Central government agencies are estimated to spend $3.6 billion on the environment in the 2023/24 financial year according to new figures from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment.
The Commissioner has released his third annual estimate of environmental expenditure which covers the spending of 20 central government agencies mapped against six enduring environmental outcomes.
“I began providing these all-of-government estimates in 2022 as a way of helping members of parliament to see the big picture of environmental spending across agencies. Traditional spending information has been focused on agencies, not outcomes. It has been difficult for MPs to understand how taxpayers’ money is being spent to achieve different environmental outcomes,” explains the Commissioner, Simon Upton.
“The estimate aims to provide MPs with the information to better scrutinise public spending. It provides a data source to help decision-makers understand the Government’s current environmental priorities, how much is being spent to achieve environmental outcomes and whether this expenditure is effective.”
“It will also provide a useful baseline against which changing government priorities can be measured,” the Commissioner adds.
The Sankey diagram shows environmental expenditure by government agencies attributed to enduring environmental outcomes. The top of the figure provides a sense of the total environmental spending by agency, the bottom shows where that spending is focused. Flows indicate the contribution of individual agencies
