GOVERNMENT ELECTION FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY BILL

Introduction and First Reading

The Hon. I.F. EVANS (Davenport) (10:34): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to improve government pre-election financial responsibility and reporting; and for other purposes. Read a first time.

Second Reading

The Hon. I.F. EVANS (Davenport) (10:35): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

In moving this bill, what the opposition is trying to do is improve the financial transparency that is available to all political parties and to the public when an election is called. Mr Speaker, you are aware that, in federal elections, through the changes made by treasurer Costello in his time, there was a charter of budget honesty brought in at the federal level. Part of that legislation requires a pre-election fiscal and economic outlook to be published 10 days after the issuing of the federal writs.

That particular statement (PEFO) is prepared by the federal Treasury secretary without interference from the political wing of government, and it gives an independent assessment of the budget and the state of the finances at the federal level at that time, so that the political parties going to the election have the most up-to-date and independent information available to them from the federal Treasury.

What this bill does is, essentially, copy that system and introduce that into the South Australian statute and, therefore, it will be part of the election framework. What this bill essentially does is set up a system that requires the state Under Treasurer, five days after the issuing of the writs, to provide publicly an assessment of the state's finances so that all politicians and the media are aware of the true state of the budget.

We know the government bring down a budget mid-year in May/June. We know they then bring down a thing called the Mid-Year Budget Review around Christmas time. If you look at the dates when the Mid-Year Budget Review has been released, it has traditionally been released days before Christmas in non-election years, and then, in election years, it has been released roughly around the Australia Day long weekend.

The timing of that release is subject to the Treasurer of the day's political whim. If the Treasurer of the day wanted to bring the Mid-Year Budget Review release forward to, say, November, the Treasurer of the day could do that; that would then, of course, deny the parliament, the public and the opposition the most up-to-date figures for a March 2014 election.

This piece of legislation requires, regardless of the budget introduced in May/June, regardless of the Mid-Year Budget Review—whenever it is released—the Under Treasurer, five days after the issuing of the writs, to produce a summary of the state finances. It also requires that, having released the Under Treasurer's financial outlook report at that time, if something occurs during the election period that the Under Treasurer thinks is of financial significance and has to brief the government on, he would also be required to brief the Leader of the Opposition and the leader of the other parties. It puts that obligation on the Under Treasurer to provide advice to both parties.

Members of the house may scratch their head and ask, 'Why would you want this particular piece of legislation?' Let me give you a live example. In the 2010 election, about a week out from the election, we were advised that the federal government had advised the state government that there was another $600 million of GST revenue available to the state. In an election context, that is a handy piece of information to have. What came out after the election, of course, was that the then treasurer Foley had had that information for a few days before passing it on to the opposition.

The Hon. P.F. Conlon: They had to check it was right.

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: They had to check it was right, yes. Under this system here through this bill, what would happen is, when the Under Treasurer received that information, given it is of financial significance, he would immediately brief the government and opposition—basically, different briefings but on the same day.

So, what we are trying to do is introduce to South Australia a system of financial transparency that exists at the federal level. It was used in the last federal government by the federal Labor government and it has been used in previous federal elections by the federal Liberal government, so this is not a Liberal/Labor issue. This is an issue of financial transparency. It works federally; it puts in place a mechanism where the parties have independent information verified to them by the Under Treasurer of the day.

Obviously, the Under Treasurer would not need to notify the government or the opposition on every single little matter that changed within the budget. It is a matter of matters of significance and there is a $1 million threshold in the bill in some clauses to clarify that, otherwise it would be totally unworkable. So, what we are looking for is to introduce a system that exists federally, works federally and offers transparency, and all we are requiring is that five days after the issuing of writs, the independent Under Treasurer produces a report on the financial status of the budget, even though the mid-year budget review might have been released some weeks earlier by the Treasurer.

Exactly the same principle is in place federally. In the federal system, in the budget there is a form of report that is used as the benchmark for the pre-election fiscal outlook report. We have adopted exactly the same system here. So, the intention of this bill and the instructions to parliamentary counsel were to copy the federal legislation in regards to this particular element of their Charter of Budget Honesty, and that is what this bill seeks to do.

Obviously, we have not had the chance to consult Treasury on this matter. This is not surprising, because obviously Treasury are beholden to the government, and we accept that is how the system works. We are not critical of that. We just make the point that if the government, having read this between now and when it is put to the vote, think there is a way of improving it through amendment following Treasury advice, we are open to that. If we form government at some point in the future, then obviously we would be seeking Treasury advice about whether there are ways to improve this particular measure.

There is time for this bill to go through the parliament between now and the next election. There are three weeks of sitting left; the government have plenty of time to consider this and put it through both houses. I hope the government can see their way clear to support what we think is a good measure and an improvement to financial transparency around the budget and financial matters of the state.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mrs Geraghty.