Page 1692 - Week 06 - Thursday, 20 May 1993
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It would certainly put public servants on their mettle when they come before the budget Cabinet to justify their claim. They would not be starting from some premise of a baseline and then arguing for more; they would have to argue for every dollar.
In terms of the budgeting process, to me there seem to be some fundamental problems with the way we go about our business now. It is a carryover from the days when we were run by the Commonwealth. There is the business of operating in one-year increments. I know that we publish forward estimates for the next two years that say, "This is approximately what the Government is going to do"; but those projections are merely projections of today's dollars. They do not project any new initiatives that the Government might want to put into place. They are merely this year's budget projected for two more years, and for all practical purposes they are valueless. So we operate on this basis that we go from one year to the next.
How can you get any continuity? How can you get any certainty of funding when you are doing that? It does not reflect the intentions of the Government in any way, which is why I have always talked about the concept of five-year financial plans. At least you are expressing an intention as to the direction in which you think you are going. You are going perhaps to plan to spend more money on this program, spend less money on this program, and maintain the status quo on the third one. The community out there can see in which direction the Government thinks it is going, at least on a program basis, and can express a view about that. When we talk about community consultation, they can be consulted on the five-year plan rather than the budget. If the community endorses the general thrust of your five-year plan, year one just drops off the end and becomes your budget and you do not have to consult on that because the consultation process has been done.
This is what I started to do when I was Chief Minister and Treasurer. The work was beginning on developing a five-year program and your five-year program would be considered six months out of kilter with your budget. You would look at your five-year program around about October, November, December, and you would have your public consultation and people would express a view. If that worked out all right you would start your annual budgetary cycle about January, February, March as to what the next year's budget was going to be. It would tend to drop out of your five-year program.
The other aspect of that is the annual budget cycle. It seems to me that our annual budget cycle is always six months too late. The Chief Minister said today that she cannot do anything about putting out a budget strategy statement yet. It is too early. We have to wait until the Commonwealth does certain things in June or July when the Premiers Conference takes place. We are all tied back to this Commonwealth process. A lot of community organisations, a lot of activities, are tied to our budget. Why is it that some community organisation that relies on public funding has to wait until about November to find out whether it is funded for the year or not? They are already halfway through their year's program and they are living on tenterhooks, hanging on by their fingernails in case they are not going to get funded this year. That is an absurdity. It is equally as absurd for an agency head within the Government not to know until September, October or November what budget he is going to have. Hence we have a thing called a Supply Bill which we put out, and it says, "We will fund you through to November, just in case, because it is going to take five months for us to tell you what your budget is for the year".
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