Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The parliamentary secretary jests and says, 'Doubt it.' Considering the polls, I suggest that that day is coming a lot sooner than you would anticipate.

I talked to the Independents about letting the sunshine in and encouraging a transparency in this government, and I refer to the Prime Minister's words of 'letting the sunshine in'. Predominantly, this amendment speaks to the protection of those in opposition in obtaining information which is relevant at a given point in time. The PBO needs to have greater jurisdiction. The PBO needs to have a capacity to obtain information which is relevant in the political electoral cycle. When we go to PEFO, there is the matter of the data which is available to the opposition once the writs are called. It is unwise for an opposition to make their assumptions on the previous MYEFO assumptions and it is more unwise to make them on the previous budget assumptions.

Our economy is one of robustness. It is one that changes on a day-to-day capacity. When we are forecasting revenues on our terms of trade and we are trying to calculate the capacity of our revenues on trading figures, we need to have up-to-date figures. For example, let us say that we are forecasting our resources revenue on the back of China's demand at the moment. At this very moment Mongolia are just about to put coal tonnage on the border of China for $80 a tonne as opposed to our trade figures of $175 a tonne. Depending on where we are in the electoral cycle, if we were to go and do our forecasts on the data that was not made available to us, because that transparency was not there, it would have a huge implication for our forecasts.

All we are asking for is the kind of information that is available to other governments, such as the Canadian governments, for instance, and this House knows other countries such as the United States which have that luxury. All we are asking for is that the powers and the capacity of the PBO are granted so that they are able to access relevant information from departments that are evaluating costings that benefit our people and the electorates that put us here. No-one wants to be made to look like a dill and everyone comes into this House in good faith.

The other point I want to make is that the assumptions that we make need to be made confidential. If we put assumptions up or want to test assumptions, under the current legislation without this amendment there is a real concern that those assumptions will be made public by the Treasurer of this country or through web pages and that there will not be the capacity to have those assumptions tested. I would be very interested to hear the parliamentary secretary's response to those concerns. In the interests of absolute transparency and as this has been a robust debate I call on the parliamentary secretary to consider this truly heartfelt amendment. I also call on the Independents, in making their determination on this bill, to give due consideration to this amendment. (Time expired)

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