What the Tasmanian Liberals will do:

Implement quarterly Transparent Financial Reporting on key Budget elements to provide greater Budget Honesty.

The economic downturn has highlighted a need for greater budget honesty.

Labor’s 2009/10 State Budget is on a knife’s edge. Failure to meet expenditure and/or revenue targets will have serious repercussions.

And after the Treasurer’s annual report is tabled, the government will have to report on these measures until the mid-year financial report – which does not have to be tabled until February next year.

In 2003, the State Labor government abolished the Treasurer’s quarterly financial reports.

There was no justification for it do so. It was all about evading scrutiny.

WA, Victoria, the Northern Territory and the ACT all provide quarterly financial updates to taxpayers; NSW issues monthly general government financial statements.

In times like these it is more important than ever for the government to be open and accountable with Tasmanians about how its revenues and expenditures are tracking. But there is other vital information it should provide too – including the number of public sector FTEs, new positions created during the three month period, and infrastructure spending progress.

A Hodgman Liberal Government will immediately legislate to make quarterly Transparent Financial Reporting the law. These quarterly reports will include:

• Revenue and expenses for government agencies;
• FTEs for government agencies;
• New positions created for government agencies; and
• Progress on budgeted infrastructure expenditure.

This will be done within existing resources. This information is already held by government – it is a matter of providing it to Tasmanians.

Governments must not be able to hide from taxpayers the true extent of a bad budget while they waste money on themselves, taking advantage of taxpayers being in the dark. This is about being economically responsible and being accountable to the people governments are elected to serve.