Senator the Hon Mathias Cormann

Labor’s Shadow Treasurer will contradict himself if during his address to the National Press Club he calls on the Parliamentary Budget Office to prepare all economic forecasts.

Just over a year ago, the then Treasurer wholeheartedly backed the Treasury to deliver professional, well researched projections, declaring:

"Of course, I would prefer and the Treasury would prefer and everybody would prefer that their projections from the Budget have been met. Everybody would prefer that. Of course that's the case. But these are professional, well-researched projections and I would remind you that my predecessor commissioned a review of Treasury forecasting, an independent review, and it found that the Treasury was using every available tool. It was as good an economic forecaster as was possible in a world economy. If others have a different view they're entitled to share their projections, but I have not seen any methodology, any approach which is superior to the Treasury's in a volatile and difficult world economy."

(Source: Chris Bowen, press conference 2 August 2013) 

Chris Bowen’s comments are an admission that Labor themselves had fiddled the forecasts produced by Treasury for their own short term political benefit. His admission explains why Labor regularly fell short of their own forecasts and projections.

The Government produced the real forecasts in December last year in the Mid Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook. It showed the true extent of the debt and deficit disaster we inherited from the Labor Party, which we are now calmly and methodically working to fix.