House of Assembly Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2) 52 2 Parliament of South Australia House of Assembly published Question Time State Budget STATE BUDGET The Hon. I.F. EVANS House of Assembly Davenport STATE BUDGET The Hon. I.F. EVANS (Davenport) (14:59): My question is again to the Premier. Why is the Premier's GST revenue forecast $1.5 billion higher over the forward estimates than the federal estimates for the same period? The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL House of Assembly Cheltenham Premier Minister for State Development Minister for the Public Sector Minister for the Arts STATE BUDGET The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier, Treasurer, Minister for State Development, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for the Arts) (14:59): That is a good question. The way in which the state Treasury estimates GST receipts is to plug in some additional data that we are familiar with that allows us to estimate more accurately the receipts that we will get in the future. One classic example is the effect that backing out of very large capital expenditure, where we receive more than our national averages, has on our GST receipts. You will notice that, in one of the years in the forward estimates, there is a large jump in GST receipts—I think it is the third year of the forward estimates. That is explained by the fact that some very large benefits that we received in capital investments are now being washed out of the GST system. So, we would be losing GST receipts by virtue of the operation of HFE that is washed out in that year, so then our GST jumps back to what it ordinarily would be on our population share. We have all that data. We plug that in. We use the commonwealth's data, and that is why there is a difference between the commonwealth data and the data that we use. It is more refined data which gives a more accurate picture about what will come into South Australia.