Greens push for separate Treasury unit to cost political promises

Tuesday 26th January 2016

The Green Party is pushing for the establishment of a new, independent unit within the Treasury that would cost political parties' new policies and improve the quality of public information ahead of elections.

In a state of the nation speech that invoked the iconic Labour Party leader Michael Joseph Savage while the Labour Party itself is out of Wellington at a caucus retreat, Greens' co-leader Metiria Turei challenged what she said was a widely held view that the Green Party's policies were "outlandish" or "too radical".

"We are the party of new ideas. We make no apology for that," she said, citing a range of policies from cycleways to home insulation funding that had come from the Greens and been adopted by both Labour and National governments.

"Ideas that are attacked as radical when the Greens propose them become conventional, sensible solutions very quickly when other parties adopt them" and that the Greens were in fact "a fairly conservative party" on environmental, economic and social issues.

It was the economic policies of the last 30 years, the intensification of dairying and the growth of inequality and child poverty that were radical, she said.

However, the Greens still got stick for the alleged cost of their policy proposals, despite getting them costed and audited.

To help address that and improve information ahead of elections, the Greens would write to every political party seeking support for creation of a Treasury unit akin to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, which would cost political party promises and release their conclusions when parties announced those policies.

If a party chose not to release a policy, the Treasury unit's work would still be available under the Official Information Act. The annual cost of the unit would be up to $2 million and a small price to pay for a better functioning democracy, Turei said.

Unlike the current process, where parties can request a Treasury costing, the process would not be routed through the Minister of Finance's office.

"We need a neutral, widely used umpire to cost policies so the public can access the information they need to make informed decisions."

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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