Investing in Our Natural and Cultural Heritage

	Document Index 1999-2000 Ministerial Statements Investing in our Natural and Cultural Heritage Chapter 2

GUIDE FOR READERS

This Statement attempts to cover all Commonwealth activities and programmes that have environmental benefit as either a primary or a secondary goal. Environmental benefit has been defined as:

the prevention, reduction or elimination of waste, pollution or other degradation of the environment; and/or
the conservation, rehabilitation, restoration or enhancement of the environment.

In practice there is no clear definition of an environmental programme and judgement is needed on what to include. The aim is not strict definition, but to show the broad range of programmes which now have an identifiable environmental element.

The expenditure figures do not include general-purpose payments to the States and Territories that may then be applied to environmental spending. Nor do figures include general funding to tertiary educational bodies that may be applied to environmental research or training.

The objective is to include all expenditure directly attributable to environmental objectives. However, environmental expenditure associated with everyday good practice operations, or expenses on some large projects, may not appear as separate line items in departmental budgets. For these reasons the figures provided underestimate total Commonwealth spending.

The figures provided for tax expenditures (tax concessions) are the cost to revenue estimated by the Australian Taxation Office and the Treasury.

Structure

Activities are classified according to their objective, not by the department or agency that undertakes them. Chapter 3 deals with activities that cut across sectors or are not dealt with under other chapters. Chapters 4 to 10 cover aspects of the environment following broadly the approach in the report Australia: State of the Environment 1996. Many activities cover more than one sector. In this case, activities are located in the chapter to which the majority of their activities are relevant. Cross-references are provided to other chapters where necessary.

After sections of text in Chapters 3 to 10, the name is provided of the agency or department (and in the case of Environment Australia, the name of the EA group) covering the activity, with a contact telephone number. These contact details are to enable readers to get more information on activities of interest to them. If there is any doubt as to which agency covers an activity, telephone the Budget Statement production team on 02 6274 1968.

Style Conventions

This Statement follows many of the style conventions of the Budget papers. However, there are some important differences.

Although new measures are expressed in outturn prices consistent with other budget statements, unless otherwise indicated, other expenditure and revenue figures are expressed in 1999-2000 prices rather than indexed or otherwise adjusted for expected cost increases.

There are some significant gaps in the figures for outyears. Often this reflects the fact that the document is reporting components of larger programmes and that decisions about how these programme funds will be deployed in future years have not yet been made.

Figures also often are not available where they cannot be separately identified from larger programme funds into which they are closely integrated.

Not all dollar figures in the text are included in the tables of new measures and programme and tax expenditure estimates. For instance, those dollar figures that are only broadly indicative or are provided as illustrations of particular projects, or are partially funded from Commonwealth outlays, are excluded.

For the first time, the Commonwealth Budget for 1999-2000 has been based on accrual budgeting. This does not mean a fundamental change to the Statement. However, the change to costing outputs on a full accrual basis may increase the level of spending on some activities in chapter tables compared with the previous cash expenditure base.

This would mean that figures for last year might not be strictly comparable with those for this Budget and future years. However, this strict lack of comparability is unavoidable with such a change, and should not undermine the objective of giving a broad indication of the levels of environment expenditure by the Commonwealth.

Tables of new measures and programme and tax expenditure estimates are broken into two sections. The first section includes new measures announced in the current Budget. The second section has total programme and tax expenditure estimates including the effects of the new measures.

All dollar figures in tables are rounded to the nearest $100,000. This means that figures in tables may not add up to totals given in tables or in the text. Forward estimates from 2000-01 onwards are only estimates and are subject to normal budgetary procedures.