Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Seniors) Share this | Hansard source

When this debate began last evening, we began by discussing the fact that this proposal for a parliamentary budget office was the initiative of the opposition. It was our initiative because we clearly saw the need for independent advice that could assist us with our costings and that was free of the influence of Treasury, which is now a politicised body. We need to ensure that when we have our costings released they will not be subject to the sort of treatment that the then head of Treasury, Mr Henry, meted out when we agreed to put our costings—which had been done independently, to the Independents, allegedly so they could make up their minds on the basis of the assessments done who they would choose to vote with, in order that a commission to form a government could be granted.

Last night I started to talk about the minutes of the meeting that the head of Treasury, Mr Henry, had with the Independents, and I started to deal with the issues that were dealt with in those meetings. Item B was the costings of opposition election commitments, and these minutes say that the attached briefing paper had been provided to the Independents and that the discussion had begun by noting that the approach taken to preparing the briefing for the costs on the government's election commitments had been, firstly, to consider the impact of the commitments on the position announced in the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook and, secondly, to prepare advice on the impact of the election commitments on the same basis as the departments would use for an incoming government.

The problem with this briefing session was that, whatever question was put, the answer given was enormously favourable to the government that had contested the election—in other words, the Labor government. Also, dishonest answers were given—or, should I simply say, answers were spun—so that we saw Treasury choose to knock out nearly $10 billion from our costings and our savings, which were 11½ billion dollars, on what I can only describe as spurious grounds. The Treasury simply said of the $2.5 billion of savings that were put down and noted against the issue of conservative bias allowance, 'This is not a real saving.' Yet Treasury itself had presided over a similar saving of $4.6 billion that had been notched up in the budget papers of the existing government—no consistency, no honesty.

Of the expenditure of $3.3 billion that we claimed savings for from the three funds—that is, the Health and Hospitals Fund, the Education Investment Fund and the Building Australia Fund—the Treasury said, 'We're not going to allow that as an acceptable saving because you haven't specifically identified the individual programs funded from those funds before the election.' How dishonest is this? In 2007, Mr Rudd went to the election and said, 'We will reserve the right to cancel committed programs which have not yet been contracted', which is exactly what we were going to do. Treasury identified that there was $3.6 billion available under those funds for us to have claimed and booked, but we only claimed $3.3 billion, and yet, dishonestly, the Treasury said to the Independents, 'They can't claim that $3.3 billion because they haven't identified those programs.' Prior to the election the shadow minister for finance and others had asked for those programs, and—guess what?—Treasury could not find them; they did not exist. Yet later in the day they suddenly found a secret list of those programs and how each of them was costed. We then asked for them in this very serious meeting with these Independents who, through their decision about who they would back, were making the decision for the nation. What did Treasury say? They said, 'We can't let you have them; they're secret.' Did they give any reason for that? Of course they did not; it was designed to influence the Independents to support the Gillard pitch.

Then we come to the question of another $2.4 billion, which was claimed against the NBN. (Time expired)

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