Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition) Share this | Hansard source

I am, respectfully, not sure how I could be more relevant to the bill. I detect a touch of sensitivity from that particular corner of the chamber in Senator Milne. The point that I was outlining is that the opposition wants to allow the PBO the same iterative process and the same confidential process of developing and refining policy without its release to the public as is available to the government of the day—and, Senator Milne, as I understand it, as is available to the Greens via your deal with the government of the day. I remember the day, Senator Milne, when the Greens used to care about members of parliament having some degree of autonomy. That process is at the core of the flaws in this bill. It is not something that applies to the Parliamentary Library. The Parliamentary Library has confidentiality provisions that protect the work between members and the Parliamentary Library. The release of information by the PBO during the election period undermines that.

Secondly, the Parliamentary Budget Office proposed in this bill by the government, the Greens and the Independents is specifically precluded from developing alternative economic forecasts, whether that be at the whole-of-budget level or at the program level. Again, there is no justification for this. I am in favour of competition but it seems like the government does not want any competition in economic forecasting. Given this government's record since it took office four years ago, I think a bit of competition might improve its performance. I do not see why there is no provision for the PBO to question the assumptions in government forecasts and come up with its own. We would have benefited from that during the first stimulus package. Maybe, just maybe, the government and the Greens might have listened to a PBO that outlined that the pink batts program was going to blow out or that, as Senator Birmingham said, the Green Loans program was going to blow out. But the government does not want to see these assumptions challenged.

Overseas, the Canadian Parliamentary Budget Office does put out alternative forecasts, and it does ensure that the papers put out by the Treasurer and the finance minister are not able to be completely unchallenged. We have lots of economists in Australia who challenge the government's forecasts. I do not see why we should have only Access Economics doing it rather than the Parliamentary Budget Office. More particularly, why is it prohibited at a program or agency level? Why can we not have alternative forecasts of programs? It seems that the government, again, is running away from real competition in this regard.

My visit to the Canadian Parliamentary Budget Office last year was very informative. One of the most important things they outlined was that there did need to be a degree of confidentiality to ensure that members of parliament could have an iterative process of developing and refining policy. More important is the ability to access information. Every budget office, whether it is a CBO or a PBO in a Westminster-style parliament, has had challenges in accessing information because Treasury and Finance or whatever they are called in various countries do like to protect their patch. They are not as in favour of competition when it comes to economic forecasting as they might be, for example, in the dairy industry, Senator Williams.

Competition in all regards is good, and in this regard in particular we should be empowering the Parliamentary Budget Office to get that information, absent an MOU, so it can get this information out to parliamentarians and, through them, to the people. A Parliamentary Budget Office should be, as it was put to me, a 'decision aid' for members of parliament. It should inform parliamentary debate and public debate about the opportunity cost of not doing something or initiating a particular policy. Our country would be a lot better off if there were more of this and less debate over costings, as Senator Birmingham outlined.

The government is seeking to nobble the PBO and ensure that it does not fulfil that purpose, to create this illusion that there is some source of advice but then to set it up in such a way that it cannot be used by the opposition of the day or any minor parties who are not part of the deal with the government.

This should have been a day when the parliament was particularly pleased about instituting a new process that informed debate for the public and for us, that added to transparency and that heightened the level of economic debate in this country, which is so critical. Absent the amendments to be moved by Senator Cormann, it is sad that today will not be that day. I urge the Senate to consider those amendments and ensure that we deliver this Parliamentary Budget Office and meet those objectives we set out earlier.