The Transparency of the Commonwealth Budget

Abstract

The focus is transparency in the Commonwealth Budgets from 1976 to 2022. Four case studies include: the publishing of the forward estimates; the Charter of Budget Honesty; Operation Sunlight; and the Parliamentary Budget Office. In addition to “transparency” motivations included strengthening the economy, mandating a legislated framework for the budget, identifying longer-term trends. These changes were public policy decisions. McConnell’s framework for analysing policy success is applied to evaluate reform success. Commonwealth Budget transparency was impacted by various counterweights. Politicians jousted for political advantage and public servants sought to retain secrecy. The study addressed the possibility that this dynamic played affected the success or failure of the transparency reforms. McConnell identifies three types of success - resilient, conflicted and marginal. “Resilient success” was success mentioned colloquially; “Conflicted success” was hard fought; and “Marginal success” was a failure, with some element of success. McConnell’s distinguished between process, programme, and political dimensions of success. Each of the sixteen decisions was evaluated against this framework.

The research tested whether the four reforms were successful. It included analysis of official documents, media reports and interviews with 37 key figures involved in one or more of the reforms. The findings were that Commonwealth Budget transparency had advanced since the Fraser Government era and each development implemented was in part responsible for this advance. Some individual policy decisions did not advance transparency. There is evidence of political advantage and public service opposition. Eventually, public service opposition became difficult to distinguish from political advantage, because the public service became more compliant. McConnell’s framework was a useful tool to identify the success of public policy decisions but had some limitations.