Page 3639 - Week 08 - Friday, 24 August 2012
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This will add a new level of transparency and robustness to the dollar figures that are inevitably thrown about at election time. More transparency and robustness is good for democracy and it is in the public interest because voters have a right to know what the cost is of election promises. Taxpayers’ money will be used to fulfil election commitments, and taxpayers have a right to know what the cost of each commitment will be.
In past elections there has been an informal process where Treasury has costed the election commitments of the various parties. In that informality lies a risk of misunderstanding and costings being released by Treasury that are less than 100 per cent accurate. Of course, that has also been done at the request of the Treasurer of the day, which has laid a level of political controversy over it.
The Greens certainly know the risks of the previous informal system, as I am sure the Canberra Liberals may also attest to. In the 2008 election Treasury attempted to cost a number of the Greens’ election policies, but, with all respect to the official involved, the intent of our policy was misunderstood and the cost was miscalculated, in some cases quite substantially. This is a reflection on the informal nature of the previous arrangements.
I think the other opportunity this process presents is to make it harder for incoming ministers to make false claims about other parties’ costings, such as Simon Corbell did earlier this week. We believe it is important to see an end to ministers making incorrect claims about the costs of other parties’ commitments. Simon Corbell was caught out on Monday, saying that the Greens’ election commitments so far are more than those of other parties. The unfortunate fact for the Attorney-General is that this simply wrong.
When you look at the released policies thus far, the ALP have promised $47 million in spending, the Greens $27 million and the Canberra Liberals $10 million. So while Mr Corbell was claiming others were big spenders, the ALP’s promises total more than the Greens and the Liberals combined at this stage. This is the exactly the kind of misinformation that these new laws will assist to set straight, and ACT voters will be able to get the truth from Treasury rather than the spin from Simon.
This bill will formalise the arrangement and ensure very clear communication between the leader of the party and Treasury officials. This is a very important step forward, which the Greens support. The leader will be able to make a formal request for a costing and include with that request detailed information about the commitment and the precise details of what is proposed.
I will comment briefly on the process that has led to the debate today, because I think it has been a good one. Three members of the Assembly—Mr Barr, Mr Smyth and I—formed a collaborative committee to examine a draft version of the bill. This was a new style of committee where we met with public servants and talked about aspects of the bill. Of course, the participation of the responsible minister in the committee was another new aspect and one that was particularly helpful. I believe the collaborative committee process was a good one. The results are here today where many of the issues have been fleshed out during the committee and addressed.
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