Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen outlined the plans for a significant overhaul of the budget forecast system during an address to the National Press Club in Canberra.
Mr Bowen said if elected, Labor would move to strengthen the Charter of Budget Honesty, implemented in 1998 to ensure transparency and accountability.
“The time has come to strengthen the charter of budget honesty in a way which fully utilises the potential of the parliamentary budget office as an expert agency, completely independent of the executive and free from political interference,” he said.
“… A government unafraid of accountability and transparency would not be afraid.”
Mr Bowen said this would be done through three primary measures, including the outsourcing of economic forecasts to the Parliamentary Budget Office.
The Parliamentary Budget Office would also publish an annual report on the structural status of the budget, as well as take over the preparation of the intergenerational report.
Mr Bowen said the five year report, required under the Charter of Budget Honesty, should not be Treasurer Joe Hockey’s “political plaything”.
“Recently, the treasurer announced he would be bringing forward the publication of the next intergenerational report,” he said.
“There should be no doubt what Joe Hockey’s [report] would say. It would be a continuation of the most politicised budget papers in memory.”
‘Hockey’s budget has spectacularly failed the credibility test’
Mr Bowen also used the address to critique the Abbott Government’s first budget, which he said had “fatally undermined” Mr Hockey’s credibility.
He said the budget had failed the credibility test with voters through its contradictions.
“In the end, the only sustainable explanation for the fatal inconsistencies in this budget is a simple one – prejudice,” he said.
“This budget does not represent a high point of right wing ideology. It represents a low point of prejudice.”
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