Page 2342 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 29 August 2007
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as at that date. We on this side are recommending that future budget papers disclose for the relevant budget year the number of approved FTE positions for the year and the anticipated actual FTE staffing numbers for the year. Further, we believe that the budget papers disclose the FTE staffing profile by grade and number of approved positions for the estimated outcome as at the end of the quarter immediately preceding the budget release date in respect of each output and the budget for the relevant budget year.
Dr Foskey raised the matter of triple bottom line budgeting and noted that the budget papers did not contain any explicit coverage of the triple bottom line and how that might be measured. Therefore, the opposition is recommending in its dissenting report that budget estimates for each agency should include a triple bottom line impact statement. As to accountability indicators, that becomes a contradiction in terms if your indicators are so vague as to be meaningless and there are no benchmarks against which to measure them. We are recommending that accountability indicators are defined, measurable and able to be compared to recognised benchmarks. The opposition is also recommending that disclosures and presentation format for budget papers should be consistent from year to year with any changes identified and explained.
There is also an issue concerning the disclosure of the cost of contracted staff. FTE staffing numbers include contracted staff, but the costs of contracted staff are included in supply and services, not employee expenses. So we are recommending that the cost of employees be shown as currently, as employee expenses, but that the cost of contract staff, currently shown in supplies and services, be shown separately. Part of the vagueness to be found in the budget papers is that they often refer to projects and activities in generic terms, which makes the purpose of the funding allocation totally opaque. Accordingly, we believe that the budget papers should provide the detail of projects and activities rather than referring to them in generic terms. This would promote significantly more accountability, which presently is wanting.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Stanhope government avoids scrutiny by changing the format of the budget papers from year to year. It is yet another nail in the coffin of open and accountable government from this government. Even the bureaucrats seem to have trouble with the changing goal posts. When invited by Mr Barr to provide some details on a matter, a senior public service officer replied, “We’re just trying to get used to the new format of the budget papers.” The changing budget format is just more smoke and mirrors from the government, which would prefer not to have its brand of sloppy, wasteful and vanity-saturated programs exposed to stern public view. We are recommending only minimalist changes to the format of budget papers and for them to be done in such a way that comparisons can be made easily with previous years.
Finally on the format, the budget papers provide no information on the detail of such significant joint ACT-commonwealth funded sustainability programs, with even the official answering the question on the detail flummoxed as to its components. The opposition recommends that future budget papers provide the detail of any significant government programs.
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