Treasury released more information than it meant to in response to an FoI request from the media. Photo: Michelle Kroll.
Jim Chalmers might be all hunky-dory publicly about his department’s stuff up in emailing the media sensitive information, but inside the Treasurer knows this is extremely embarrassing for the Federal Government and is something that should never have happened.
Behind the scenes, there have been a lot of angry demands of Treasury over who, what, why and how the hell it actually did take place.
To recap, Treasury’s incoming government brief to Labor following its re-election in May contained advice that taxes need to go up if the government has any hope of fixing the budget.
More taxes, less spending was the general theme of the document.
The advice also states quite clearly that Labor’s pledge to build 1.2 million homes over five years simply would not be met.
We know this because the ABC made a Freedom of Information request on the briefing papers, which is a routine thing for many media organisations following an election.
It’s also a given that a department’s response to FoI requests usually (always) means a lot of redactions so as not to distribute what it deems to be sensitive and confidential information.
What’s not routine, however, is the department leaving intact the subheadings and contents listings of those redacted passages – and then emailing them to the media requesting the FoI papers.
That’s what Treasury did, alerting the ABC to much more of its advice to the government than it wanted in the public domain.
Reeling from the mistake, the department quickly asked the ABC to ignore and delete that email and instead use a follow-up document (with headings etc more fully redacted).
The ABC refused that request and decided to publish the original information in the public interest – and more power it.
That left the government having to explain exactly what taxes and just how many houses are actually going to go up.
And why is Treasury so pessimistic about the state of the budget?
As stuff ups go, this one is quite comical (in a serious kind of way).
It’s not hard to imagine some under-pressure Treasury officer thoroughly deleting info and maybe feeling somewhat smug about not giving the media what it really wants, and then (after who knows how many checks), sending it off with “too much” info anyway.
The Treasurer is playing it down.
“What’s happened here is a Treasury official has sent those documents in error. That sort of thing happens from time to time,” Dr Chalmers said after the story broke.
“I’m pretty relaxed about it, to be honest, because of course Treasury provides advice for incoming governments and no government typically goes into the detail of that.”
Except this is advice that the government is spending too much, that one of its flagship programs is going to fall over, and that taxes need to go up.
That’s not a message any government would want out there in voter land.
It does explain the Treasurer’s recent “openness” to reviewing the tax system in next month’s productivity roundtable.
But that’s not enough to give credence to a theory being bandied about that the accidental disclosure wasn’t really that accidental.
This is too embarrassing for the government for it to have been some hare-brained scheme to get the public used to the idea their taxes might be raised.
It has allowed the Opposition to go on the offensive over what the government is really up to and what it’s hiding from the nation.
And it took the oxygen out of much of the “good news” over the start to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s China visit this week.
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley says the PM and his Treasurer are not being up front with Australians.
“I wish Anthony Albanese well on his six-day visit to China. But when he gets back to Australia, he’s got some explaining to do,” Ms Ley said on Monday (14 July).
“What is his plan to increase taxes on Australians? Because the advice that his government has received has clearly told them that that is what they need to do…
“The Prime Minister and the Treasurer have received advice after the election that tells them that they won’t build 1.2 million homes in five years, that the budget is straining, that the budget is weak, that the structure of the budget needs repair, and they haven’t been honest with the Australian people.
“So while Jim Chalmers is giving one message about everything is fine and we’re in good shape and looking ahead, everything is great, what they’re actually hearing from Treasury, the official advice is that that’s not the case.”
As public service administrative bungles go, this is quite a doozy.
The Opposition Leader knows it, the Australian public knows it, and so do the Treasurer and the PM.
And the ABC knew it the moment it got those hastily redacted documents from Treasury.
