David Bradbury (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The real issue in question here is whether, as the government bill proposes, the PBO should have the capacity to rely upon the economic and fiscal forecasts that are prepared by Treasury and Finance. It is important and relevant to know that the agencies and departments providing advice to government are the same agencies and departments that will be providing advice to any future government and the very forecasts upon which they have modelled will be available and will be the benchmark upon which judgments and costings will then be made.

I take some offence at the comments of the member for Goldstein, who came forward and said that the contribution that I made earlier was pathetic. I do not expect applause from the member for Goldstein, but I find it extraordinary that, of all the members on that side of the chamber after the debacle that was the opposition costings of the last election, the member for Goldstein would come forward and talk about the politicisation of Treasury. Let us just remember that we have a Charter of Budget Honesty that was put in place by the former Liberal government—a Charter of Budget Honesty that places great trust and respect in the departments of Treasury and Finance.

We all know that those on the other side have a single-minded agenda when it comes to the Public Service because they have already indicated that, if they do not agree with them, they will sack them. We have seen it with the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency and the member for North Sydney saying, 'We'll just shut the whole department down because we do not like the advice they're giving us.' Now we are hearing that they do not like the advice that Treasury gives them. Are they going to shut them down too?

I heard the member for Mayo, and it was good of him to contribute to the debate. I know that he is out there brandishing his wares because he was disappointed that he was not on the Joint Select Committee on the Parliamentary Budget Office. The joint select committee recommendations that were handed down were unanimous. They went through a thorough and comprehensive process and the recommendations they handed down were unanimous. I notice that the opposition members of the parliamentary committee are conspicuous in their absence: the member for Sturt and the member for Higgins. Neither of them are in here today because they went through the process and they know that the parliamentary committee handed down sensible and reasonable proposals that the government has adopted in its bill. We have this suggestion about shopping around for alternative forecasts. In the end that is what it is all about: they want to shop around for alternative forecasts; if they do not get the forecasts that they want, they can go shopping around for some more. The bottom line is that the Parliamentary Budget Office is going to be an independent—

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