Page 2791 - Week 07 - Thursday, 7 June 2012
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then at stages having officials and federal public servants appearing and speaking with us. It was like some of that negotiation that you have before a bill actually appears rather than a standard committee hearing. People will, I guess, judge us on the output. I hope that people read the report. It is important that we get costings in the lead-up to any election right.
The inquiry required us to consider some quite complex matters, matters that are changing around the country. The federal government, for the interest of members, is in the process of introducing a federal parliamentary budget officer who will look at these matters. New South Wales have just finished a review of their parliamentary budget officer and have suggested that they go back to the function of costings for the purpose of elections. It is an interesting and quite complex area and we were very lucky to have officials, particularly from the federal parliament, address us.
Much of the inquiry was relatively straightforward. Indeed, the committee suggested that an election costings process broadly along the lines suggested in the exposure draft be implemented. The original chair’s draft had a couple of extra chapters that some members did not agree to. Those extra chapters, of course, were from me and looked at having a parliamentary budget officer that combined the functions.
As members would be aware, at each estimates now the estimates committee gets some assistance with the technical and economic matters of the budget. I saw that there was scope to morph that slightly, particularly in election years, into a longer period. That individual could be briefed on the budget and stay on board as a de facto parliamentary budget officer and continue to brief members in the lead-up to the election. Unfortunately, my colleagues did not see the wisdom of that. When we see the bill that the minister will no doubt table at some stage that might be something we can consider after this Assembly.
There were some significant issues and they are set out in the relevant recommendations, of which there are 12. These include our recommendation that the pre-election period apply from the day after the last sitting day of the Assembly until the new government is formed. I think the recommendation that there be no fees charged for any costings activities undertaken is significant.
Some of the more contentious issues that we worked through were the nature of the draft guidelines. Rather than keep talking about the draft bill, I will talk about the guidelines and the bill. We decided that a portion of the draft guidelines dealt with matters of principle and not of administration. To this extent, therefore, we have suggested a number of deletions from the draft guidelines and, as necessary, the inclusion of matters of principle in the bill.
I emphasise that the guidelines must only deal with administrative matters and not with matters of principle. Therefore, we were concerned about the way in which information on the costings would be dealt with by the Treasury. Section 9 of the bill would require that Treasury make costings publicly available as a statement of principle. That is satisfactory as far as it goes, but the issue we came up against then was the proposals in the draft guidelines relating to the actual mechanics of providing this information. The committee did not agree with the example that the Treasury
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