Whole of Government (continued)
Responsible Economic Management
Consistent with the Government's commitment to responsible economic management, the 2008‑09 Budget delivers savings of $7 billion in 2008‑09 and $33 billion over four years. These savings more than offset the Government's spending on election commitments and other priorities, and contribute to a 2008‑09 budget surplus that is the largest as a proportion of GDP since 1999‑00.
The Responsible Economic Management package includes savings measures that were announced as election commitments prior to the 2007 election, totalling $1.6 billion in 2008‑09. The Government has identified further savings measures across a wide range of areas as part of its review of Government expenditure.
Savings have been achieved by cutting ineffective and wasteful programs, ensuring welfare payments are targeted to those most in need and realising efficiencies in the public sector.
Measures include:
- winding down the Commercial Ready program, generating savings of $707.0 million over four years;
- rationalising and modernising the workplace relations system, resulting in reduced costs of $394.0 million over four years;
- applying a one‑off 2 per cent efficiency dividend to the departmental funding of most Government agencies to improve the cost effectiveness of the public sector, generating savings of $1.8 billion over five years; and
- abolishing the Access Card, providing savings of $1.2 billion over five years.
If www.budget.gov.au responds slowly or you are having trouble downloading a document, try one of the Budget Website Mirrors
Note: Where possible, Budget documents are available in HTML and for downloading in Portable Document Format(PDF). If you require further information on any of the tables or charts on this website, please contact Treasury.
