The Australian Labor Party released its
dividend
imputation policy in 2018 and began to come under sustained political
attack by the Morrison Government and News Corp with claims that there was a
$10 billion dollar hole in Labor’s costing of its policy.
On 18 June
2018 the Parliamentary Budget Office issued
a media release:
Imputation
credits policy costing
Earlier today, comments
have been made about the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) estimates of the
gains to revenue that may flow from the Australian Labor Party’s (ALP’s) policy
to make imputation credits non-refundable.
“The PBO brings our best
professional judgement to the independent policy costing advice we
provide. We have access to the same data
and economic parameters as The Treasury and draw upon similar information in
forming our judgements,” Parliamentary Budget Officer Jenny Wilkinson stated
today.
“We stand behind the PBO
estimates that have been published by the ALP in relation to this policy,
noting that all policy costings, no matter who they are prepared by, are
subject to uncertainty.” In its advice,
the PBO is explicit about the judgements and uncertainties associated with
individual policy costings.
The PBO confirms that it
always takes into account current and future policy commitments, as well as
behavioural changes, in its policy costings.
In this case, as outlined at the recent Senate Estimates hearings, these
included the superannuation changes announced in the 2016–17 Budget and the
scheduled company tax cuts. In addition,
the PBO explicitly assumed that there would be significant behavioural changes
that would flow from this policy, particularly for trustees of self-managed
superannuation funds.
The PBO was established
as an independent institution in 2012 with broad support from the
Parliament. A key rationale for the
formation of the PBO was to develop a more level playing field, by providing
independent and unbiased advice to all parliamentarians about the estimated
fiscal cost of policy proposals. The
purpose of establishing the PBO was to improve the public’s understanding of,
and confidence in, policy costings and enable policy debates to focus on the
merits of alternative policy proposals.
Ten months later on 25 April
2019 News Corp’s The Daily Examiner ran an article on page 8 concerning Labor’s
dividend imputation policy which stated:
The independent
Parliamentary Budget Office has estimated Labor’s plan would save $7 billion
less over a decade than the party expects and that it would affect 840,000
individuals, 210,000 self-managed super funds (SMSFs) plus some bigger funds.
Now the
Parliamentary Budget Office publishes
the requests for information it receives, including requests for policy implications and
costings, however there appears to be no new request for information and
costings on Labor’s dividend imputation policy on its website.
Morrison
& Co have been caught out misrepresenting the source of their costings
before and even flat out lying on occasion, so one has to suspect the veracity
of their latest attack on this particular policy.
It's just as likely costings and other figures were done on the back of an envelope by Morrison or Frydenberg.
