This year’s budget represents an absolutely critical one for Australia as it makes especially visible the underlying structural deficit that has faced Australia now for many years. When assessing some of the assumptions underpinning Wayne Swan’s 2013 federal budget, two things spring to mind: the Henry Tax review and the notorious inaccuracy of forward estimates. […]
Author Archives: Graeme Wines
Government budgets are increasingly becoming more political documents. This has been particularly evident with the federal government’s pledge to return the budget to surplus. However, budget numbers are calculated pursuant to accounting principles and a number of accounting ‘tricks’ can be identified behind the $1.5 billion surplus number. Moving of spending out of the 2012-13 […]
In the recently released Victorian government budget and in the accompanying Treasurer’s speech, the government made much of a fall in GST and stamp duty revenue, claiming ‘significant revenue write downs’ and a reduction of $7.6 billion over the forthcoming four year period 2012-13 to 2015-16. This would suggest an actual expected decline in the […]
Events can occur that render forward estimates in budgets obsolete in a relatively short time frame. Given the increasing emphasis on forward estimate figures in government budgets, it is timely to examine past budgets to determine their accuracy. Take the Commonwealth budget released three years ago in May 2008. That budget projected a surplus for […]