Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Finance and Dregulation (Senator Wong) to questions without notice asked by Senator Cormann, the Leader of the Nationals in the Senate (Senator Joyce) and Senator Fifield today relating to Future Fund assets.

Whatever way you look at it, the government has been caught out using the proceeds from the expected sale of Future Fund assets to help it create the illusion of an early surplus. The assets from the Future Fund are of course supposed to be quarantined from the government. The government is not supposed to touch those assets, but what is very clear from information provided by the Secretary of the Department of Finance and Deregulation, David Tune, is that the government expects to raise revenue from the expected sale of Future Fund assets and that those proceeds will hit the budget bottom line. Those proceeds will become part of the government's underlying cash balance in 2012-13, which the government wants us to believe will be about $3.5 billion.

Today we had a lot of political rhetoric from the minister. We did not have a lot of facts, we did not have a lot of actual information and we did not have a lot of answers to the questions asked, so let me recap where things are at. A spokeswoman for the Minister for Finance Penny Wong was quoted in the Australian today as saying:

… more than $250 million worth of assets were due to be withdrawn from the Future Fund in the 2012-13 financial year, despite the fund having been created, by Peter Costello, under the condition it was not to be touched before 2020.

These are not the opposition's words; these are the words of the minister's own spokeswoman, as reported by the Australian. A spokesman for the Future Fund is also quoted in the story, confirming:

… the anticipated withdrawal was known to the fund and that this was the first time a withdrawal had been included in the budget bottom line.

This of course is a government that is always desperate for more cash. It is a government that has deserted for successive deficit budgets. It is a government that inherited a position of no government net debt. It is a government that is very quickly running up to $107 billion worth of government net debt and is likely to exceed that, given the fiscal impact of recent decisions, including the $4.2 billion hit on the budget bottom line from the carbon tax and various hits from decisions in Western Australia and New South Wales to increase royalties.

Today, the minister refused to confirm the figure that was given by her own spokes­woman. Her spokeswoman said that the government planned to withdraw—the spokeswoman's words—$250 million worth of assets from the Future Fund. I ask the minister: how much of the $4.937 billion in estimated proceeds from the sale of non-financial assets in 2012-13 is expected to come from the sale of assets of the Future Fund. Given that the government has put the overall figure into the budget, the minister, if she were prepared to be open and transparent, should have provided the Senate with that figure. It is a very straightforward question. The Secretary of the Department of Finance and Deregulation let the cat out of the bag. He said that that figure of $4.937 billion includes revenue from the expected sale of Future Fund assets. The Senate deserves to know how much the government expects to collect from that. The minister also confirmed that, yes, the proceeds from that sale of Future Fund assets will hit the budget bottom line. It is part of the government's claim of an early surplus; it does form part of the government's underlying cash balance of $3.5 billion. The minister was not prepared to say when that money would leave the government's budget bottom line and when it would exclusively be held as an asset in the Future Fund.

The Future Fund has sold assets before. The Future Fund sold down its shareholding in Telstra, for example. None of those proceeds and none of those sales have ever made it into the budget bottom line. Sales of assets and purchases of assets inside the Future Fund should not hit the budget bottom line, but of course this is just, at best, another accounting trick by a government that is so desperate to claim an early surplus that it is prepared— (Time expired)