Mr SOMLYAY —My question is also directed to the Treasurer. Has the Treasurer seen reports that there is some opposition to the introduction of a charter of budget honesty? What is he doing to answer such opposition?

Mr COSTELLO —The object of the charter of budget honesty, a measure that we announced during the election campaign and a measure which we will introduce as a government, is to ensure by legislation that government accounts are clean, transparent and disclose to the Australian people the true state of the books.

We would hope that there would be bipartisan support for a charter of budget honesty on both sides of the House. It was for that reason that I was intrigued to read in the West Australian newspaper on Saturday, 20 April a story by Randall Markey of an interview with the now Leader of the Opposition. It said:

He rejected Mr Howard's promise to introduce a charter of budget honesty requiring the government to throw open its books before an election to avoid political manipulation.

But what really interested me was the reason he gave as to why he was against the charter of budget honesty. The Leader of the Opposition said, `The Treasury is straight; the politicians are not.' A moment of self-realisation from the Leader of the Opposition—`The Treasury is straight; the politicians are not.' During the whole of the campaign, at his disposal, at his fingertips, was the opportunity to ring the Treasury and to have the Treasury disclose to him what it disclosed to the Prime Minister and me on the Monday after the election. He refused to do it. Instead, he went throughout that campaign maintaining that there was a surplus and that there would be a surplus for years to come.

It is to stop that kind of behaviour, it is to make sure that that kind of deceit is not practised in the future, that this government will introduce by legislation a charter of budget honesty so that the Australian people know the situation before an election begins and so that elections can be conducted on the basis of the facts and not on the basis of deceit, as governments in the past have sought to do.