The NSW Government has delivered its response to the Public Accounts Committee’s report on the 2023 election, noting or rejecting recommendations that would provide more up-to-date information to the Parliamentary Budget Office.
The report examines the Parliamentary Budget Office’s (PBO) audit of the 2023 state election, making seven recommendations to improve transparency around both policy costings in the lead-up to the election, and the administration of the election itself.
The government has noted six recommendations, rejecting a seventh that called for the Pre-Election Budget Update to be delivered “no later than three days after the caretaker period commences”.
A spokesperson wrote the NSW government did not support the amendment.
“The government of the day can make decisions which could impact the budget aggregates up until the caretaker period commences,” they said.
“Maintaining the current legislative wording, which requires the Pre-Election Budget Update to be released as soon as reasonably practical, will ensure sufficient time to produce accurate budget aggregates should late government decisions be made and economic forecasts.”
The response does not accept in full any of the report’s recommendations, saying that while they accepted the intent of the recommendation, further information was needed to determine whether legislation was the best instrument for dealing with addressing the issue.
First among these is a recommendation that would have the NSW PBO deliver full election costings for major party policies a week out from an election. Further recommendations around transparent costing of election policies include a mandate for politicians to forward policies to the PBO within 48 hours of the announcement, and a call to make the office either permanent or longer standing around election time. The former of these was categorically rejected.
NSW is one of the only jurisdictions in the world without a permanent budget office of this kind.
Another recommendation calls for greater flexibility for public service leaders to be able to appoint proxies, and work openly with other departments on PBO information requests.
At the moment, confidentiality rules prevent PBO requests from being communicated to, except “a member of staff or head of the agency”, or “the secretary or a member of staff of the Department of Premier and Cabinet”. Given the Department of Premier and Cabinet no longer exists in NSW, this makes cross-agency communication about an information request legally impossible.
A spokesperson for the Public Accounts Committee said this was creating a bottleneck in PBO’s work, despite attempts to MacGyver together a solution.
“The PBO previously requested legal advice on this issue and found that the PBO Act does, indeed, prevent agencies from consulting with each other,” they said.
“The workaround solution, which the PBO developed in 2018-19 with advice from the NSW crown solicitor, was to send information requests to the heads of all applicable agencies at the same time. This enables their staff to work in parallel on providing the information request.
“Although this solution has worked, it adds extra work and there is still a perceived risk by agencies around sharing information. The PBO recommends that the PBO Act be changed to explicitly enable information to be exchanged freely and quickly so policies can be costed in a timely manner.
“This provision in the PBO Act should state that a person who seeks information from another NSW Government agency for the purpose of fulfilling a PBO information request does not, by so doing so, risk breaching confidentiality provisions.”
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Transparency in government and the role of parliamentary budget offices
