uncertain and that the accounting standards may often be incomplete. More importantly, comparisons are made between the IFRS and Australia’s modified versions of IFRS and the results highlighted that Australia’s modified standards may sometimes be of superior quality and are more contextually relevant for Australian financial report users than the IFRS. Hence, from the above considerations, it is recommended