EXPLANATORY NOTES
INTRODUCTION
This publication contains statistics about financial outlays, revenue and financial assets and liabilities of Northern Territory Local Government Municipalities, Community Government Council (CGCs) and Identified Incorporated Associations (IIAs) for the financial year 1998-99.
The municipality figures in this publication have been compiled from annual financial statements supplied to the ABS. The CGC and IIA figures have been jointly compiled by the ABS and Northern Territory Department of Local Government (DLG) from annual financial statements are based on accrual accounting concepts and are consistent with Australian Accounting Standard (AAS) 27.
This is the third Northern Territory Local Government Financial Statistics publication to be released and the first in electronic form. It is produced according to ABS Government Finance Statistics (GFS) classifications. Government Financial Statistics - Concepts, Sources and Methods (Cat. no. 5514.0) is currently being updated to reflect GFS on an accrual basis. In the interim, ABS Information Paper - Accruals Based Government Finance Statistics (Cat. no. 5517.0) provides an explanation of accruals GFS. Aggregate data has been shown at the Municipality, CGC and IIA level while more detailed data has been shown at the regional level. It is envisaged that more detailed data at the Municipality, CGC and IIA level will be available in the near future.
SCOPE AND COVERAGE
The scope for this publication is the Northern Territory local government sector which comprises all Municipal councils and those CGCs and IIAs funded by the Commonwealth and NT governments to provide local government services.
Municipalities, which offer services similar to municipalities in other regions of Australia, and CGCs operate under the Northern Territory Local Government Act. Identified Incorporated Associations operate under the Association Incorporations Act (with four exceptions operating under the Commonwealth's Aboriginal Councils and Associations Act 1976). Amendments to the Association Incorporations Act have meant that the obligations and powers of IIAs are very similar to those of CGCs.
Both CGCs and IIAs are responsible for delivering a wide range of local government type services. Jabiru was established under the Jabiru Town Development Act and is treated as a municipality in this publication. Nhulunbuy was established under the Companies Act and is not recognised as a local governing body for funding purposes.
CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS
The economic type transactions presented in this publication are aggregations of financial transactions reported in each local governments body's annual financial statement. The aggregated transactions are consistent with ABS GFS classifications.
The transactions are further categorised by purpose, consistent with ABS GFS classifications. However, they have only been categorised at the broad general purpose level due to limited detail within the annual financial reports. A definition of each broad level classification is provided in Appendix 1.
Statistical units are classified to their institutional sector based on the Standard Institutional Sector Classification of Australia (SISCA). Municipalities, CGCs and IIAs are classified to the institutional sector of general government. The primary function of the general government sector is to provide public services which are mainly non-market in nature, are mainly for the collective consumption of the community, involve the transfer or redistribution of income, and are financed mainly through taxes and other compulsory levies.
The ABS has prepared the Australian Standard Geographical Classification (ASGC) for use in the collection, compilation and publication of its statistics. The ASGC is a system for the classification of statistical units by geographical areas. The ASGC hierarchical structure used in this publication is the Statistical Subdivision (SSD).
The geographical boundaries of the NT SSDs were used to construct the boundaries of the five regional areas used in this publication: Darwin, Katherine, Alice Springs, East Arnhem and Barkly. A concordance between SSDs and regional areas is provided in Appendix 2. Each municipality, CGC and IIA was classified to one regional area based on their physical location within the regional area boundaries. A list of the individual municipalities, CGCs and IIAs within each of these regions is provided in Appendix 2.
Maps which accompany this publication illustrate the geographical areas relevant to SSDs and illustrate the location of each municipality, CGC and IIA.
RELIABILITY AND COMPATIBILITY
Municipalities, CGCs and IIAs are required to publish financial reports based on AAS27. AAS27 does not specify reporting to GFS standards, particularly with respect to purpose, and in some instances data has been allocated to the most appropriate category based on the best information available.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Local government finance statistics for the Northern Territory are collected jointly with the Northern Territory Department of Local Government.
RELATED PUBLICATIONS
Other ABS publications which may be of interest include:
- Government Financial Statistics - Concepts, Sources and Methods (Cat. no. 5514.0)
- Government Finance Statistics, Australia (Cat. no. 5512.0)
- ABS Information Paper - Accruals Based Government Finance Statistics (Cat. no. 5517.0)
- Regional Statistics, Northern Territory (Cat. no. 1362.7)
- Standard Economic Sector Classification of Australia (SESCA) manual (Cat. no. 1218.0)
- Statistical Geography: Volume 1 - Australian Standard Geographical Classification (ASGC) (Cat. no. 1216.0)
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