Introduction
Scope of the 2003-04 Environment Budget Statement
This statement documents the Government's key outcomes for the environment and outlines spending on environment activities for 2003-04 and the years ahead. It is presented as an overview of policy and expenditure for the whole of the Commonwealth Government. It also identifies new environment measures that are managed by Commonwealth portfolios.
Outline
Chapter 1 of this statement contains an overview of the Government's environmental expenditure, as well as a description of new initiatives arising from the Howard Government's environment strategic directions and priorities for 2003-04.
Chapter 2 describes key achievements and the Commonwealth's major strategic directions for protecting the environment, as well as discussing environment programmes in more detail.
Expenditure for environment activities undertaken by this Government is listed in Appendix 1.
Structure
Activities reported in this statement are grouped thematically. The themes reflect those used in the State of the Environment Report 2001, and are also aligned with the reporting structure of the Environment and Heritage Portfolio. The statement can therefore be cross-referenced with other budget publications, in particular the 2003-04 Portfolio Budget Statement for Environment and Heritage, and non-budget publications such as the State of the Environment Report 2001.
The extent to which spending can be identified and ascribed to environmental purposes varies across programmes. As a result, some expenditure with environmental implications may not be recorded in this statement.
Changes in reporting
Care needs to be exercised when comparing estimates for 2002-03 and estimates for forward years and when making comparisons between this edition and previous editions of the Environment Budget Statement. From 1 July 2003 the Government will discontinue the Capital Use Charge (CUC). The Commonwealth introduced, as part of the accrual budgeting reforms in 1999-2000, a CUC. The CUC is paid annually by general government sector agencies on their net assets. The CUC is an internal government transaction and therefore, does not affect the budget balances as the payment is offset by a departmental appropriation.
The discontinuation of the CUC has the overall impact of lowering estimates of expenditure for programmes in 2003-04 and beyond. It does not have any impact on actual programme funding, as it is an accounting adjustment. In the 2002-03 Budget, the estimated total CUC and dividends for all agencies was $6.5 billion. This is equivalent to 3.8 per cent of the total estimates of the Commonwealth general government expenditure of $170.2 billion. Using this proportional percentage, as a rough guide, the CUC portion of the 2002-03 environmental expenditure would be around $54 million. This is likely to be an understatement as the provision of environmental services frequently requires a higher proportion of capital stock (eg in National Parks, to support Antarctic research, and to conduct surveillance of illegal fishing) than general government services. For example, the environment elements of the environment portfolio alone have a CUC of over $46 million for 2002-03.
There has also been a significant change in the way in which direct and indirect environmental expenditures are accounted for under Australia's foreign aid programmes, which means that it is not appropriate to directly compare estimates published for 2002-03 and previous years with those for 2003-04 and beyond.