what else can we expect ..it was all LIES.Policies without the financial workings are weasel policies used only to attract the voters and win votes.It was a lie that all their policies were fully funded and fully costed...that lie makes a lie of all else.Australia has been conned
Election policy costings and the changes to come
Federal Politics
Date October 28, 2013
Parliamentary budget officer Phil Bowen's election costings are under scrutiny. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
Some relevant news from the weekend.
Many of the costings the government used to justify its budget-tightening credentials are unreliable, write Paul Malone and Bianca Hall for Fairfax. The office's post-election report shows that many of its costings of Coalition policies were of "low" or "medium" reliability only. (I have particular concerns about how the office assessed the savings from the Coalition's purported hiring freeze.) This is unsurprising in a way: costings, like most economic modelling, are ultimately guesswork. And parliamentary budget officer Phil Bowen's task was made especially difficult by the tight time frame in which his relatively small team (39 full-time-equivalent staff) had to work. But the post-election report should raise the question: why were the Treasury and Finance departments, which had much greater resources available to them, so rarely used by the Coalition under the Charter of Budget Honesty, and do we really need an independent, parliamentary economic adviser?
The Daily Telegraph's editorial sings once again from the government's songbook: it warns that DisabilityCare Australia "looms as a potentially enormous bureaucratic exercise that may cost far more than it should". It says Treasurer Joe Hockey is right to "examine ways the administration could be trimmed, so public funds actually go to the people who need them rather than to public servants and other hangers-on". The Coalition appears to be taking a few steps back from the insurance scheme, as the Financial Review had earlier reported that the government's commission of audit will examine whether Medicare Private's network could be used to deliver the service
Similarly, the Financial Review's Joanna Heath reports that Australia Post could take over Centrelink and Medicare's shopfront roles. Hockey said the Centrelink and Medicare offices were costly and hampered by redundant technology. The commission will also examine this proposal. Labor's human services spokesman, Doug Cameron, responded, saying post offices would not be up to the task, writes Judith Ireland.
In an extract from her book A Smile For My Parents, Heather Henderson writes about her father Sir Robert Menzies' relationships with his public servants and personal staff. After the 1949 election, the head of the Prime Minister's Department, Allen Brown, "who had been appointed by the previous Labor government. told my father that one of his senior officers was the president of a branch of the local Labor Party. My father's reaction was: 'Can he be trusted to give me professional advice? I don't care what he's president of.' "
The bureaucrats' union, the Community and Public Sector Union, says the Coalition's machinery-of-government changes have left 4000 public servants "in limbo". They must wait another two months to learn where they will end up working, writes Noel Towell. The union's Beth Vincent-Pietsch said: "Some have been told that it might not be until mid-December when they find out. For staff to be placed in a state of limbo for up to three months is frankly unacceptable
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/blogs/public-sector-informant/election-policy-costings-and-th...
