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2010-08-27

An independent budget office and policy analysis

Comments on Sinclair Davidson “Replace this partisan treasury with an independent budget office”, 27/08/2010, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/commentary/replace-this-partisan-treasury-with-an-independent-budget-office/story-e6frgd0x-1225910613675
The state of play has not been satisfactory over the past years.

Bureaucrats are supposed to have dual roles: giving independent advice and serving the government of the day.

It is difficult to be completely independent when the government of the day is your master.

Further, inevitably, many government policy proposals may come from bureaucrats in some sort of version and they have a natural bias and hence thus they have a conflict of interest at hand when do costing of the major parties policy costings.

Also, government has the advantage of using bureaucrats and opposition parties don’t have.

In sort, it is the institutional setting that results in natural advantages and disadvantages to the government and the opposition parties and the natural biases and conflicts of bureaucrats.

Ideally, there should be a much more independent agency to do the costings and scrutinise government policies in general. A Parliamentary Budget Office or the sort may be the way to go.

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