The Cause of the Deficit

As early as May Council it was apparent that NZUSA was in financial difficulty. Barely a third of the way through the year and the financial whizz-kids had to expend great ingenuity to produce a budget that allowed for the possibility of matching expenditure to income. History however has shown that Council was unduly optimistic and did not account fully for all the extra costs that might, and therefore did (Murphy's Law) occur.

The other half of the deficit arose from the [unclear: Tils] and Telex spending. Had expenses continued at the level they were running at before Council, the total bill for the year was estimated at $10,250. The total budget allocation was $4,900.

[unclear: The] bulk of the overspending came from two items; the toll and telex bill; and the James Movick Campaign.

The James Movick Campaign expenditure was $3,000 over budget. This $3,000 is the bill from the lawyers for legal expenses arising from the appeal in the Supreme Court.

These expenses simply were not budgetted for at May Council, although it was hoped that the James Movick Appeal would be more successful, and would cover more of these costs.

Council took a very serious view of this overspending and instituted several measures to curtail it. The most dramatic of these is a ban on all toll calls from the National Officers unless specially authorised by the President (or of course made collect). Another measure, of a more permanent nature was to stop use of the telex. As Phil Chronican (President OUSA) put it, "telex should be regarded as a cheap form of toll call, but they are being used as an expensive form of letter", of letter." Another concern of Council in this area was the number of toll calls which were difficult to trace back to National Officers (some 40% of the total bill). Most of these were in the form of transfer charge calls. Accordingly NZUSA is investigating the possibility of not accepting transfer charge calls.