Integration of Sustainability and Accounting in Australia

Running head: COST AND MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING
Cost and Management Accounting
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s note

COST AND MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING1
Introduction
The main objective of this essay is to provide a broad view of sustainability as seen by
Australian accountants. Integration of sustainability and accounting is the major phenomenon
discussed in the essay with respect to Australia. First section talks about the stance and the
initiatives that are taken by the Australian government for the promotion of corporate social
responsibility and sustainability into their accounting system and standards. This part also
draws attention upon the role of accounting profession in the development of sustainability
into the system of accounting in Australia. The specific segments are highlighted such as
rules for the preparation of a standard sustainability report on the basis of Global reporting
initiative. In the second part of the essay, an example is provided which shows the
demonstration of BHP Billiton on social and environmental accountability. Overall, the
changes that are taking place in the Australian accounting standard while providing
sustainability are noted down and discussed thoroughly in the essay.
Discussion
Initiatives of the Australian accounting profession on CSR and sustainability
Australian Government in recent days has deliberately taken the initiative to
incorporate sustainability into the businesses and the industries of Australia. This has proved
to be recognised as the key strategy of Australian Government (Junior, Best & Cotter, 2014).
The sole objective behind such a strategy is to plan and implement appropriate tools and
frameworks for providing amendments to sustainability in accounting. One of the important
part of this technique is to work on the development of partnerships (Junior, Best & Cotter,
2014). Partnerships have been considered to be one of the important features of a successful
sustainability strategy. An effective partnership would provide importance to the diversity
and would open up new opportunities and perspectives. The Australian Government would

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work in collaboration with the top industry bodies, professional associations and other non-
governmental organisations for the purpose of developing and delivering sustainability into
the business (Collison, Ferguson & Stevenson, 2014). This would require workplace
learning, professional development, mentoring and many other collaborative works.
There is a need for the promotion of sustainability so that it can be incorporated into
the different professional learning qualifications and the accredited course of Universities.
One of the examples of this can be cited with respect to CPA Australia who published its
annual report in the year 2008, abiding by the regulations of the Global Reporting Initiative
(GRI) (Bice, 2014). Accountants are considered to be the most crucial professionals who are
supposed to have a direct impact on the concept of sustainability. This is because the
accountants have links with a wide range of industrial and economic activities (Bice, 2014).
There has been a project newly formed known as ARIES project that works hand in hand
with the accounting professionals for the purpose of upgrading the capacities of these
professionals for bringing about a change towards sustainable development.
The Australian government has decided to work along with appropriate partners for
promoting integration of sustainability into different professional degrees or qualifications.
The financial services Institute of Australia has published many articles stating the research
on the importance of corporate social responsibility (Maas, Schaltegger & Crutzen, 2016).
There has been contributions from the two principal professional associations of Australia for
spreading the awareness regarding the issues of sustainability reporting. These two
associations are CPA Australia and the Institute of Chartered Accountants (Watty, McKay &
Ngo, 2014). These two institutions have committed significantly to the development of
sustainability principles and approaches and have also taken up membership in the forum of
Accounting for Sustainability.

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Along with these two institutions, the Australian media is also aware of the increased
importance of the practice of sustainability into accounting. It is noted that sustainability
would be a crucial driver for the success of businesses due to their responses in the fields of
environmental, social and governance issues (Griffen-Foley, 2014). The important drivers of
sustainability have been at the global, national and local levels. Within the practice of
accounting, there has been a growing importance of the role of professional associations who
are keened to promote sustainable practice. In the recent days the benefits of CSR have been
realised by the Australian corporate sector (Malik, 2015). A recent survey has revealed that
the reporting of CSR activities should take place on a voluntary basis and only a small
majority accepted the need for mandatory reporting. There has been introduction of research
program in the business schools of Australia which addresses multiple drivers for embedding
sustainability in the education curriculum. In this respect there has been active participation
of corporations.
The two important stances or initiatives that are taken with respect to implementation
of sustainability in accounting profession are global and local initiatives. The global
initiatives have been widely promoted through the usage of international partnerships and
also with the help of not-for-profit organisations. These initiatives include the Global
reporting initiative (GRI), The standard of accountability partnership known as AA1000
standards, the connected reporting framework, the sustainability indices of the Dow Jones
and a range of other initiatives (Tschopp & Nastanski, 2014). The other initiatives include
the triple bottom line reporting, ecological foot printing, approaches related to balanced
scorecard and assessment models related to sustainability (Tschopp & Nastanski, 2014).
There has been development of different metrics by the rating agencies for reporting
sustainability and risk management based on sustainability. These range of initiatives have