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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 10 Hansard (13 October) . . Page.. 3034 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

I have to say that considerable resources would be required to allow the estimated year-end results for performance measures to be published in the budget papers. We are projecting in a given year what we expect to be happening with a particular budget. Mr Speaker, if I might take the budget to be presented in this financial year as an example of how difficult that task would be, it is my hope to be able to produce a draft budget in this place in mid-January of next year. The Government will attempt to make that draft budget as comprehensive as possible and to have as much information in there as is reasonable to provide in the final budget. Obviously, some information would not be available by mid-January for 2000-01, but what is available we will attempt to have in that document.

Mr Speaker, the inclusion of a projection for the end-of-year outcome with respect to outputs, as is required by this Bill, would rely essentially on the outputs available to the Government for the September quarter of 1999-2000. I have to ask members how useful they feel an expected whole-of-year result for a particular department would be when the latest available figures to us would be for the September quarter of a given year - in this case, 1999-2000. By mid-January it probably would not be reasonable to expect us to have figures for the December quarter. We might, but I do not think that that usually would be the case, particularly with Christmas intervening. Realistically, we have to expect that we would have figures available only for the September quarter.

We could rejig our budget reporting process to produce figures on a monthly basis, say, rather than a quarterly basis, but that in turn would involve very considerable additional effort with respect to the provision of information and the resources needed to make that happen. I have to ask members whether that is particularly necessary in the context of the debate we are having here today.

The fact is that considerable resources would be required to allow the estimated year-end results for performance measures to be published in budget papers. The process of estimating the outcome on performance measures is much more difficult than the process of estimating a financial outcome. In the latter case we are simply dealing with a projected balancing of revenue against expenditure and various cost pressures. With respect to outcomes, all sorts of factors have to be taken into account. It is a much more difficult exercise. To take the information based on monthly data captured by our systems and try to convert it into a financial outcome available potentially on only one quarter's figures would not be reasonable.

There are other mechanisms through which members will have current and up-to-date information on the estimated outcome for performance measures. As those opposite are fully aware, the Financial Management Act requires, in section 25A, the tabling of quarterly performance reports. Those reports provide progress on the delivery of outputs and an explanation of any significant variations from the original performance targets.

Members have at their fingertips each quarter information about how outputs are actually tracking in the preceding quarter. The value of that information is greater in some areas of government than in others. To take one example which my colleague the Minister for Urban Services may cite later with respect to expenditure relating to roads and the cutting of grass, a very large amount of that expenditure occurs in the second and third quarters of the year compared with the first and fourth quarters of the year.

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