Thank you, Mr. Chairperson.
Thanks to all of you for your presentations.
It's really unfortunate that these great in-depth presentations have five minutes to cover off everything, so let me ask a general question, and anybody who wants to answer can jump in. Maybe we can go down the row.
We started this pre-budget process with an announcement from the government that it was putting $13 billion of surplus money all against the debt. It was cutting $1 billion in programs that included adult literacy, some career and job placement programs for young people, any kind of research programs that were new and innovative, and the list goes on and on. That was followed by the finance minister's announcement that he was going to bring in more tax cuts. It seems that's one sort of scenario we've been dealing with for a number of years.
Do you have some advice in terms of a new set of parameters for budgeting how we can achieve this competitive agenda with another scenario?
Ian, do you want to start?