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

In this provision of the bill, as soon as we release or announce any policy for submission to the Parliamentary Budget Office, those costings are automatically released. If we have a situation where we have two policies to consider, this provision requires the costings of both of those alternatives to be released without us having the opportunity to make a decision about which policy we would prefer.

We face a situation where we are denied, during the caretaker period, the opportunity to have costed various alternative policies that we might be considering. The costings have to be automatically released. In other words, this provision of the Parliamentary Budget Office bill means that the provisions during the caretaker period will be absolutely no different to those we experienced during the last election. They will be no different to that which we experienced under the Charter of Budget Honesty. What we will have is another dogfight for 33 days, instead of a debate about the policy. This is what the government has intended by the way in which they have corrupted the intention of this bill. We looked for honesty, transparency and integrity.

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