Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I move amendment (9) circulated in my name:

(9) Schedule 1, item 16, page 13 (lines 1 to 7), omit section 64M, substitute:

64M Disclosure of personal information

A requirement to publish under this Division does not authorise the disclosure of personal information (within the meaning of the Privacy Act 1988 ) without the consent of the individual concerned.

This amendment relates to information-gathering powers and secrecy. In particular, I move to omit proposed section 64M and substitute a new 64M. This provides that a requirement to publicly release information does not authorise the disclosure of personal information without the consent of the individual concerned. This will protect the privacy of individuals. It is possible that, in meeting requests for information or policy costings or in the performance of its other duties, the PBO will be required to access information of a personal nature. It is important that the rights of individuals to maintain confidentiality of private details is protected.

Question put.

The House divided. [23:41]

(The Speaker—Mr Harry Jenkins)

Question negatived. Question put.

The House divided. [23:41]

(The Speaker—Mr Harry Jenkins)

Question negatived.

I move opposition amendment (12).

This is the seventh set of amendments debated before this House in debate that has taken some hours. In many ways, this is in fact the most important of the amendments. This gives the Parliamentary Budget Office the same powers as the Auditor-General to be able to obtain information from government departments that will suit the needs of members and senators in this place.

Let me be very clear: under the government's own Parliamentary Budget Office bill the only information that can be obtained by the Parliamentary Budget Office for the purposes of fiscal estimates and economic forecasts is the information that is released by the Treasurer—not the Treasury—in the budget outcomes in MYEFO and in other scheduled Charter of Budget Honesty publications other than the pre-election fiscal outlook, which is the sole document that is going to fuel the needs of the Parliamentary Budget Office that in fact comes from an independent department. The only one!

So the Parliamentary Budget Office's sole source of economic information is published information. There is no independence about it: none. And this government, together with the Independents, thinks that is a great idea. Given that the Canadian budget office has just moved from this set up of being restricted to published treasurer or minister for finance information to the obtaining of independent information, and that the American congressional office already can obtain independent information and make economic and fiscal forecasts independent of their own equivalent of the Department of Finance and Deregulation; no, this government, together with the complicity of the Independents has now decided that the PBO will be so restricted that it is simply going to be a post box for the government of the day.

So you have called it Let It Be. In addition, the great brainwave of the government, combined with the Independents, is that the only information that can be obtained from other departments has to be based on a memorandum of understanding between the Parliamentary Budget Office and that department. A memorandum of understanding! The Treasury put in a submission to the parliamentary committee and said that the benchmark for the release of information should in fact be tighter than the FOI provisions. And this is the Parliamentary Budget Office. The Treasury wants the Parliamentary Budget Office to be so restricted in its information-gathering powers that it is actually easier for the Parliamentary Budget Office to FOI government departments than to obtain it from them. But no—this is an independent Parliamentary Budget Office established by the Labor Party and the Independents, and this body is going to be so independent that it is going to rely solely on the Treasurer's own figures and then after that it has to enter into a memorandum of understanding with hundreds of government departments and agencies—literally—and Commonwealth companies. And those memoranda of understanding need to be negotiated before the next election. What a joke!

This is the most symbolic example of a group of Independents who are complicitly walking in the footsteps of an incompetent Labor government. We make no apologies. We want a truly independent Parliamentary Budget Office. We want one that stands up for the members. We want a Parliamentary Budget Office independent of the government. We want a Parliamentary Budget Office that serves the needs of members and senators, no matter what political party they come from. We want a Parliamentary Budget Office that serves the needs of the people of Australia and not the needs of the Labor Party and the Independents. Question put.

The House divided. [23:54]

(The Speaker—Mr Harry Jenkins)

Question negatived.

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