Sound budgeting practices, such as providing for decisions taken but not announced, can make it challenging to evaluate government expenditure, according to Parliamentary Budget Officer Sam Reinhardt.

Reinhardt told the Australian Conference of Economists that prudent budget practices designed to provide for expenditure that has yet to be finalised and announced can make it difficult to track initial spending decisions through future budgets.

This is because expenditure for which provision has been made is often reported in aggregate and cannot be broken down into specific line items until the figures become more certain.