House debates

Monday, 18 June 2007

Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2007-2008

Consideration in Detail

7:33 pm

Photo of Chris BowenChris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I understand that and I thank the minister for taking those questions on notice. I suspect that answers to the following questions might be in a similar vein, which I understand and completely accept.

I draw the minister’s attention similarly to the line item ‘whole-of-government and interagency amounts’. This year’s budget paper shows that to be a negative amount of $9.82 billion, but the estimate in last year’s budget paper was for there to be a positive $122 million at this point of the cycle. So again we see a $9 billion shift, which is a significant amount of money in anybody’s book, without any explanation that I can see in the budget paper or any other public explanation from the government as to why that has changed. I imagine there has been some change in accounting methodology, but could the minister take on notice whether that has been the case? Could he take on notice particularly whether there has been a change in methodology and, if so, what that change in methodology encompasses and what the difference is? If there has been such a change, could the minister provide, within the best of his department’s ability, a profile of departmental expenses based on this new methodology or classification over the last three financial years?

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