Page 2728 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 23 June 2009
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I asked the Chief Minister:
How much has been budgeted for 2009-10 for advertising and marketing?
The answer provided is:
As the Legislative Assembly has not passed the 2009-10 Budget the budget allocations have not been finalised.
Hang on, are you not asking us to approve the expenditure of money? Is it not the role of government to say what that money will be spent on? Is that not what we have been doing in this process? Instead of actually having a process where departments said, “We will need some money to pay teachers, we will need some money for classrooms, we will need some money for consumables, we will need some money for advertising,” apparently, based on this answer from the Chief Minister, that they said, “Well, we need a bucket of money. We need roughly X million dollars and we will work out later how we are actually going to spend it.” That is a ridiculous way to do budgeting and it actually demonstrates the guesswork approach from the Treasurer to this budget.
The Chief Minister will not answer about advertising and marketing. It goes on. We see this in relation to a number of other areas. This is another example relating to expenditure in the Chief Minister’s Department:
How much has been budgeted for 2009-10 for hospitality?
Why should we not be able to ask that? Why should we not be able to get an answer? The response was:
As the Legislative Assembly has not passed the 2009-10 Budget, no allocations have been made.
We need to know what you are planning on spending in various areas. Yet we get these non-answers. Another question:
How much has been budgeted for 2009-10 for staff training?
That is a question about the budget. We get the same answer.
As the Legislative Assembly has not passed the 2009-10 Budget the Department’s budget allocations have not been finalised.
It goes on. We see it in other departments represented by the Chief Minister as well:
How much has been budgeted for 2009-10 for:
a. Interstate travel
b. Overseas travel
The response:
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