Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the Assistant Treasurer for his opening remarks. I want to touch on a few things before moving to his specific responsibilities. I would like to focus on the general issues around the budget. There is some confusion surrounding the budget papers and why in a number of cases they were delivered late to coalition people in the opposition budget lock-up. Assistant Treasurer, was it Treasury's responsibility to deliver the budget books to the opposition in the budget lock-up? Were any copies of the budget or related papers, including the portfolio budget statements, shredded at any stage during the printing process in the lead-up to the 2012-13 budget? Copies of portfolio budget statements were not available at 1:30 pm when the opposition budget lock-up started. I wonder whether the Assistant Treasurer could shed any light on that; whether there was any delay in the loading dock. I am curious as to why those papers were not available when they would ordinarily have been available.

I also want to talk about the clarity within the budget papers and their transparency in accurately reflecting the Commonwealth's budget position. You would be aware of criticisms from Ross Gittins, who was quite vivid in his criticisms of the actual budget position and how that was communicated—the transparency in a range of transactions that have been shifted off budget and the accounting rationale there; a table that aggregates all those transactions under a range of different headings; and their headline and underlying impacts. You would be aware that he was pointing to a budget surplus when, in his words, 'it actually hides an $8.7 billion budget deficit.' He goes on to say:

The hiding of the headline deficit is just one example of the way the budget papers are becoming less informative rather than more, and the way the spin doctors are turning them into an exercise in media management rather than transparency and accountability.

He provides a number of specific examples. I invite the Assistant Treasurer to address himself to those criticisms that Mr Gittins outlined in relation to payments to NBN Co. as an example, and also on the Clean Energy Development Bank and why that is presented in the way it is in the budget papers.

AAP also had a complaint, which Mr Gittins has alluded to:

This year AAP has accused the government of leaking budget information to selected media for broadcast during the budget lock-up. How's that for duplicity.

Has the Assistant Treasurer had those complaints by the AAP investigated, either by the Treasury or the government? What are the outcomes of those arrangements? Does he agree that this in part undermines the whole point of the lock-up, where there is selective release of information? The Assistant Treasurer and I share a spot on a particular television program, where he is fond of saying, 'I won't be drawn on budget speculation,' and then proceeds to talk about the selective speculation he would love to be drawn on and was actively involved in propagating.

I would invite the Assistant Treasurer to comment on those two very concerning issues about the integrity and transparency of the process and the papers themselves, and on the bewildering reason why key documents were not available to the opposition as they would ordinarily be in the regular course of events.

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