Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Parramatta for that very important question, because this government is getting on with the job of rolling out a very big reform agenda: putting a price on carbon to drive investment in renewable energy; reforming our tax system; boosting national savings through our superannuation reforms; and, of course, putting in place reforms to skills and training and establishing the NBN. We are rolling out all of these reforms in a responsible way, and the rock on which they are built is a very credible, strict, clear and consistent fiscal policy. We are building on the strength of that fiscal policy by establishing a new Parliamentary Budget Office, an independent costing service. The PBO will ensure there is greater transparency and accountability in the costing of election programs in particular. For the first time ever in the history of this parliament, the opposition and individual members and senators will have access to an independent, confidential costing service outside the general election period, and they will have access to a fully transparent election policy costing service during election periods.

This is absolutely fundamental to ensuring that the Australian public are informed about the costs of election promises, because the Australian people do not want to see ever again a repeat of what occurred during the last general election, when there was an $11 billion costings black hole in the budget estimates of the opposition. At the last election the opposition spent all of their time hiding their costings from the Australian people.

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