Commonwealth General GovernmentCommonwealth General Government

Commonwealth General Government

Australian Commonwealth Government departments and agencies’ principal function is to provide non-market goods and services, principally financed by taxes, to regulate economic activity, maintain law and order and to redistribute income and wealth by means of transfers.

Include:

• departments and agencies such as Department of Finance, Department of Defence, ABC, SBS, Australian Film Commission and CSIRO;
• Commonwealth government unincorporated enterprises which provide goods and services to the Australian Commonwealth Government and/or to the public for free or at prices that are not economically significant (e.g. government employee cafeterias, munitions factories);
• non-profit institutions controlled and mainly financed by the Commonwealth government;
• Commonwealth Government quasi-corporations which sell their output, at near market prices, exclusively to other government units (e.g. government printers and defence force housing schemes); and
• public universities.

Exclude:

• government trading enterprises such as Australia Post (record as Trading enterprises owned by the Commonwealth Government); and
• departments of the ACT and Northern Territory Governments (record as State, Territory and local general government); and
• Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and Commonwealth Government financial institutions such as Export Finance and Insurance Corporation (EFIC) (record as financial institutions as appropriate).