Page 2018 - Week 07 - Thursday, 17 June 1993
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In this current fiscal year, that could be up to $60m, as the appropriation for this year was $1,295m. So, assuming that there is money available in the Consolidated Fund, the Minister can take on additional funds to the tune of $60m in a normal year.
In looking at how that has operated, and we had to look at 1991-92 because it was the most recent completed year, the original Treasurer's Advance was of the order of $8m, but it was augmented by a total of $12m during the year. So, it was augmented by an amount one-and-a-half times that originally appropriated by the Assembly, and I think those are figures that one should have in mind. So, there were questions about how this is done and whether the Assembly should be advised.
In terms of transfers between and within programs, this can be done not only between divisions, subdivisions or items within programs but also between the capital and recurrent budgets within any program. So, managers have a fair flexibility, with the endorsement of the Treasury, to move money about. We noted that in the year 1991-92 a total of just over $11m was moved across budget between programs. There is a certain amount of flexibility there. I will not comment on the Commonwealth payments because that is merely money coming from the Commonwealth. It is for a specific purpose. It is simply passed on to the agency head, and neither the Treasurer nor the Government can do anything about that. Section 5 of the Supply and Appropriation Acts, as I said, allows payment of unexpected salary increases. There is, essentially, no advice in the budget as to what that amount is, although we understand that there was a provision of approximately $12m in 1991-92, and about $7m of that was used. There were some questions about the amounts and how it is done.
Looking at this in total, the committee was concerned that there is no standard procedure for processing these things and there is no standard procedure for informing the Assembly in what we would consider to be a reasonable time. For example, for some of these things, the Government is obliged to tell us within six sittings days that they have done them. In 1991-92, a decision was made on the second last sitting day of that fiscal year. We were not advised until the August sitting, which is in compliance with the Audit Act, but it was four months later and was at that stage entirely historical data and not of great interest to us. The committee would like to have a more systematic approach to these changes; it would like to know at the time the changes are made, in particular, and what they are being made for.
I referred to the document of March 1993, circulated by the Treasury. What that does, in effect, is change the process by requiring a review of the budget in total in February-March of the year, rather than taking the changes on an ad hoc basis as they come up, and those changes would then be considered by the Executive and/or the Treasurer. That provides what one could describe as a supplementary estimates process, and we believe that that supplementary process should include referral to this Assembly for consideration of changes that are proposed to the Appropriation Act. Since the Government or the Executive or the Treasurer will have the proposals put to them at that time, it should be a very simple matter for those proposals to be put to the Assembly. The Assembly is in a position of approving the appropriations in the first place, and then being across the debate and the approvals process for any significant changes to the appropriations. That, in effect, is what the committee is recommending.
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