Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Cameron for that question. No, the rules of disclosure of election policy costings as laid down by Peter Costello have not changed. We agree with Peter Costello when he said, as he introduced the Charter of Budget Honesty:

By requiring the costings to be made publicly available, there is limited scope for the results of the costings to be misrepresented.

He might have been anticipating Mr Robb and Mr Hockey, mightn't he, in the last federal election when they misled the Australian people about the true cost of their policies, only to be found out after the election?

What is extraordinary about it is that they are spoiling to do the same thing. They want to tell people nothing before the election about what they will cut should they get into government, what they would cut to fund their $70 billion black hole.