Own Your Budget – How did that happen Mr Chalmers?

And the importance of explaining your budget performance.

The Australian government handed down their budget this week.

It is a wonderful case study of how a budget owner needs to be able to explain their performance to the decision makers. The budget owner being the government in charge. The Treasurer Jim Chalmers on behalf of the Labour party. And the decision makers are the Australian people. We get to decide at election time.

So, how did they go in explaining their budget performance to the Australian people?

The budget is in surplus. The government has $9.3 billion dollars left over after paying all their expenses. That sounds like a good result. Surplus is good right?

Commentators are estimating that the Government received $100 billion dollars extra in revenue. We sold more of our resources to other countries, mainly coal, gas and iron ore (at a higher price).

An extra $100 billion coming in, and we are left with $9.3 billion. Where did the other $90 billion go?

As a budget owner in an organisation, we would have to be able to explain the difference. This level of understanding will be needed if we want to have a positive influence on our future budget conversations.

As a budget owner, we need to be able to answer the key question when it comes to budget understanding:

How did that happen?

And I don’t believe this question was answered very well by Mr Chalmers last Tuesday night.

Own your budget so it doesn’t own you.

PS: Want to start understanding what your budget is about? When you are ready, let’s have a chat