Public loses from Treasury's stitch-up by Labor

Lobbecke

RHETORICAL overreach is something we all mistakenly commit from time to time. This week it was the government that tied itself in knots as it tried to condemn the Coalition for yet another costings failure. Attempts to damage the Coalition's economic credibility backfired when the trustworthiness of what Labor ministers claimed as fact came into question. And it let the Coalition off the fiscal hook.

Wayne Swan's office had done what it does best last weekend: it leaked a Treasury document to the media. While most of us might prefer it if the offices of ministers spent their time on meaty, indeed worthwhile, policy initiatives, unfortunately the dark arts of politics necessitates such practices. And contrary to Liberal Party squealing this week, all sides do it.

The leak in question pertained to the possible impact on businesses of the Coalition's plans to repeal the carbon tax (and, importantly, the compensation packages attached to it). Implementing the Coalition's alternative tax policy would cost businesses more than $4.5 billion in the first year alone, according to Treasury.

That sort of detail kinda puts a hole in Tony Abbott's argument that scrapping the carbon tax is all upside for business, so it's easy to see why the Treasurer's office wanted to play politics with the information.

Putting to one side the fact Treasury also estimated that the minerals resource rent tax would collect upwards of $3bn in its first year, yet that figure was reduced by more than $1bn four months later in the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook and the first quarter of the MRRT's operation reaped zero revenue, I suppose we have to take the Treasury's estimates at face value, even if credibility is in short supply.

But whether or not the Coalition's alternative to the carbon tax (which is to not have one) is more expensive than the government's policy, and how such new information might undermine the Opposition Leader's aggressive assault on the carbon price, ceased to be the primary issue this week. The debate shifted to an argument about how it came to be that Treasury documents were leaked, and why we were seeing leaks that damaged only one side of politics.

It raised the obvious question of whether the Treasury was being politicised.

Of course, the answer is pretty clear: in our adversarial system Labor was using the power of incumbency to tear down its opposition. As the government it has access to Treasury and is entitled to use that access in a multitude of ways.

Nothing wrong with that; it has always been thus. But it was the rhetorical overreach of Trade Minister Craig Emerson that caused the government's political skulduggery to backfire.

At a press conference on Monday Emerson told reporters: "The Treasury has done these costings and they have made available the results of those costings. It is not unusual for the Treasury, when there are clearly articulated policies, to release costings of them."

The aim of the statement was to put the credibility of Treasury behind the costings assault on the opposition. Were the attacks just seen as partisan, they would carry much less value.

Emerson's claim understandably led opposition Treasury spokesman Joe Hockey to demand an explanation from the head of Treasury, the independent bureaucrat Martin Parkinson. The answer swiftly given was that Treasury had nothing to do with the documents being leaked, and, in fact, Treasury had not even commissioned the research: it was the minister's political advisers who had requested it be done.

Again nothing unusual in that, except that it directly contradicts what Emerson claimed to be the case. In the days that followed, speaking from Washington, DC, Swan even admitted that his office had requested Treasury do its dirty work. (Of course, he worded the request a little more diplomatically than that.)

Not that Emerson was backing down. In yesterday's The Australian he was quoted as saying: "At no time did I say or imply Treasury released the costings publicly." A lawyer might be able to distinguish between the technical specifics of what Emerson told the media on Monday and the above statement, but I certainly cannot.

Emerson has a PhD in economics and was a senior economic adviser to the greatest economic reforming government this country has seen, Bob Hawke's administration. But Emerson's strength is not political skulduggery; he should leave that to the former Queensland state secretary and his team of advisers who (gulp) run our economy.

An unintended consequence of this week's costings debate is the renewed calls by the Coalition for the costings of Greens policies to be released. Readers will recall that the September 1, 2010, agreement Labor and the Greens signed to form minority government included Greens' access to Treasury to cost their policies. Liberals long have been seeking access to those numbers, including by Freedom of Information, on the assumption that a fiscal train wreck might be what they are handed.

It would be a nice little political find were that to be the case.

Each time FoI requests have been made, a litany of excuses have been provided as to why the costings must remain secret: cabinet confidentiality, a lack of public interest and the importance of preserving the deliberative process are just three offered. Who needs Yes Minister when you can read the real-life correspondence between the bureaucracy and opposition MPs?

Putting to one side how the Greens continue to sell the value of their partnership with the Labor Party on their website - "Labor will work with the Greens to deliver improved transparency and integrity to parliament" - not releasing Greens costings when political advisers are busy commissioning and then leaking costings of Coalition policies by Treasury is a tad hypocritical.

But, then, that's politics, and no one should believe Peter Costello's faux outrage and claim that this sort of thing never went on during his time. It did; it's just that the Howard government was much more polished at doing so.

The person who has been damaged most by this week's events, however, is the innocent bureaucrat who has been mixed up in the government's gamesmanship: Parkinson. Because Labor attempted to pit him against Hockey, cries for Parkinson's removal if the Coalition wins the next election have got louder within the partyroom.

Hockey might hold on to Parkinson until his contract expires because he is competent and such people can be few and far between at the upper echelons of the public service. But no one should expect him to be around for long after that.

If Parkinson was the individual loser from the costings debate this week, the public is the collective loser. There is now no way that the Coalition will submit its suite of policies to the Treasury for costing in the lead-up to next year's election. That means it will instead use its own accountants - hopefully this time not ones who are fined for breaching professional standards in their work on the costings, as occurred at the 2010 election.

Either way, that means less transparency and less information for voters ahead of polling day. We all lose out when that happens.

Peter van Onselen is a professor at the University of Western Australia.