Perspectives on Life: Budgets

Budget. It’s a word that causes consternation to all but a few touched individuals – primarily Treasury and the 20% of accountants in the profession who like their jobs. For the rest of us, budgets are either necessary evils for continued survival, or something to be denied whilst buying the eighth handbag for the day using shopper dockets and change taken from the ashtray in the car. Speaking of Sarah Hanson-Young, I’ll talk more on the Greens’ approach to Budgets later, but there’s some other more important stuff to cover first.

The Budget Process

In Australian politics, the Budget is the fourth-most dominant object of media and public attention (the second-most obsessed about are elections, with Julia’s fashions and Tony Abbott’s mental state tied for first). It’s also the only aspect of politics where specific leaks are encouraged, where the media actually talk about an issue for more than a day, and where there is iron-willed unanimity within the Government on the need for belt-tightening / discreet purging / limb amputation for the sake of the country.

The Budget process itself is of course mostly done behind the scenes and is an arduous process that essentially never stops. Once one Budget is delivered, planning for the next one starts pretty much straight away. It’s not a linear process either: changes in the economy happen every day and it all needs to be factored in.

On the expenditure side there’s the never-ending tussles with colleagues over their Department’s budgets. Lindsay Tanner left me a great document summarising Ministers’ tactics from the previous year and it’s proved invaluable. Whether it was Garrett claiming he needed a further 2500 staff for audit and risk management activities or Stephen Conroy claiming the internet needed more RAM, they soon backed off when I showed them Lindsay’s notes showing they’d asked for the same things last year and that in both cases they’d been delivered (the internet now has 64GB more RAM apparently).

On the revenue side, there are no shortage of challenges either. There are the more obvious examples like natural disasters which have an enormous impact on the Budget bottom line. That said, events like those are relatively easy to incorporate into updated forecasts as Treasury have models covering those contingencies. It’s the more unusual events that can be difficult to factor in and they explain most of the Budget discrepancies that can occur. Some examples:

• Bronwyn Bishop goes on a six week parliamentary junket and goes on a makeup shopping spree whilst overseas. Dozens of David Jones cosmetic staff are made redundant, counsellors report a downturn as there are less kids traumatised by seeing Bronwyn in the (undead) flesh while she’s OS and our balance of payments are affected by the amount of makeup imported on top of the now excess David Jones inventory.
• Today Tonight decide to run a week of stories based on old-fashioned journalistic rigour. KFC and Harvey Norman report huge downturns in sales as their advertisements are suddenly seen by less than 10% of the usual bogan cohort.
• It is revealed that Bon Scott has been cryogenically preserved and that the CSIRO have worked out a way to revive him. Alcohol sales increase 700% within a week and every third Australian buys a ninth AC/DC shirt for their collection with a direct mining resources / T-Shirt trade agreement signed with China.

Of course, only two of the three above are real examples (Bronwyn has a Customs embargo on her importing cosmetics) but I’m sure you see the point: Budgets are a highly nuanced process.

The Greens

One of the more frustrating parts of the current budget process is the accusation that our priorities are being driven by the Greens’ demands. It’s a claim that’s so ridiculous that I shouldn’t need to even take the time to refute it, but I will anyway. When we signed the agreement with the Greens to support Labor to form government, we had the foresight to put in a Budget clause. As a trade-off for unlimited criticism of the Immigration portfolio and an agreement to Bob Brown’s request for Lee Rhiannon to be put in an office the furthest away from his own, they agreed to not make any direct requests for Budget funding and that any criticism of the Government’s Budget will be limited to community radio and ABC 3.

The arrangement has worked well primarily because the two parties are united in their dislike of Lee Rhiannon, who I predict will be the first Senator to make the overhead microphone in the Senate Chamber explode through the use of her voice alone.