Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Talk about leading with your chin! Every so often someone comes in off a long run-up and bowls you such a full toss that you cannot believe your luck. We have just heard from the member for Mayo about form. Let us talk about form because the question of costing policies is something the coalition has significant form on. Obviously the member for Mayo does not want to hear it because he is leaving. Let me tell you first of all about the Greens' story and why we have the Parliamentary Budget Office.

At the last election, the Greens went to Treasury and said, 'We want to submit for costing the policies we are taking to the election because we believe, as the Greens, that we are a political party in the Australian parliament and the Australian public is entitled to look at our policies—exactly the same as anyone else's going to an election—and to know what it will mean for them, including what it will cost and where the money will come from. It was for that reason that we took our policies to the Treasury. Treasury said, 'We do not have the capacity, the ability under legislation, to cost the policies of minor parties.'

So when we found ourselves in the position in this parliament where no one party had a majority, we saw this as an opportunity to reform this deficit in Australian democracy. This is an opportunity now to ensure that all non-government members and oppositions would, from here on in, be able to have their policies costed. So we struck an agreement to establish the Parliamentary Budget Office. Before the Parliamentary Budget Office was established, we wanted to ensure that our policies could continue to be costed in a like manner. I would have thought that those who are interested in democracy and economic responsibility would want people to get their policies costed so that they could then decide: does this need modification, can we pursue both of these at the same time, should one be put on hold while we pursue the other, do we need to go back and re-think and, having had a look, do we need to give more information? After all of that, an Australian political party would be able to go to the Australian people and say, 'Here's what we will do. Here's what it will cost. Here's where we will get the money from.'

After negotiations and after legislation passed through here, the government has established a well-funded Parliamentary Budget Office. That is going to be good for democracy because now there is no excuse not to have policies that you are taking to the election costed. We are now going to have an independent officer, independent of Treasury, charged under statute, making independent assessments of the parties' costings. This will be an independent officer acting in accordance with the Charter of Budget Honesty. People will know that what the Parliamentary Budget Office comes up with will be in accordance with that charter.

The principle of confidentiality will apply—I alluded to that before—and that has got to be critical. This is a point that the member for North Sydney made a lot about, and he will continue to make a lot about it. Parties and members of parliament should have the ability to get their policies costed, have a look at the costings confidentially and, if others want to pursue them, produce them publicly and back them up. The Greens will now commit to the Australian people that we will use the Parliamentary Budget Office. We will go to the election with policies costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office. It is a reform that we drove. The public will then be able to put us under the same level of scrutiny as they do any other political party. The public will know that the government's policies will be costed by Treasury and that the Greens' policies will be costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office; but you can bet your bottom dollar that the coalition's policies will not be costed. Last election, so weak were the coalition's costings of their own policies that they could not even convince two conservative country Independents to support them—because there was a blow-out and a hole in their costings. Treasury found a hole in their costings, and the accountants that they supposedly used to cost their policies were later reprimanded. The coalition has some gall to come in here and talk about appropriate policy costings when loose talk about a $70 billion black hole is probably going to turn out to be close to reality.

And they are still hedging their bets, which is why I am going to move an amendment to the motion before us. On 30 May 2012 the member for North Sydney, who is here tonight, said, 'We'll have a look at who gets appointed as the Parliamentary Budget Officer before we decide whether or not we'll use the Parliamentary Budget Office.' The Parliamentary Budget Officer has been appointed now, so I presume that, when the member for North Sydney gets up to speak, he will be able to give us a commitment that he is satisfied with the independence of the Parliamentary Budget Officer and he will make the same commitment that the Greens have made and have the coalition's election policies costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office. If the coalition do not do this, the game is up. Michelle Grattan nailed it when she said, 'The opposition now has no excuses about how to handle its policy costings.'

I move:

That all words after That be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

this House:

(1) notes that the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) has now been established in accordance with the Agreement for a Better Parliament: Parliamentary Reform, signed on 7 September 2010;

(2) notes that the establishment of the PBO is a significant reform that will increase budget honesty and transparency; and

(3) calls on all interested parties, including the Coalition, to submit their policies to the PBO for costing.

I await with great anticipation the seconder of this motion because he has now had time to assess the PBO and the Parliamentary Budget Officer. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has circulated guidelines and explained how the office is going to run its business. The coalition should now be ready to commit to submitting their policies for costing by the Parliamentary Budget Office. If they do not commit to doing so, and if they do not support my amendment to the motion, the cat will have been well and truly belled. The government will go to the election with its policies costed by Treasury, and the Greens will go to the election with our policies costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office. But the coalition will be whistling in the wind, hoping that maybe they will pick an accountant who has not been hauled before the disciplinary tribunal and who can give some fig leaf of validity to their costings, which did not even have enough integrity to win the support of the two rural independents. I commend the amendment to the House.

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