Tuesday 18 March 2014

HOCKEY MISLEADS THE PARLIAMENT ON BUDGET - All News - Chris Bowen - Federal Member for McMahon -

HOCKEY MISLEADS THE PARLIAMENT ON BUDGET - All News - Chris Bowen - Federal Member for McMahon -



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HOCKEY MISLEADS THE PARLIAMENT ON BUDGET


Posted March 18, 2014



The
Treasurer has misled the Parliament in a sloppy attempt to explain how
much the underlying economic assumptions in the Mid-Year Economic and
Fiscal Outlook have blown out the budget deficits by.
Today in Question Time I asked the Treasurer a simple question:

I
refer the Treasurer to the Government’s decision to depart from
long-standing Budget conventions in its Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal
Outlook by changing the underlying economic assumptions in that
document.

Can the Treasurer advise the House how much this Government decision added to the Budget deficit?

The Treasurer said in part:
HOCKEY:
The fact is, the fact is the forecasts that were presented in MYEFO did
not have forecasts presented to us under the alternative scenario
presented to Labor. So therefore you cannot have a number that is the
difference, you clown. You cannot work it out, because the numbers that
were presented were on the forecast presented by the Treasury now
.
Wrong.
You don’t even need to ‘work it out’, it states clearly in MYEFO what
the impact of the change in economic assumptions are:
“The
change in the projections assumption for the unemployment rate
increases the number of unemployment benefit recipients in the
projection period, and contributes $3.7 billion to the deterioration in the budget bottom line since the 2013 PEFO over the forward estimates.
“In
addition, changes to the terms of trade methodology reduce nominal GDP
growth over the projection period, and contribute to the deterioration
in the budget bottom line by reducing tax receipts by around $2.0 billion over the forward estimates since the 2013 PEFO.”
[Pages 29-30, Part 3: Fiscal Outlook, 2013-14 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook]




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