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Finance News with Stephen Dullens

•By Rachael Vrana

Commission of Audit Report Released

Last week, the federal government released their long awaited Commission of Audit Report. This report was commissioned to look at the expenditure of the Australian Commonwealth (spending at a Federal Level) while trying to identify short and long term savings measures.  

Overall, the commission was tasked with finding areas of waste, duplication and advise on tough government spending decisions. 

The commission released 86 recommendations, the majority of which centered around reducing the size of government, identify savings in government departments, establishing co-payments for government services and adjusting access to government pensions and allowances.  

From here, all eye’s turn to the federal budget which will be released by Treasurer Joe Hockey on the evening of Tuesday May 13. Both the Treasurer and Prime Minister have advised their response to the Commission of Audit Report will be contained in the budget speech.  

In state news, the Victorian government released their state budget a couple of days ago (Tuesday 6th). Given we’re approaching an election later this year, this is expected to be a generous budget without too many surprises. We’ll report any major news coming from this next week. 

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