MEDIA RELEASE: ‘GOOD GOVERNMENT’ GRINDS TO A HALT WITH FURTHER DELAYS ON IGR AND TAX WHITE PAPER

Join Media Release with the Hon. Chris Bowen MP.

It didn’t take long for ‘good government’ to grind to a halt.

The Government has broken the law by not releasing the Intergenerational report – it’s Peter Costello’s Charter of Budget Honesty that Mr Hockey is breaching.

We were promised both the IGR and Tax White Paper issues paper last year, but reports today suggest that they are being pushed back further and further.

It’s all about desperation politics for the Government and the Treasurer. It’s all about political strategy, not economic strategy.

Who knows what shape the Government’s Budget processes are in – we are yet to get one clear economic message from Mr Hockey, so it’s a tough operating environment for Treasury and Finance.

This comes on top of uncertainty around where Treasury and Finance are to be located in the future following the announcement by the Finance Minister today that work is commencing to sell-off the Treasury and John Gorton buildings.

If the Government is going to sell iconic Canberra buildings and simply lease back space to agencies including Treasury and Finance, what guarantees will the Government provide that its long-term lease costs don’t outweigh the one-off sale proceeds?

One day it’s a ‘Budget emergency’ and the Government is keeping to all of its current Budget measures, and the next it’s the Government is going in a new direction spending money on a families package and cutting taxes.

No wonder business and consumer confidence have been battered over the last 12 months.