Page 1690 - Week 06 - Thursday, 20 May 1993
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would, of course, institutionalise incentives of program areas to ensure that all funds allocated are expended during the fixed budget period. Finance regulations prevent payments being made in advance for orders to be delivered in the following year, so the budgetary reforms that the Government has adopted have been directed at achieving efficiency and effectiveness in the expenditure of public funds.
Apart from achieving efficiency within the budget limits, the other main priority of the budget has been for the ACT to live within its means. The success of this objective has been indicated by the ABS comparison of State finances which shows that the ACT has achieved a greater degree of expenditure restraint than any other State. It has also been indicated by the reduction in the Grants Commission's above standard expenditure in the ACT from 12 per cent above the States in 1988-89 - that is the year prior to self-government - to 4.5 per cent in 1991-92. We should not underestimate the magnitude of that adjustment task and the further adjustments that the ACT still faces, but I do believe that the Government's record demonstrates that we have achieved a high degree of financial responsibility in each of our budgets. We have done this consistently through a consultative approach while at the same time meeting community needs and meeting our own social justice objectives.
What Mr Stevenson appears to be arguing for is a more flexible regime, although in most instances he has not gone beyond the methods that are currently in use in the ACT. He talked, for instance, of a 6 per cent carryover as compared to our current 3 per cent carryover. It is my policy to hasten slowly in those sorts of matters. Even the 3 per cent carryover is a recent innovation in budgetary terms, and I think it needs time to settle down. Mr Stevenson also was looking for incentives for good managers, for people who were able to spend rather less than their budgets; but, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I believe that good management means good budgeting. It is in no way to the advantage of government or of management to have an end of year situation where programs are significantly underspent. To me that indicates that the resources required to carry out a particular function have not been very well assessed and that, in my view, is not a sign of good management. I favour an approach which does enable some flexibility aimed at achieving better management, but the main aim of budgets is to deliver policy, to deliver services to the people. I do not really regard underexpenditure in every case as a sign of success.
I think that in the ACT we have made vast strides in the past few years in budget management terms, particularly when you consider that up until about 1987-88 there was simply no consolidation of the ACT budget at all, and that in achieving that consolidation information had to be drawn from a vast range of Commonwealth Government departments and agencies. The fact that we are at the point that we have now reached in terms of budgeting, budget management and budget accountability, I think, is a tribute to a great many people, not least of whom, of course, are the Treasury people who work so hard on budget management right across the ACT service.
I take notice of Mr Stevenson's views and his wish for greater flexibility, but it is my view that the flexibility that we have achieved and the better management that we continue to achieve are moving at about the right pace, and I look forward to even better results. I am sure, though, that those results must be achieved in the framework of very responsible budget management.
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