The challenge of budget honesty

So will the Liberals provide some honest answers? In July, Mr Hockey said that if the PEFO figures were the same as those in previous budget updates “PEFO won’t be worth the paper it’s written on’. Last week, he went further, saying of Treasury costings, ‘These numbers just look stupid so we won’t be adding up our policies.’

These were such extraordinary statements from a would-be Treasurer that even Mr Abbott contradicted them, saying ‘The budget bottom line will be there for everyone to see.’ Yet while Mr Abbott is promising that his full suite of policies will be out in ‘plenty of time’ before the deadline, he is increasingly looking like a teenager preparing to pull an all-nighter to get the assignment done.

And now, the jig is up. In PEFO, Treasury has confirmed what the Government has been saying for months – that the forecasts in the budget and its updates reflect the best estimates of the experts. The Liberals no longer have the excuse that they’re waiting for PEFO. Now, let’s hope they’re finally willing to level with the Australian people about their tax rises and service cuts.

Because as much as Mr Abbott likes to talk about the laws he wants to repeal, he can’t repeal the laws of mathematics.