IN AN attempt to get the $917 million deficit reduced in the mini-budget, the NSW Treasurer, Eric Roozendaal, and the Finance Minister, Joe Tripodi, tried to have an assumption that rail maintenance and ferries would be privatised taken into account in the budget numbers.

Senior Treasury officials refused to do this, Labor sources have confirmed, believing that to do so would breach Australian accounting standards, as a decision by the Government to privatise had not been announced.

Mr Roozendaal's office reacted angrily last night to the revelation, but did not deny he had put the question on whether outsourcing could be included in the figures.

It is understood the savings would have been worth about $50 million a year.

"The mini-budget was prepared in accordance with all appropriate standards, and any suggestion otherwise is simply incorrect," a spokesman for Mr Roozendaal said.

"There was no Government decision in the mini-budget to outsource rail maintenance or privatise the ferry service, and the mini-budget figures reflect that. Only proposals agreed to by the Government form part of the mini-budget figures.

"As would be expected in such a process, each proposal came with a costing. That's how a budget is done.

"But only proposals agreed to by the Government form part of the mini-budget figures."

Mr Tripodi said in a statement: "Accounting principles administered by treasury determine budget numbers. I have always supported this and have never suggested anything than this practice should occur."

The shadow treasurer, Mike Baird, said: "I don't think anyone would be surprised that the current Treasury team would be more interested in headlines than the facts and discipline required to get the financial strength back into NSW."