Mr. Kevin Cardiff:

Well, I had a responsibility as an official of the Department of Finance to serve the public as best I could. But I wasn't ... after 2004, I wasn't the person who would be ... who would have the pen, if you like, in drafting the response but there were quite specific advices about risk. Even in the budget, you'll see ... even budget '07-'08, you'll see a listing of risks and even in the manifestos for the 2007 election, you'll see that those similar risks are not just noticed but acknowledged by the various parties and everyone, sort of, decides "Well, we see the risks but we keep spending unless things get bad." Well, that's reasonable within limits. The Department of Finance was advocating much tighter fiscal policy than governments and even oppositions were ... were acceding to but even we didn't have a sense of the impending doom that was there and while we might have been more conservative than most, we weren't conservative enough.