Ian McPhee AO
Citation
Ian McPhee was born in Toowoomba, educated in Maryborough and Rockhampton, and earned bachelor’s degrees from Central Queensland (CQU) and Canberra universities. His career in the Commonwealth Public Service commenced as a cadet in 1971. Periods of service in the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO), Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Department of Finance (Finance) followed. In the early 1990s Ian was division head in Finance responsible for managing the transition arrangements for Commonwealth departments and agencies moving from cash to accrual based financial reporting. In 1995 he was appointed Deputy Auditor-General for Australia, transferred to Finance in 2003 as Deputy Secretary Financial Management Group and was subsequently appointed the fourteenth Auditor-General of Australia (A-G) in 2005 serving until 2015. As A-G Ian was instrumental in ensuring that the ANAO was active in a range of international and regional groupings of supreme audit institutions. Throughout his long public service career Ian performed a multitude of external roles. As a standard setter between 1992 and 2021 he variously chaired the Public Sector Accounting Standards Board of the Australian Accounting Research Foundation, was Deputy Chair of the Australian Accounting Standards Board and served as a member of the Australian Auditing and Assurance Standards Board, the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board and the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants. Ian was a member of multiple standard setting boards in the post-Enron world as greater scrutiny was placed on the role of accountants and auditors. Ian McPhee’s expertise has also been sought for reviews and committees that focused on governance and accountability. The Australian banking industry, CPA Australia and PwC have all sought his advice. In 2018 Ian was appointed by the ACT Government as part-time independent Public Sector Standards Commissioner for a seven-year period and as a member of the Council of CQU. He has chaired audit committees within the Commonwealth Public Service and is a Distinguished Honorary Professor at the Australian National University. For more than four decades, Ian McPhee has contributed significantly to improving and enhancing public sector administration, governance, and accountability. In so doing he has brought the importance of professional ethics and behaviour to the fore as well as shaping the direction and focus of financial reporting and auditing and assurance. Ian’s lifetime contribution has been recognised in a multitude of ways. In 2002 he was awarded the Public Service Medal for outstanding public service and in 2009 he was awarded the Bintang Jasa Utama (First Class Medal of Honour) by the Indonesian Government in recognition of his contribution in promoting transparency and accountability of public finance. In 2013 Ian received a Doctorate honoris causa from his alma mater CQU and in 2014 was named Federal Government Leader of the Year. A Fellow of CPA Australia, Ian was awarded life membership in 2015 and in the same year was made an Officer in the Order of Australia in recognition of distinguished service to public administration, principally in the areas of accountability and policy development.