Page 1824 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 15 June 1993
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As the supply estimates are prepared on current policy, the decisions made in the budget will impact on the supply estimates as well. These include decisions to devolve functions from a central program to a number of other programs. It is just not possible to do a reconciliation between supply estimates from one year to the next. Rather, it would be possible, but it would be an extraordinarily labour-intensive exercise, and I think it would assume that the changes reflected changes in government policy.
I would like to address a couple of other issues that members have raised. First of all, Mr Kaine referred to the supply figure being five-twelfths. I did not refer to its being five-twelfths, nor has any previous Supply Bill put forward by my Government. It is an approximation, and I think it is quite incorrect to attempt to extrapolate information from the Supply Bill into a full-year picture, because there are variables. I have been through some of them and I will go through some more. The Supply Bill does provide for expenditure for the interim period between the commencement of the financial year and the passage of the Appropriation Bill, which traditionally in this Assembly has been in November, usually fairly late in November. So the amount specified for each program provides for expenditure in that period, in accordance with existing policies.
In this year's Supply Bill, in addition to the matters I have outlined, there are some other funding issues to which I would draw members' attention. There is, as I said, provision for salary expenditure for 13 pays. We have also included in supply the full-year payments for all Comcare premiums. We have included the full amount for payment of the 1992-93 prisons bill for ACT offenders who are held in New South Wales prisons. We have included the full-year provision for expected expenditures on redundancy payments. We have included the full payment of the outstanding amount for the purchase of Macarthur House. That is the item referred to under "Corporate Development for the Department of Urban Services" that Ms Szuty raised.
In addition, expenditure for the capital works program is skewed towards the first half of the financial year, and that is, again, as a result of contractual commitments. Funding for the remainder of non-salaries areas of expenditure has generally been provided for anticipated costs for the first five months of the year; that is, they are anticipated on a current policy basis. There has been no provision made for policy changes, and that is the usual practice. Even Mr Duby did that. Policy and other changes will, of course, be addressed in the formulation of the budget.
Mr Kaine addressed a couple of other issues. First of all, should the supply figure be extrapolated out? No, it should not, and I have addressed that in all of the remarks I have made. There are special arrangements, special contractual timing issues, that are addressed in supply and which mean that you cannot just extrapolate the supply figure, call it five-twelfths of the total figure, and come to some other full-year figure. That does not work. Mr Kaine also asked about health. The changes in the health supply figures in the schedule indicate the change of administrative arrangements for the Department of Health. As members will recall, Health's own bank account has been closed and now, rather than netting off their revenue as occurred in previous years, their revenue goes to Consolidated Revenue. So the Supply Bill has to provide to them the full amount of anticipated expenditure for the period. There is also the question of capital. The health capital costs actually come out of the public works and services amount, which is some $70m in the schedule; so that explains that one.
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