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Legislative Assembly
 
Parliamentary Budget Officer Bill 2016

25 February 2016
Second reading
TIM PALLAS  (ALP)

 


Mr PALLAS (Treasurer) — I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Speech as follows incorporated into Hansard under sessional orders:

This bill delivers on the government's commitment to establish a permanent Victorian Parliamentary Budget Office. The PBO will be an authoritative, independent and credible body.

The bill improves on the coalition's 2013 bill by providing for a permanent office that will operate throughout the parliamentary term, not a temporary office that only comes together during elections. A permanent office will contribute to longer term, iterative policy development by members of Parliament and parties outside of election periods.

It will also safeguard the independence of the Parliamentary Budget Officer by allowing them to employ permanent staff, instead of relying solely on seconded departmental employees.

The bill also provides a stronger mandate for the PBO than the coalition's bill. As well as election costings and pre-election aggregate reports of costings, the bill expands the PBO's role to include providing general costings and advice at the request of MPs, and post-election aggregate reports. This will improve the value of the PBO to members of Parliament and the public.

The PBO's role is to inform policy development and public debate in Parliament and the Victorian community by preparing policy costings and fiscal and economic analysis and advice for members of Parliament.

An effective and independent PBO supports open and democratic government by:

strengthening public debate throughout the parliamentary term;

levelling the playing field in relation to financial expertise between government and the opposition, minor parties and independent MPs;

facilitating iterative policy development by parties and MPs;

encouraging parties and MPs to release independently costed policies earlier to gain credibility with the electorate; and

providing the community with credible, independent and timely information to help inform their voting decisions.

Under the bill, the PBO will:

be led by a Parliamentary Budget Officer, as an independent officer of Parliament, with power to employ staff and engage consultants;

be placed as a separate office within Parliament;

be overseen by PAEC;

have a mandate to prepare election costings at the request of parliamentary leaders, and to prepare general costings and advice at the request of MPs;

prepare pre-election aggregate reports of costed policies (on request by a parliamentary leader) and post-election aggregate reports of all election commitments of all parties;

publicly disclose costings and advice, at the request of relevant MPs;

have power to correct a public misrepresentation of its costings or advice;

have power to obtain relevant information from the Victorian public sector (VPS), other than commercial-in-confidence documents; and

be exempt from freedom of information (FOI) requests in relation to costings and advice (except where that costing or advice is disclosed). The VPS will also be exempt from FOI in relation to documents disclosing PBO requests.

The PBO will operate confidentially, and have appropriate information-gathering powers. In providing information, departments can require that the information be kept confidential. The Parliamentary Budget Officer and public sector bodies who have provided information to the PBO will be able to transfer documents created solely for the purposes of the PBO's work to the public record office at any time, with those documents secure from public scrutiny for 30 years.

While all MPs will be able to request costings, advice, analysis and briefings on fiscal matters from the Parliamentary Budget Officer at any time, the bill provides that during an election costing period — which will run from state budget day until the Thursday immediately before the election — requests from parliamentary leaders for election policy costings will have priority over the other work of the PBO.

Costings and advice will only be publicly disclosed on request from the relevant member of Parliament or parliamentary leader. There is no automatic disclosure of costings.

The bill provides for the Parliamentary Budget Officer to report annually to Parliament on the operations of the PBO, and after each state election to report to Parliament on the PBO's activities during the election costing period.

The bill also addresses an unintended oversight with respect to the role of the Presiding Officers of the Parliament. At present the Constitution Act 1975 authorises the Presiding Officers to continue to perform their administrative duties after an early dissolution of the Legislative Assembly, but not after the expiry of the Assembly for a scheduled election under the fixed four-year cycle. The bill provides the necessary authority and corrects this anomaly.

This bill aligns with Victoria's existing legislative and governance frameworks, and will be consistent with proposed reforms to integrity and accountability legislation. Its passage will be of great benefit to all MPs and to the Victorian community, by enabling better informed scrutiny of election commitments.

I commend the bill to the house.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mr CLARK (Box Hill).

Debate adjourned until Thursday, 10 March.