The Charter of Budget Honesty Policy Costing Guidelines released today sets out how Treasury and the Department of Finance and Deregulation will approach costing policy proposals.
These Guidelines, which will inform the newly-established Parliamentary Budget Office, will assist in promoting consistency, transparency and comparability of costings.
Tony Abbott has no excuses left not to have his election policies properly costed, either by Finance and Treasury or by the new Parliamentary Budget Office.
This will avoid a repeat of the Oppositions 2010 election costings debacle, where they were found to have a $11 billion budget black hole.
Despite this, the Opposition has refused to commit to having all of their policies costed either by Finance and Treasury or the Parliamentary Budget Office, choosing instead to keep Australians in the dark.
With a $70 billion budget black hole thats now been confirmed by the Oppositions economic trio Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey and Andrew Robb Australians deserve to know what the Oppositions policies will really cost.
Its time for the Opposition to stop making promises they cant afford.
Its time for the Opposition to stop using dodgy accounting firms and catering companies for their costings.
The only way the Oppositions policy costings can be taken seriously is if they are submitted to Finance and Treasury or to the Parliamentary Budget Office under the Charter of Budget Honesty, in line with the costing Guidelines released today.
The Guidelines can be found on both the Treasury and Department of Finance and Deregulation websites
http://www.finance.gov.au/publications/charter-of-budget-honesty/index.html
http://www.treasury.gov.au/PublicationsAndMedia/Publications/2012/charter-of-budget-honesty