Portfolio Media Releases

TREASURER MUST IMMEDIATELY RELEASE DETAILS OF TREASURY MODELLING TO BACK UP HIS CLAIMS

15th June 2009

The Treasurer must release details of Treasury modelling and advice provided in relation to the Government’s economic policies.

For the Treasurer to have any public credibility when citing Treasury advice he must release that detailed advice or else the statement should be ignored.

The Government has increasingly relied on Treasury advice to defend its spending binges and record levels of debt. 

Time and time again the Government justifies its policies on Treasury advice it never releases.

Today in his address to the CEDA ‘State of the Nation’ conference, the Treasurer again cited Treasury estimates in an attempt to justify the record $315 billion of debt that the Rudd Labor Government has burdened on the nation.

The reliability of Treasury advice has previously been called into question.

In January this year, Wayne Swan made claims that Rudd Bank would help protect as many as 50,000 jobs.  However, in March the Australian Financial Review revealed that this was a ‘back-of-the-envelope’ calculation, conceived in two hours via a four-line email between Treasury and the Treasurer’s office[1].

For any of Wayne Swan’s claims to have credibility, the methodology and assumptions of the Treasury modelling must be made public.

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