Page 490 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 20 February 1991
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is provided it would serve them little purpose. It is not open to them to budget for a particular works project, get excess money, and then spend it on something else without public scrutiny, which is the term you use. It is subject to the scrutiny of the government of the day and it is subject to the scrutiny of the estimates committee of the day.
You have every right to inquire about any position, any job, that you think has not been properly managed. But to assert that there is a slush fund and that it is without public scrutiny again is an absurdity. Of course, during any financial year circumstances change and these have an impact on your estimates - and I emphasise that they are estimates. People make their best effort to determine what the cost of a project or a program is going to be and that project or program is then managed within the amount of money made available by the Government. Some of the things that cause changes, of course, are beyond the control of this Government. They are generated by decisions made in the Commonwealth Parliament across the lake.
I submit, Mr Speaker, that there is no practice of overestimating in the ACT budgetary process; neither is there a practice of spending money wastefully simply because there is a budgetary provision based on somebody's best estimate of cost which is not achieved. I refute that entirely. Of course, not all programs underspend. They did not in 1989-90 and they will not in 1990-91 and they will not in any future budget. For every one that underexpends I will guarantee that I could go through the budget and find one or two that overexpend. That is why you have to be very careful, in managing your budget, to make sure that your total budget allocation is not exceeded.
While there may be overs and unders on specific capital works projects or other projects within the totality of the budget, there is not an overestimating right across the board. These things balance themselves out. It can be proved that in last year's budget the Government had to provide supplementary funding over and above that identified in the budget estimate to enable programs to meet additional demands placed upon them. That can be easily demonstrated by looking at the end-of-year result for last year.
I indicated in my budget speech that during 1989-90 there had been a number of positive management and policy decisions initiated by this Government when we took over last year's budget and that, combined with some unexpected circumstances, some windfalls, led to a particular budget surplus last year. That is most unlikely to occur again. On my view, it is most unlikely that a favourable juxtaposition of events such as those will occur again this year or in any future year. Of course, we will be
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