Nats coy about supporting law for independent policy-costing unit

National won’t yet say if it plans to support legislation to create an independent body to cost political parties’ policies before an election.

The Government announced it would create an Independent Fiscal Institution (IFI) in last year’s Budget.

A recently released Treasury discussion document revealed the Government intended to develop a bill to be introduced to Parliament this year.

Asked when the bill would be introduced, a spokesman for Finance Minister Grant Robertson said: “These are matters that are under consideration as part of the Budget process, so we can’t comment.”

Establishing the IFI would require changes to the Public Finance Act. But National finance spokeswoman Amy Adams would not commit to it supporting changes to the legislation, as too little detail was available. But she was “a little sceptical” about what the Government aimed to achieve.

“While I remain open-minded at this stage, the more we go into it, the more we realise there are a lot of unanswered questions.

“Until the Government can fill in some of those blanks, it’s impossible for us to reach a view.”

The role of the IFI would be to independently cost political party policies to make sure they could feasibly be paid for.

“Recent elections have seen a significant focus on fiscal policy and the cost of election platforms,” the Treasury document said.

A notable example of this was last election’s $11.7 billion “fiscal hole” saga, whereby National claimed Labour’s policy numbers did not add up. Labour rejected this and spent weeks explaining its policy costings.

The Treasury document said providing consistent costings to all parties would enable a higher level of public scrutiny and improve the debate of election promises.

Many countries have such a body and a New Zealand IFI was recommended by the OECD in 2017. At the moment, political parties can request Government departments to cost their policies as long as they have the Finance Minister’s approval.