This presentation was made by Rosemary Huxtable, Australia, at the 38th Annual Meeting of OECD Senior Budget Officials held in Lisbon on 1-2 June 2017.

1. 1
Australia’s Parliamentary Budget Office
Ms Rosemary Huxtable PSM
Secretary, Australian Government Department of Finance
OECD Senior Budget Officials, Lisbon, 1-2 June 2017

2. 2
Historical Context of the Parliamentary Budget Office
(PBO)
• Broad political support for an independent PBO
• Unmet need for a service to assist non-government parties
in developing and costing policies on an ongoing basis
• Key rationale: to ‘level the playing field’ of policy
development and costing between the incumbent
government and opposition parties and independent
Members of Parliament

3. 3
Key events in the establishment of the PBO
Date Event
20 October 2010 Agreement for a Better Parliament
22 November 2010 Joint Select Committee on the Parliamentary
Budget Office formed
24 August 2011 PBO Bill introduced into Parliament
23 November 2011 PBO Bill passed by both Houses
23 July 2012 PBO began operating

4. 4
PBO Mandate and Functions
Charter of Budget Honesty Act 1998 - Policy Costing Guidelines
• Preparation of policy costings for parliamentarians
• Provision of analysis relating to the budget for parliamentarians
• When requested, submissions to inquiries of parliamentary
committees
• Self-initiated research and analysis of the budget and fiscal policy
settings
• A post-election report on election commitments
The PBO explicitly does not have a role in producing economic or
fiscal forecasts. The PBO does not have a mandate to monitor
Government compliance with fiscal rules.
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5. 5
PBO costing and budget analysis requests
No. of requests 2012-13 2013-14 2014-15 2015-16 2016-17
(YTD)
Total
Received 1,146 1,297 973 4,146 1,542 9,104
Completed 664 1,522 869 3,251 877 7,183
Withdrawn 19 162 42 1,013 335 1,571
Average time
(days)
33.9 13.8 19.7 18.6 11.5 18.3
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Source: Parliamentary Budget Office Review 2016-17 Report of the Independent Review Panel,
March 2017

6. 6
Successes and challenges for the PBO
• Independent and non-partisan organisation that produces rigorous
analysis relevant to public policy debate
• Successful and collaborative relationship between the PBO and
Government departments
• Increasing demand for PBO services
 prioritising costing requests, given limited resources
• In the future, parliamentarians and Government will face a choice of
either providing additional resources to the PBO or seeing a
significant reduction in its activities
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7. 7
Possible future directions
The independent review saw merit in the PBO taking an
evolutionary path:
• build on its medium-term fiscal sustainability work
• increase capacity to analyse the long-term drivers of
the budget
• potential future role in reporting on the long-term
(subject to a decision by Government)
The PBO is already building its demographic analysis
capability.
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