Thank you, Minister, for being here. Thank you for taking into consideration our concerns from the previous time.
Like you, I am confused as to why this simple process is not being treated in holistic way that you're showing us. If you have consulted with the previous parliamentary budget officer, who was well versed in the parliamentary processes and how budgets have to appear and who knew that accountability and transparency were critical, because we have to perform our oversight function....
My question is, when you were in opposition for 17 years out of your 20 years, what were the main challenges you faced trying to match these apples and pears, the apples being the estimates and the pears being the budget? How did you reconcile them? What was the transparency there?