The ACT Opposition says new rules that will allow government agencies to borrow from the forward estimates to fund capital works will help the government obscure the true state of the budget.
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Labor and the Greens passed legislation on Tuesday that will create a new pool of funding, worth up to 20 per cent of the government's total capital works budget, that agencies can use to draw advances from to keep infrastructure projects moving.
The advances would be deducted from money budgeted for future years, allowing directorates to pay for work when needed rather than waiting for funding to become available in the new financial year.
Projects would not be able to go beyond their original budget if they drew an advance.
Agencies won't be able to tap into the fund until next July 1 as no money will be available until the 2019 ACT budget.
Chief Minister Andrew Barr said the fund would "significantly improve the budgeting practices associated with ongoing management of the government's capital works program while providing agencies with the cash flow flexibility of getting on with significant new infrastructure that Canberra will need in the coming decade".
No other state or territory has a directly comparable fund although the Commonwealth has an equivalent mechanism for capital works as well as a Treasurers' Advance.
However, Canberra Liberals leader Alistair Coe said the bill "does not improve the accuracy of budget estimates as the government claims".
"In fact, it does the opposite. It allows the government to draw on the reserve to hide its mismanagement of capital works and the budget at large," Mr Coe said.
Mr Coe said the bill made any budget figures attached to each financial year "pretty much meaningless".
"It obscures how much the government is able to spend in any given year and props up the budget in the process by shifting number from one side to another."
Mr Coe said based on the 2018-19 budget, the fund would have a value of about $290 million which is more than "five times the size of the Treasurer's advance".
"It begs the question what is the point of an annual budget if you've got that sort of discretion?" Mr Coe said.
"The Assembly has a duty to ensure taxpayers money is being spent appropriately. It is absolutely wrong ... to bypass this place and give additional resources and additional decision making to the government."
Asked why the government was introducing this fund on top of the existing $50 million Treasurers' Advance pool, a spokeswoman for Mr Barr said the Treasurers' Advance was intended for urgent or unforeseen expenditure requirements which may emerge through the year.
"Existing capital projects are neither urgent nor unforeseen because they are identified and programmed in the budget," she said.
"The Capital Reserve provides a more transparent, budget neutral mechanism for providing additional resourcing to these programmed projects where they are running ahead of schedule or able to advance works beyond those allocated for a specific fiscal year, by bringing forward funding allocated for those works in a future year."
The creation of the fund comes amid scepticism about the true state of the ACT budget, with concerns about rising levels of debt and the territory drawing on borrowings to fund new spending pledges.
Former Treasury official Khalid Ahmed and ex-Labor chief minister Jon Stanhope sounded the alarm on the "massive and unsustainable increase" in net debt, which is now forecast to increase from $1.3 billion in 2017-18 to $2.95 billion in 2021-22.
