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