I just spoke to a friend from UNSW who's also doing Accounting/Finance and he told me that it would take him 4 years as well to finish his degree since he wants a CPA. He started at UNSW from day 1, so it seems even those that have started at UNSW will take longer than the standard 3 year commerce.
That's weird, because i compiled a list of subjects that i would need to complete in order to satisfy the Accounting requirements, Finance requirements and ICAA requirements and it seems to add up to 144 units of credit perfectly.
Accounting and Financial Management 1A (Accounting)
Accounting and Financial Management 1B (Accounting)
Corporate Financial Reporting and Analysis (Accounting)
Issues in Financial Reporting and Analysis (Finance) (Accounting)
Management Accounting 1 (Accounting)
Management Accounting 2 (Accounting)
Business Finance (Finance)
Auditing and Assurance services (Accounting)
Business and the Law (ICAA)
Business Entities (Accounting)
Business Taxation (ICAA)
Information Systems in Business (ICAA)
Microeconomics 1 (ICAA)
Macroeconomics 1 (ICAA)
Business and Economic Statistics (ICAA)
Capital Markets & Institutions (Finance)
Portfolio Mgmt (Finance)
International Business Finance (Finance)
TBD (Finance)
TBD (Finance)
TBD (Finance)
Gen Ed/Elective
Gen Ed/Elective
Gen Ed/Elective
That's 8 units for both accounting and finance ('Issues' counts as 1 for both) and it satisfies the unit requirements for ICAA, the only flaw i think is that it doesn't have enough General Education/ elective units to satisfy that portion of the commerce degree, so that may be why it takes a little longer, but everything I've listed here can be completed in 3 years.