Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Hansard source

Last night it took us three hours, in answer to a series of questions, to eventually establish with the parliamentary secretary that during the 33-day campaign period the nature of costings would be absolutely no different to what we witnessed at the last election. I think everyone accepts that that is totally unacceptable. All it means is that we will have a dogfight for 33 days between ourselves when people in the community really want to debate the policies.

It is not beyond the wit of man to establish—and the member for Forde just put his finger right on it—the capacity for the policies of both sides of politics to be assessed by the same authority in an independent fashion, in an open, honest and transparent way. That is all that is being requested, yet this thing has been so complicated, so misrepresented from the original intent, that there is now a large measure of mistrust that has already emerged between both sides of politics. And it will have a real effect. Actions have consequences, and if this mistrust is not dealt with then it will impact on how we deal with the costings process at the next election.

We are 100 per cent prepared to have all of our costings dealt with by the PBO in an independent fashion, as I would expect the government's policies to be dealt with so that both sides of politics know that it is a level playing field, that the database on which it is based is identical for both and that if there are mistakes because the data may be wrong they will be reflected in both costings. That is not so much point. It is really what order of magnitude of cost is associated with these costings. There has been a large measure of distrust generated because of the nature of this bill that the government has presented. That is exactly why my friend and colleague the member for North Sydney has presented a lot of very sensible amendments to this bill to try and get back to the original intent.

The second thing we discovered last night was what would happen if the Parliamentary Budget Office made a request of Treasury for the data, the modelling, the assumptions and the variables associated with something like the carbon tax. In a very long-winded and roundabout way the answer we got was that that would be a matter for the Treasury—that it would be a matter for the memorandum of understanding that the Treasury would have carriage of. The Parliamentary Budget Office would basically tug their forelock to any one of 30 departments—in in this case Treasury—and be told under the memorandum of understanding. The memorandum of understanding is not negotiated; from what we could ascertain last night, the memorandum of understanding is a question of the Parliamentary Budget Office being told by each department what they could and could not receive.

So my first question to the parliamentary secretary tonight is: am I correct that the memorandums of understanding do not involve a negotiation; they do involve, essentially, the Parliamentary Budget Office being told what they can expect to receive by way of data, modelling, variables, assumptions and whatever? I would be grateful if the parliamentary secretary could give me and my colleagues an answer to that question. (Extension of time granted)

The second question I would like to ask is about when costings would be released if we had completed 80 per cent of the costings of our policy proposals, or even more, before the election—if we had done 100 per cent, as the parliamentary secretary suggested we must. I think he said that any well-organised party would have all its policies ready and costed before the campaign started, but bear in mind that two-thirds of the government's policies, when they were in opposition and ran for election in 2007, were presented on the Thursday before the election in a press release. The detail actually got delivered on Friday at lunch time. It just makes a mockery of what the government says. We got lectured last night. We were asked how we could be expected to be considered organised if we did not have all that work done and costed before the election.

But let us say we had done that. Let us say we had done 100 per cent of the costings, as the parliamentary secretary has suggested—but which, in his own experience, he has never delivered. If we had done that, could he please explain when the costings data that was associated with that would be released publicly? He said last night that in the period before the 33-day campaign the costings of any policies would be confidential. That was always our understanding, but it is very important for us to know when the Parliamentary Budget Office would be required to release those costings in a public sense. Ultimately, if we announce a policy, the costings, as we have said from day one, would be subsequently released for the public to have a look at in an open, honest and transparent way.

The third item that I would like to pursue is an example that came up at the last election. We requested from the government in advance of the campaign—so that we could be prepared and have costings well ahead of the conclusion of the campaign, or even the start of the campaign—a status list of the infrastructure projects that they had already contracted out of the infrastructure fund that had been gifted to them by the previous government, and which they were in the process of spending. They have spent every other fund that was gifted to them by the government, including the surplus.

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