59 The audit was completed on 31 October 2008, and is the date at which our opinion is expressed. The basis of our opinion is explained below. In addition, we outline the responsibilities of the Members of the Commission and the Auditor, and explain our independence. Basis of Opinion We carried out the audit in accordance with the Auditor-Generalfs Auditing Standards, which incorporate the New Zealand Auditing Standards We planned and performed the audit to obtain all the information and explanations we considered necessary in order to obtain reasonable assurance that the financial statements and statement of service performance did not have material misstatements, whether caused by fraud or error. Material misstatements are differences or omissions of amounts and disclosures that would affect a readerfs overall understanding of the financial statements and statement of service performance. If we had found material misstatements that were not corrected, we would have referred to them in our opinion. The audit involved performing procedures to test the information presented in the financial statements and statement of service performance. We assessed the results of those procedures in forming our opinion. Audit procedures generally include: determining whether significant financial and management controls are working and can be relied on to produce complete and accurate data; verifying samples of transactions and account balances; performing analyses to identify anomalies in the reported data; reviewing significant estimates and judgements made by the members of the Commission; confirming year-end balances; determining whether accounting policies are appropriate and consistently applied; and determining whether all financial statement and statement of service performance disclosures are adequate.