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

I rise to support the remarks made by the member for Goldstein, who had to make his original remarks under the most appalling disorderly House I have seen for some time. This amendment that we are debating here relates to the requests for costings of policies during the caretaker period and is particularly important to oppositions. Under our system, the government always knows when the election will be called. The government can plan in advance how to use the Parliamentary Budget Office. It can have the advantage. Its costings may not be disclosed. But the opposition never knows when the government will call the election. Accordingly, it is always in a position where it may wish to use such an office, a parliamentary budget office, during the caretaker period.

This is precisely the sort of facility we need and yet this section of the act as drafted by the government means that all that information which the opposition would put forward to the Parliamentary Budget Office would be disclosed publicly, and once again we would be placed at the same disadvantaged as were to be placed with the use of Treasury when they were used to brief the Independents when they were to make their decision about who would form this government. So the amendment moved by the shadow Treasurer is very important and needs to be passed.

The Independents were ably briefed by Mr Henry, who subsequently left the Treasury and has now been appointed to the Office of the Prime Minister. The parliamentary secretary, Mr Dreyfus, in the consideration detail stages of the appropriation bills, explained that although the salary for Mr Henry had been set at $528,000 a year and would be on a pro-rata basis for his part-time service, the fact of the matter is that the terms will not be made until later this year.

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