TRANSCRIPT

THE HON PETER COSTELLO MP

TREASURER

Interview with Chris Bath

Channel 7

Friday, 8 October 2004

10.40 am

BATH:

And now the Federal Treasurer joins us live from Melbourne, Mr Costello,

have you made an error here?

TREASURER:

Well I think Mr Crean’s intervention was pretty desperate as you saw and

as the campaign draws closer he is getting more and more shrill and more

and more desperate. We are now less than 24 hours before polling day and

Labor’s tax policy has not yet been fully costed…

BATH:

Well…

TREASURER:

…as he himself said, no, let me go through it. As he himself said,

there is no costing on their participation dividend, no costing on their

tax compliance. There is no costing on the GST and the reason for that is

that he put those in for costings on Monday of this week when the cut off

for independent scrutiny was Thursday of last week. So we are now in a situation

where we don’t have the costing of Labor’s policy. It is unlikely that we

are going to get it and people are going to the polls tomorrow morning.

Now this policy this policy was actually released on the 7^th

of September, it was over 30 days ago, and it could have been put in on

any one of those days before Monday of this week.

BATH:

But Mr Costello, you staked, on radio, your economic credibility on there

being a $700 million black hole. Treasury says there is not, so is your

Department wrong after eight and a half years as Treasurer?

TREASURER:

No, we say that the hole is over $2 billion. We say that when you fully

cost this policy, and you haven’t got a full costing because the Labor Party

didn’t put it in on time, that it doesn’t add up. When you have the whole

of the policy, it just doesn’t add up. Now, what Labor does is it has a

little bit here and a little bit there and he says: ‘oh look, don’t

look at the full package, just look at this little bit here.’ But until

you have the full package, you can’t assess whether or not something is

properly costed. When you assess this package as a whole, and you won’t

get it before tomorrow because Mr Crean deliberately didn’t put it in on

time…

BATH:

Mr Crean says that he put in things…

TREASURER:

…this policy doesn’t add up.

BATH:

… that you wanted costed.

TREASURER:

He has not. We wanted costed the participation dividend, the tax compliance,

the full working tax bonus, we wanted the GST changed – he put those

things in on Monday and there is no report on those things. It just hasn’t

come out. And he put it in on Monday for this reason that the cut off time

– as he well new – was Thursday of the week before. He tried to run

to the election before giving proper scrutiny, and here we are the day before

and Mr Crean has not had his full policy costed and the people of Australia

have not had the opportunity to look at it.

BATH:

So, is your Department right or wrong?

TREASURER:

Well the Department is still to report. The matters that show that there

is a hole, well over $2 billion, were put to the Department on Monday. There

is no report because Mr Crean knew that the cut off day was Thursday before.

I made this point on Monday, I made the point that Labor had now put itself

in a position where there could be no costing of its full policy and it

had done it deliberately so that it could try and skate to the election

without independent scrutiny and that is what it is trying to do. This is

a scandal. Mr Latham could have put this in for costing on the 7^th

of September. It is a scandal that he held back for 32 days and he wouldn’t

allow proper scrutiny of his policies going into this election.

BATH:

Alright Mr Costello, we will leave it there, good luck tomorrow. Thank

you.

TREASURER:

Thank you very much.