Coalition Costings by ACME Corporation
Chris Bowen posted Wednesday, 18 August 2010
Providing the Australian people with a legitimate assurance that election policies are fully costed and fully funded is one of the most important tests a political party faces during an election campaign.
This is essentially the economic blueprint that underpins the promises that have been made to the Australian people and guides the future economic direction of the new government.
Joe Hockey and Andrew Robb promised they would deliver their costings on time, then delayed, promised again, and then delayed again, and are now flat-out refusing to take part in the Budget Honesty process.
As a result, the Coalition’s budget costings are currently being frantically put together by a mystery company Joe Hockey tells us will be revealed to the public sometime today.
Yes, that’s right, the document that determines whether the average $1 billion of spending promises the Coalition has made each day during this campaign can be reconciled with the budget position is being put together by ‘who-knows’!
Of course, the irony of all this is the Coalition is in breach of the very law they introduced when Peter Costello was in charge of the coffers - the Charter of Budget Honesty Act.
Policies costed by Treasury and Finance under the Charter for Budget Honesty don’t just check that the sums add up, they check whether the underlying assumptions behind the polices presented stack up to reality.
It is this ‘reality check’ that helps Australian voters know what they are voting for.
While I wait with baited breath for the identity of the ‘mystery company’ to be revealed by Joe, for the time being, let’s call it ACME Corporation.
The Australian people need to know a few things about what ACME Corporation will actually do for Mr Hockey and Mr Robb:
- Is ACME Corporation testing the reasonableness of the underlying assumptions used by the Coalition, as Treasury and Finance would under the Charter of Budget Honesty?
Or
- Is ACME Corporation simply just checking that the Coalition have correctly summed the columns and rows in a spreadsheet? (Understandably, given the mistakes made by Tony Abbott’s economic team earlier in the campaign, this is a service they would be wise to outsource).
If anything demonstrates the risk Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey pose to the management of Australia’s $1.3 trillion economy, then it is the truly farcical situation of making billions of dollars of unfunded promises, then refusing to get these policies properly costed. You have to ask – why won’t Mr Hockey & Mr Robb just let the Treasury and Finance professionals do their job?
This is an Opposition that is not ready to manage the economy, and if you can’t manage Australia’s economy, then you are not fit to be in Government.
Labor has been fully complying with the Charter of Budget Honesty and updating the net budget position each day of the campaign. You can see the latest net budget impact statement here.
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