Debating departmental objectives and annual Reports : Second report of session 2007-08, report, together with formal minutes and written Evidence

How do Australian governments budget? How well do they spend and manage our money? Governments seem to be locked in a constant struggle with the problems of budgeting. Cabinet never has enough resources to go around, and while some agencies 'guard' public expenditure, others find endless ways to make new claims on budgets. Managing Public Expenditure in Australia provides the first systematic analysis of government budgeting and the politics of the budgetary process. Drawing on extensive original sources, the authors examine debates and reforms in public finance from Whitlam and Fraser to Hawke, Keating and Howard, and assess their impacts on policy development. In tracking the way governments actually spend money, Managing Public Expenditure in Australia provides an alternate and complementary political history of federal government over the past forty years. This book also includes accessible discussions on topics such as budget theory, financial management in government, and debt and deficit reduction. An explanation of new resource management techniques and initiatives help to illuminate the ongoing changes to budget and expenditure management practices. This is an essential purchase for students, teachers and practitioners of public finance, and for anyone involved in the continuing debate over the nature and role of the public sector.

Parliamentary scrutiny of the Government's finances needs to be improved. The purpose of scrutiny is to make the government's financial decisions transparent, to give those outside Parliament opportunity to comment, to have the opportunity to influence the Government's financial decisions and to hold the Government, departments and other public bodies to account. The complexity of the Government's financial system is a major problem. There are: departmental budgets determined in spending reviews; estimates; and resource accounts. Complicated reconciliations are needed to relate one to another. The Treasury has started an Alignment Project which should improve consistency and continuity between these three types of document. Parliament is not receiving the information required for effective scrutiny. Financial reporting to Parliament should: include the information that departmental managers use to monitor performance, rather than just financial control and audit information; enable an overall view of planned expenditure; highlight the information which is significant; relate the information to objectives and to what is achieved by spending the money; identify key risks; use graphs; be provided in good time; use plain English; and enable as assessment of the quality of financial management. The Committee makes specific proposals based on these principles. Select committees and the House should, together, engage with financial issues before the Government makes decisions. The House should take back the right to debate and vote on individual government programmes or items of expenditure, and more than three days a year (the current allotment) should be made available for this purpose.

Dated May 2007

The Transition to Sustainability 'details how all nations are repositioning their economies, their societies and their collective purpose to maintain all life on Earth, peacefully, healthily, equitably and with sufficient wealth to ensure that all are content in their survival.' From the Preface The governments of Europe are committed, in principle, to the implementation of sustainable development policies. What will this mean in practice? Most importantly, how compatible is such implementation with other commitments to economic growth and competitive markets? Can it be achieved, and what are the implications for all other policy areas? This book looks at the implications for government, business, taxation, planning, measures of change and local communities within the European Union. Country case studies include Germany, Norway, Greece, Portugal and the UK. The Editors conclude by giving an overview of progress so far, and offer pointers for the future. Policy makers, researchers and students across the range of social sciences will find this a valuable and groundbreaking book.