Thursday 26th of December 2024
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the cost of puds...

hockeypuds

The Treasurer's office has admitted being responsible for a release of Treasury's analysis of the Coalition's tax policies.

Labor used the Treasury costings to attack the Opposition, because it showed three of their policies would cost businesses $4.57 billion in their first full year of operation.

It prompted outrage from the Coalition, who said Treasury had "serious questions to answer" about why the work was done and how it came to be published in Fairfax newspapers.

It is understood the Treasurer's office asked officials to undertake the work.

"It's not remotely unusual for Treasury to do analysis of policies that are in the public domain - it's doing its job as it did under the previous government," a spokesman for Treasurer Wayne Swan said in a statement.

"From time to time governments of both persuasions publicise information to contribute to a more fulsome debate about policies."

Liberal MP Jamie Briggs has accused the Government of "trashing the reputation" of Treasury by leaking the costings, and is demanding Mr Swan apologise.

"It is an utter and absolute disgrace that Wayne Swan would politicise the public service in this way, bringing into question fine men and women who go to work every day to do the right thing by our country," he said.

Mr Briggs has described it as a "misuse" of taxpayers' money.

But Prime Minister Julia Gillard has defended the decision to release the Treasury analysis.

"It's very routine for Treasury to cost policies that are being talked about in the public domain," she said.

"No amount of spin from the Opposition gets away from the simple fact that three of the policies they say they are committed to have been costed, and they will cost businesses more than $4 billion in the first year."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-11-06/swan-office-admits-coalition-costings-release/4356024


hypocrite hockey...

THE Treasury secretary, Martin Parkinson, has repudiated suggestions by the shadow treasurer, Joe Hockey, that his department displayed political bias by conducting unsolicited costings of Coalition policy then leaking them to the media.
In a letter to Mr Hockey on Wednesday, Mr Parkinson said the costings were not unsolicited but were requested by the office of the Treasurer, Wayne Swan.Nor did Treasury leak them, Mr Parkinson said.
''As is always our practice, the Treasury did not provide the advice or the underlying analysis to anyone outside government,'' he said. ''I can assure you there has been no breach of the professional and apolitical ethos of the Treasury.''

Mr Hockey has been on the warpath since Monday, when Fairfax Media published Treasury analysis that found three Coalition polices would cost business $4.7 billion in one year and more than $17 billion over four years.
Mr Hockey claimed the government was abusing the Treasury by having it do such work and then giving it to the media, and he suggested the Treasury had lost its independence.
''I am concerned that if Treasury undertook to conduct these unsolicited costings, or subsequently released these costings to the media, the apolitical and non-partisan nature of Treasury has been severely compromised,'' he said in a letter to Mr Parkinson. ''I believe this matter raises serious questions about the impartiality of your department.'' On Wednesday, Mr Hockey said the government was using the public service ''as both a shield and a sword on the political battlefield''.

He said Treasury should ''speak up',' and that if elected, a Coalition government would not use Treasury in this manner.

However, when the Coalition was in government, it would frequently find budget holes in Labor's promises with the assistance of Treasury and Finance.Mr Hockey said the Coalition never released Treasury minutes - documents from the department detailing its findings.
But the government produced a press release from then treasurer Peter Costello in 2002, saying Labor would blow a multi-billion-dollar hole in the federal budget if it opposed changes to superannuation policy.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/treasury-boss-slams-hockey-on-bias-claim-20121107-28yll.html#ixzz2Bcdg0X28

meanwhile at the real coal face...

In response to all this rhetoric and reporting, the Prime Minister on Monday wrote to both business leaders and the ACTU to suggest the creation of a "National Economic Reform Panel", which sounds bland enough, and it never hurts to have all sides in a room discussing issues.

Perhaps the first order of business on the panel might be for everyone to take a deep breath and realise the economy is not in tatters, unions aren't in control, wages growth if anything is below average, and that just because a headline says something that doesn't make it so.

Greg Jericho writes weekly for The Drum. View his full profile here

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4382230.html?WT.svl=theDrum