ABSTRACT
Budgets present the collective expenditure decisions of government; or more accurately bundle up the many 'items' of spending covering the range of activities ministers have wished to pursue or could not refuse. Budget allocations are statements of commission, recording what is intended. The system of government budgeting evolving over the postwar years consisted of disaggregated and dispersed processes of incremental decision-making brought together both by and for the annual cycle of parliamentary appropriation. The consequent lack of consistent and detailed knowledge of expenditure commitments made any overall budgetary planning and prioritisation difficult. The Accounting and Supply Division of Treasury traditionally produced budget estimates for the year ahead. Criticisms and critiques of the value of forward estimates arose almost from their introduction. The term central ledger was used to describe the record of cash receipts and payments for the government as a whole, and was centralised in Treasury.
