Paper money

Our State Budget (Victoria, Australia) is out today, both in print and online. Over the past few days there has been television coverage of the state treasurer flipping through the printed copy of his budget documents, but I wonder how much it costs to print all those copies.

This state government, like most governments, promotes environmental concerns but still prints the eight-part budget with lots of pages, keynote speech (16), strategies (101), service delivery (417), Capital (216), Financial Statement (269), Overview (64), Gender Equality (31) and Covid Debt Repayments (31) giving 1150 printed pages. I didn't even bother to look at the twelve press releases. It would be expensive to print and realistically a waste of resources. Why couldn't it just be available in PDF format.

In summary, all it really says is that the government will spend a lot of money and the citizens will pay a lot of taxes — 15 words.

Denis Fitzgerald,

Melbourne, Australia