Thank you very much.
We still think that the longer term is always the key issue, and we're gratified when parliamentarians focus on the long term. There are aspects in this budget and decisions have been taken in recent months that certainly deal with the long term. That's a good thing, and these are tough decisions.
What we're saying so we can better support this committee and Parliament in general.... It is to make sure that we can provide analysis for you to decide what is that broader fiscal context. You highlighted those numbers quite correctly in terms of the demographic challenges over the next little while.
When we look at fiscal sustainability in terms of one program, again, the way I think the decision was communicated by the government was that we have to do this for fiscal sustainability reasons.
So for us, as economists, as legislative budget officers, if you're talking about a program that's funded from general revenues you need to look at fiscal sustainability from the broader context. So when we do our analysis we do it in that broader context. It doesn't minimize the challenges that we face.