Charter of Budget Honesty Act 1998

Here is a brief overview of the Charter of Budget Honesty Act 1998:

The Charter of Budget Honesty Act 1998 aims to improve fiscal policy outcomes by providing a framework for the conduct of Government fiscal policy. The purpose of the Charter is to increase public awareness of the Government's fiscal strategy and establish a benchmark for evaluating its conduct of fiscal policy.

The Charter sets out key principles of sound fiscal management, including managing financial risks faced by the Commonwealth prudently, ensuring that fiscal policy contributes to achieving adequate national saving, and pursuing spending and taxing policies that are consistent with a reasonable degree of stability and predictability in the level of the tax burden.

The Act requires the Treasurer to publicly release and table regular fiscal reports, including budget economic and fiscal outlook reports, mid-year economic and fiscal outlook reports, and final budget outcome reports. These reports provide information on the Government's fiscal performance against its current fiscal strategy statement and are based on external reporting standards.

The Charter also provides for public release and tabling of intergenerational reports at least once every 5 years, pre-election fiscal and economic outlook reports if a general election is called, and requests for costing of election commitments.