The Dreyfus Files - The Age
This fortnight can't have been pleasant for the Liberal opposition’s economic team.
More than a year ago The Australian Financial Review's political editor, Laura Tingle, wrote that there were ''two possible explanations'' for the opposition ending up with an $11 billion hole in the cost of their election commitments: ''One is that they are liars, the other is that they are clunkheads.'' She went on: ''Actually, there is a third explanation: they are liars and clunkheads. But whatever the combination, they are not fit to govern.''
This assessment came after Tony Abbott's Liberals refused to have their election promises costed by the Departments of Finance and Treasury, clinging instead to an ''audit'' by private accountants, which later proved to be deeply flawed.
For the anointed clunkheads, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey and finance spokesman Andrew Robb, the ruling this fortnight by the Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICA) that the accountants they hired to cost their 2010 promises had breached professional standards, should have prompted at least a clunking expression of remorse.
Mr Hockey and Mr Robb had, after all, said repeatedly in advance of the last election that the opposition's election promises had been ''audited''. Mr Hockey said on ABC's AM in August last year: ''You know what? If the fifth biggest accounting firm in Australia signs off on our numbers it is a brave person to start saying they’re accounting tricks. I tell you it is an audit, this is an audited statement.''
This was no magic pudding according to Mr Hockey. We were told the $11.5 billion the Coalition had identified in savings off the budget bottom line were real, we just had to put our trust in the ''audit''.
And Mr Robb said the accountants' work on the Coalition’s costings was even better than the Treasury, explaining, ''if they make a mistake with the auditing of accounts for companies or prospectuses or mislead, they are at risk of being punished and going to jail, not Treasury''.
But last week, after a lengthy investigation, the ICA's Appeal Tribunal rejected an appeal by the two Perth-based accountants against the decision of the ICA's Professional Conduct Tribunal to fine them $5000 each. The fines were imposed because their costings of Coalition policies failed to contain a ''statement that the procedures performed do not constitute either an audit or a review''.
The Tribunal’s findings confirmed that the Coalition’s private ''audit'' was not an ''audit'' at all, and that they’d sought to conceal their true costings from the Australian public, refusing to have them properly costed by the Departments of Finance and Treasury.
So any murmurs of remorse from the opposition’s economic team?
Not from Mr Hockey. When asked about the tribunal ruling by Fairfax's economics correspondent Peter Martin, Mr Hockey's stunning reply was ''I'm not getting into it, mate''.
And, despite the jaw-dropping errors in the Coalition's costings and misleading statements about audits, Mr Hockey refused to commit to using Treasury or the Parliamentary Budget Office for costing Coalition election promises in the next election campaign.
As far as Mr Hockey is concerned, it seems that the Australian public don't deserve the right to scrutinise opposition policies. And it appears he has the strong backing of Mr Abbott.
When Mr Abbott was asked by a journalist last Friday if he continued to stand by his costings, given the breach of professional standards findings against the two accountants that carried out those costings, he said ''Yes I do. I'm very proud of the fact that Joe Hockey and Andrew Robb and the Coalition more generally were able to come up with $50 billion worth of serious savings. It shows that it is possible to reduce government waste, it is possible to reduce the size of government while maintaining people’s standards of living. We did it before, we can do it again.''
And that is the frightening reality. Faced with a gaping hole of some $11 billion in their election policies, faced with a ruling that the accountants that they engaged to ''audit'' their costings breached professional standards, and faced with confirmation that the work they’d engaged in did not constitute an audit at all, the Opposition Leader has brazenly declared that they ''can do it again''. He is saying that he’ll ignore the new Parliamentary Budget Office during the next election campaign.
But, to use a phrase so familiar to Mr Abbott, ''no you can't''. Australians deserve the right to scrutinise the $70 billion in cuts the opposition is proposing and we shouldn't and won’t accept anything less.
