One Nation vows spending transparency but refuses to release policy costings

One Nation has vowed to create an online, real-time expenditure tracker as a way of revolutionising “the way that that budgets are done in this state” if elected, while refusing to release costings for its policy proposals before Victorian voters head to the polls.

Speaking on Monday, the party’s Victorian leader, Warren Pickering, criticised the financial records of the major parties and questioned the accuracy of the Parliamentary Budget Office, which is responsible for independently costing policy proposals.

One Nation recently came under scrutiny from the PBO for what the office found to be a massive underestimate of the cost of a group of policies.

Asked how voters could trust the minor party to deliver financially stable and transparent policies when it had refused to release costings and use the PBO, Pickering said the independent agency had been inaccurate over the past decade.

“We know there’s some great people at the PBO, but the reality is, when has one of their cost projections been accurate in the last decade?” he said.

“Why would we waste energy, effort and resources utilising a system that we know they don’t have access to everything they need?

“No, we won’t be engaging in that until we have an opportunity to blow the books open ourselves and revolutionise the way that that budgets are done in this state.”

The PBO was established in 2018 to provide all MPs with independent expertise, including policy costings around elections. It acts as the state’s fiscal umpire and is staffed by economists and researchers who use financial modelling systems and can access public service information, making its predictions comparable to government costings.

One Nation has had access to PBO services since its MP Rikkie-Lee Tyrell was elected to the upper house in 2022.

Asked about Pickering’s comments, Parliamentary Budget Officer Xavier Rimmer encouraged all parties to make use of the office’s unique insights.

“While there are alternatives to the PBO’s election costing service, only the PBO’s service combines expertise and independence, with comparability across parties,” Rimmer said.

One Nation’s refusal to release costings for its policies raises major questions ahead of an election in which debt is a major concern for voters and a threat to the state’s prosperity.

Last month, One Nation was forced to clarify its costings for proposed family policies after PBO costings commissioned by the Liberal Party found they could blow out by more than $500 million.

One Nation deputy leader Colleen Harkin initially told reporters the party’s plan to cover out-of-pocket pregnancy expenses for women in public hospitals, give $2000 payments to pregnant mothers in the private system and provide two $150 sport vouchers for school-aged children every year would cost $136 million over a four-year term.

But at the request of the Liberal Party, the PBO independently costed the plan at $688.7 million – $553 million more than One Nation’s estimate. The independent costings showed the sports voucher policy alone would be likely to cost taxpayers $471.3 million.

The figures prompted Harkin to revise her position, telling The Australian the estimate was per year, not over four years. This would still create a $144.7 million shortfall on the PBO costings.

Pickering said on Monday that the party would not be making any costings public because it first wanted to conduct an audit of the government’s finances.

“We believe that the books are sufficiently cooked to warrant a full investigation,” he said. “Now, having done that, we will then resource, allocate according to need.”

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