Page 3636 - Week 08 - Thursday, 19 August 2010
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delivered through that agency. Indeed, in Education, for example, the number of students enrolled in public schools, the number of students enrolled in schools who have high and complex needs or disabilities—these are issues that cannot necessarily be predicted 15 months out, which is when you are putting budgets together.
All of the items that come to call on the Treasurer’s advance are put through a rigorous test through the ACT Treasury around whether they meet the requirements for Treasurer’s advance. Indeed, there is often some to-ing and fro-ing between agencies around that. The end result is what you see before you at the end of year, where we have returned $13½ million back to the budget, which shows that we are seeking to control expenditure, but also recognises that government agencies across government, particularly those with large budget lines such as Health, TAMS and Education, will at times experience pressure on their budgets that needs to be dealt with towards the end of the financial year.
If you look at the case of TAMS, for example, with an appropriation of almost half a billion dollars—probably half a billion dollars—their call on the TA is actually coming down each year as they put in their own measures to contain their growth in service output and also in expenditure.
We are very pleased with how the Treasurer’s advance is going, and the fact that agencies are taking very seriously the need to look at their budgets, to remain within budget. But where there are legitimate, unforeseen and urgent requirements, this government will ensure that government services are adequately funded through the line that the appropriation bill allows, and that is what the Treasurer’s advance allows us. What is the alternative? That you do not fund students with disabilities in public schools and their needs? That you say no to supplementing education for the numbers of students enrolling in their schools? Why do you have a Treasurer’s advance if you do not have a small pool of funds, one per cent of expenditure that is there, one per cent of the budget that is there, to deal with, in a $3.9 billion budget, unforeseen and urgent expenditure requirements of government.
MR SPEAKER: Mr Seselja, a supplementary question?
MR SESELJA: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Treasurer, you said in your answer that many of the items were for unforeseen expenditure. Which of the items in the Treasurer’s advance were not?
MS GALLAGHER: All of the items in the Treasurer’s advance meet the tests required for urgent and unforeseen expenditure. A rigorous process is in place that the Treasury provide advice to me on every single request for a Treasurer’s advance that comes across my desk.
Indeed, when I look back at previous governments and their use of the Treasurer’s advance, what do I find? What do I find from when Mr Smyth was in the cabinet room using the Treasurer’s advance? I found a whole range of approvals for expenditure for cost overruns in agencies. They may well have been urgent and unforeseen. I hope they were, because that is what they use the Treasurer’s advance to meet. The Department of Justice and Community Safety—lo and behold: there is one
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