Methodology
Departments and agencies were asked to identify and isolate expenditure related to First Peoples-specific programs and services.
‘Expenditure’ refers to expenses from transactions, excluding capital, in the general government sector.
‘First Peoples-specific expenditure’ is defined as that which relates exclusively or predominantly to First Peoples. In this report we also refer to this expenditure as ‘targeted expenditure’. For example:
- A discrete grants program eligible to only Aboriginal organisations
- A business support service that targets First People in Victoria only.
FY22/23 is selected as the focus year for this report. This year provides recent data, and was found to be reliable in comparison to prior year expenditure. FY23/24 appeared less reliable, noting the State Budget was in the process of being finalised when data was collected.
Machinery of government changes took place during the period considered in this report. We have spoken with departments to confirm the risk of error or duplication is low for the significant change to the Department of Health and Human Services in 2020-21. We do not expect the impact of other machinery of government changes to be significant, however we will be seeking further confirmation of this from departments.
Data requests
Targeted expenditure was requested for the following years:
- FY19/20 (actual)
- FY20/21 (actual)
- FY21/22 (actual)
- FY22/23 (forecast)
- FY23/24 (budgeted)
The data request sought information on targeted First Peoples spend for each program within each department categorised by:
- Service Provider
- The relevant Closing the Gap and the Victorian Aboriginal Affairs Framework targets and goals
- Expense category (i.e. funding approach)
- Existence and type of evaluation of the program
- Region.
Updated