Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, , 51:25 to 56:58
Senators question a $16 billion anomaly in health services budget outcomes, which officials suggest may relate to Department of Veterans' Affairs spending.
Topics: Government spending, Health
Speakers: Senator The Hon Anne Ruston, Ms Kelly Fisher, Senator Ellie Whiteaker, Mr Blair Comley, Unknown Speaker, Ms Rachel Balmanno
Senator Ruston? Yeah. Can I just ask? In the final budget outcome 2526. And I noted it it was also indicated in the budget outcome in 2425. Under health services, there is an amount an anomaly in 2425 where health services on average are sort of around the 15, 16 billion dollars. And then in 2425, the actual budget outcome had them at 31 billion dollars. And I was just wondering if you could explain what that 15 or 16 billion dollar one off anomaly was.
So can I ask what document you're referring to?
No, no, you're doing a lot of the remote.
It was um it became visible in the budget outcome in 2425. Um but I was actually just reading the recently released final budget outcome for 2526. Um it just stood out as anomaly, and I just wondered what it was.
So Ms. Fisher's come to the table who's our Chief Budget Officer. She will get her she will get her name tag while I otherwise we don't know who she is. And she is coming with her name tag and she has a performance background, which is why she danced on away.
Thank you, Secretary, and thank you. Senator Kelly Fisher and the Chief Budget Officer for the portfolio. Uh I'll have to take most of your question on notice. The final budget outcome papers are developed by the Department of Finance. And we'll see if we can get a bit more information in session if that's useful. But under the health services element of FBO, it does include expenditure from outside this portfolio. I understand that some of the variants and a fair amount of it may be due to DVAs. Uh health services expenditure between the two financial years? Do they have health expenditure in relation to veterans? Yes.
In relation to health services?
Yeah, it gets classified as health services.
It's a very big number.
Yeah, so we will take that on notice. I agree it does seem unusual that it would change that much. And we'll just have to check whether there was any change in the way that our expenditure was allocated to the line item you are talking about. Because obviously our health expenditure across the whole Commonwealth is significantly higher than that and has been on an upward trend over the period without particular spikes.
Yeah, and the interesting thing just for your reference is the fact that it wasn't projected. So when the estimates were put out it it wasn't projected, but when the outcome was delivered. It was yeah, it was $16 billion more.
I'm sure it's one of these explanations about what's been linked to that.
And I'll also have some more questions in relation to the um the budget outcome figures um in relation to um age care, but I'll leave them for the time being to give you time to forensic the paper. Okay.
I will just very brief you're done on this section, yes. Excellent. Okay. Uh I will just before we move on, um, let everyone know that we have some media in the room and just want to confirm with members of the committee that comfort with them. Excellent, good, good. Thank you. Um I will just confirm we don't have any other senators on video conference who wish to ask questions in this outcome. No? Excellent. Okay then. Thank you very much. We will uh move to outcome three, aging and age care. And I now call officers from the Department of Health, Disability and Aging in relation to outcome three, aging and age care. Okay, thank you. We will move to questions starting with Senator Ruston.