bureaucrats expose alp's biggest crisis

Hahahahaaa it's all blown up in the face of Rudd, Wong and Bowen.


Bureaucrats expose ALP's biggest crisis by: Dennis Shanahan, Political Editor From: The Australian August 30, 2013 12:00AM

TREASURY has been subjected to a lot of ridicule and criticism from the Coalition over costings and budget forecasts. But last night Treasury head Martin Parkinson and David Tune at the Department of Finance signalled a line had been crossed.
Two of the nation's most senior public servants had been placed in an impossible position by Labor's wilful misuse of confidential briefings. They had to act. Stepping out from behind the normal veil of government, Parkinson and Tune did precisely what strong public servants should do in the caretaker period - calling out Labor's misrepresentation for what it was.

Kevin Rudd now faces the biggest crisis of the election campaign - on an issue of truthfulness, trust and economic competence - after Treasury, Finance and the Parliamentary Budget Office exposed the government's politically fraudulent and desperate attempt to frame Tony Abbott for a "$10 billion fraud". Early yesterday, the Prime Minister accused the Liberal leader of fraud, and questioned his "truthfulness" based on "independent" Treasury and Finance Department costings of the Coalition's promises. Rudd, Chris Bowen and Penny Wong stood shoulder to shoulder and declared "Treasury, Department of Finance and Deregulation and PBO figures released this morning have exposed a $10bn hole in the savings claimed by the Coalition yesterday".

Taking the "serious step" of releasing the "independent figures", the three cited "Treasury figures" and a "minute from the Department of Finance", which Rudd said showed that, within 24 hours of the Liberal costings' release, government agencies had identified a $10bn hole. But for Labor the far more damaging revelation was to come: Parkinson and Tune effectively repudiated the government's use of their early estimates and disclosed that their departments had not made any analysis of the Liberal policies "prior to the election being called".

"At no stage prior to the caretaker period has either department costed opposition policies," they said in an unprecedented public statement.

The PBO later added its own condemnation of the way Labor had purported to release opposition policies costed by the independent office. The government was caught in its own "pea and thimble" trick, stitching together old reports and comparing apples with oranges to conclude Abbott was a fraud. Rudd's attempts to portray Abbott in a particular way have backfired and it is the Prime Minister's truthfulness that is now in question. This response to the Liberal policies is reminiscent of the last days of the Keating government, when then treasurer Ralph Willis got caught flogging false documents about Liberal plans, supposedly from Victorian premier Jeff Kennett. It was a singular moment of humiliation for a dying government.

Read more at : http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/bureaucrats-expose-alps-biggest-crisis/story-e6frg75f-1226706989599