Page 416 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 27 June 1989
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"Division 110, Program Public Transport". What the difference is between transport in 090 and public transport in 110 I have not the faintest idea. I have spent a good deal of my life in public accounting and accounting for public finance, developing budgets and being responsible for them, and it is simply impossible to set these two documents alongside each other and determine what the relationship is between the Supply Bill and the budget of the current year that is just ending.
It is further compounded because, if you take the three forward estimates that were published by the Government recently and put those down alongside the first two, you find that you have yet a different layout of the information. It is impossible even to move from the Supply Bill to the first year of the forward estimates which presumably will form the basis of the budget that is about to be brought down.
I would ask the Government to consider this matter in the interests of informing the community, and particularly as the Government has said that it is going to consult with the public and make sure that the public is happy about what it is doing. The public cannot even be intelligently consulted and can make no intelligent comment when you have got three documents moving from one year to the next, none of which can be related one to the other, and you simply cannot comprehend what any one of the three means.
The other comment that I would like to make in connection with the Supply Bill, and I think it is a point that Mr Collaery overlooked, is that this is not a statement of the Government's intention in terms of its expenditure programs. It is merely a short-term provision to make sure that the business of government can go ahead in the interregnum until the budget is brought down. It in no way reflects the priorities of the Government. It is merely a continuation of this year's budget into next year for a limited period of time.
So what I am looking for is the budget, because it is the budget that will turn this document into something comprehensible, I hope, and it is the budget to which Government policies will be applied to turn the first year of the three-year forward estimates into a statement of intent of what the Government intends to do and how it intends to spend the money. So it is the budget that is important, and that is why the budget should be brought down early in the year rather than late. That is why I find it difficult to understand why the Supply Bill, as I said before, is for a period of six months.
What the Government has done here is to say to the Administration, "Here is $615m". It does not say that you must spend it in any particular way. It assumes that the money will continue to be spent in the same way as this year's budget has been spent. It reflects no change in government policy. It expresses no change in government
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