Risk Oversight and Management

Corporate Plan 2016 - 2020

The Federal Court of Australia, as the merged entity, promotes a culture that supports the identification, analysis, assessment, treatment, monitoring and review of all strategic, professional, reputational, personnel, political and operational risks. These include risks to our stakeholders and risks associated with competition.

This is supported by the Risk Management Plan which has been developed in accordance with the methodology set out in Australian/New Zealand Risk Management Standard (AS/NZS ISO 31000:2009) and the Commonwealth Risk Management Policy 2014.

We have adopted six broad criteria for establishing risk management priorities. These are:

1. Risks that affect the reputation of the Chief Justices, Chief Judge and Judges and their ability to perform, or which may impair the community’s trust
2. Risks that affect the Registrar’s management of and accountability for performance, including the entity’s service delivery obligations, regulatory framework and business relationships
3. Risks that affect performance against identified strategic priorities
4. Risks that affect the integrity of decisions, processes and information
5. Risks that affect the security of all courts’ and the NNTT’s resources (including property) and visitors to its premises, and
6. Risks that affect the health and safety of personnel.

Risks are reviewed at least each quarter and the risk register is updated after each review. We recognise the importance of training and awareness programs in risk management. Consequently, we are committed to ensuring all staff receive regular training and information on risk management and their responsibilities.

We continued to participate in the annual Comcover benchmarking survey, which measures risk and assesses the extent of cultural change within agencies. Our overall result continued to improve, reflecting the efforts in the area of risk management.

Oversight

The Audit and Risk Committee is established in accordance with s 45 of the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013. The Chief Executive Officer must establish and maintain an Audit Committee, with the functions and responsibilities required by s 17 Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Rule 2014.

The functions include:

• endorsing the entity’s Risk Management Plan
• endorsing risk treatment strategies and action plans
• oversight of the implementation of the entity’s Risk Management Plan
• compliance with finance law including financial and performance reporting
• review of annual risk reports, and
• providing a system of internal control for the entity.

The identification and review of critical risk areas within the group and the implementation of the Risk Management Plan will be the subject of internal audit protocols, to be applied by Internal Audit. Our Audit and Risk Committee monitor the implementation of individual audit report recommendations generated from those audits through quarterly status reports.