Australia kicks in a million dollars into the coffers of the IFRS Foundation in London as a part of this country’s long-term adoption of international accounting standards.

That million dollar contribution to the process that results in the standards companies must comply with was signed off by the Financial Reporting Council during its second full public meeting that was attended by 19 people.

Only one person in attendance was not linked to one of the key stakeholder groups, a government department, or the Financial Reporting Council itself.

The approval of the funding was only one of the key issues discussed with the FRC spending a large portion of its meeting looking at the upcoming challenges in getting consistent pronouncements dealing with climate reporting in Australia.

Climate reporting has been announced as a priority for the new Sustainability Accounting Standards Board that will strut its stuff in London and Australia’s auditing and accounting standard setters are watching what is going on in London and in New Zealand.

The New Zealand standard setters are looking at progressing something more quickly as the parliament in that country is looking at imposing new reporting requirements related to climate change.

Members of the Financial Reporting Council discussed how best to frame the sustainability reporting standards process to the Federal Government given that the council provides policy advice in this area to Commonwealth.

The council also spoke at length about the various groups involved in the sustainability reporting debate and how best to leverage the input of groups such as the Business Reporting Leaders Forum.

Other issues discussed by the council during a meeting that finished 90 minutes before the oversight body was scheduled to pull stumps included the decline in registered company auditors, the inability of the council to get enough people from specific groups to respond to surveys on audit quality and other issues as well as the most recent guidance from the auditing standard setter on issues related to cybersecurity.