Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Banking and Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

It is $400 million. What we do not know to this day is what the cost is to date. Compounding this lack of financial accountability is that when you ask, ‘What is the up-to-date cost of these inadequately costed programs that the Prime Minister has been announcing?’ the department will not tell you, even though they know the information. I don’t criticise the public servants, because the minister of the day says, ‘Don’t disclose publicly what the cost of these programs is running at; keep it hidden,’ because if they make a mistake they do not want the world—the public or the parliament—to see what the level of the mistake is.

We have seen this in other areas. We had the announcement of a utilities allowance. That was another billion-dollar cost. I do not complain about the program itself—but can we find out what that program has cost to date? We were advised it was well over $1 billion. Senator Mason, who is in the chamber, goes to estimates with me. He smiles; he knows what goes on at estimates when his minister is on the other side of the table. They have told the public servants: ‘Don’t let the Labor Party know the cost overruns on these programs. It could be very embarrassing.’ He knows what goes on. It is not that the departments—in particular, the department of finance—do not know when a program has got a cost overrun of hundreds of millions of dollars. They do know. The government do not want it out on the public record, because it would highlight this lack of rigorous financial assessment and process, the decline in standards, the decay in this area of financial management by this government.

Let me give you another one. We have had the recent package of superannuation bills, which passed through the parliament with Labor support. They were announced in the budget—$6.2 billion. But when we asked the minister and the department—and I do not blame the public servants, who knew the cost; I could tell from their smiles—‘What is the cost to tax revenue of these particular measures within the budget announcement of $6.2 billion?’ they refused— (Time expired)