Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also want to add my voice to this debate on this very important issue. Making sure that there can be provided to the public, covered in the media and part of any election debate that we have, a sensible discussion about the costs of various alternative policies is really important. The establishment of the Parliamentary Budget Office, enabling, particularly, the opposition and minor parties to be able to get their policies costed and to able to give the public confidence that the costings that are attached to those announcements are sound, could not be more important for the future of the country. But, unfortunately, the debate—as we have seen from some of the contributions already—has got to such a level that people no longer think that obtaining proper information and being able to have that reported to the public is something that we should even care about for the elections. I do not think there could be anything further from the truth. We need to make sure that proper information is available.

The reason I feel particularly passionate about this—and I know that members on our side have talked about the last election—is that I remember extremely clearly as the Minister for Health that just a number of days before the election the then opposition, seeking to be the government, had not released the costings of any of their policies. We were in the situation where we were close to media and advertising blackouts. We were literally days from the election. I think I was at a community chef facility in my electorate in Altona—a facility that makes meals on wheels for people; something funded as a regional project which has been very successful—and suddenly rather more people than you would expect to be at the Altona community chef facility turned up because the costings had just been announced by the opposition. They were audited but, as we now know, it was done by a very small firm which was professionally reprimanded for the work that it did having really accepted all of the assumptions—although many of them were flawed—that the Liberal Party had included in the work that they asked to be audited. I particularly remember it because these proposals included a quite breathtaking submission about what the PBS could cost in the view of the Liberal Party. There was no basis, however, for those figures being included. There was no detailed work done and no legitimate academic discussion, which of course, with a complex policy like the PBS, you might have. There was just an assertion that a billion dollars could be saved, where the only possible way of finding that saving would have been to increase copayments for ordinary consumers.

If in the election a party wants to come and say that is what they will do, the public should be able to then say, 'I actually don't want to pay more for my medicines,' or 'Yes, I agree that is worth it if it means we will do something else,' and have a proper debate. In fact, the media did not particularly run this issue. They said, 'The coalition says this and the government says that.' There was no assessment given of whether these were credible financial assessments or assumptions to make.

The Parliamentary Budget Office will now enable those sorts of last-minute sweeping and dramatic changes to be assessed and will provide to the public an independent view of whether those figures actually add up or not. You could not think of a more important thing that the public should be able to know. If we see the Liberal Party running away from having their policies costed—as it sounds as if they are going to, from the contributions that have been made—we will know that the same shonky approach that they took last time is going to be taken again.

I particularly want to use the example of health, because it has a budget of more than $60 billion. It is an area where there are always going to be financial issues that people want to talk about. These issues very much affect the community and people should be entitled to know. I make this point because, five years ago when our government was first elected, I would have thought—I have not counted; it is a guess—that there would have been about 10 dedicated health journalists in the press gallery, and now, as we speak today, there is one, and that person is not dedicated to health; they do health amongst other things. So how can we rely on the media to be able to properly pick apart assessments that are made by competing parties? We need budget experts. This office will have them. They have all the protection that means that the information will not be released early. The policies of the opposition should be costed by this new office. (Time expired)

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