Costings semantics a 'smokescreen': oppn

The federal opposition has accused the government of creating a smokescreen by
attacking the coalition's election costings, rather than trying to deal with the
negative impact of a rampant Australian dollar.
The dollar briefly nudged above 99 US cents for the second time in five days on
Monday, and financial market analysts believe that parity for the first time since
it was floated in December 1983 is inevitable.
New data showing only modest growth in new home loan commitments was insufficient to
further fuel expectations of a near-term interest rate rise, causing a modest
pullback in the currency to 98.65 cents.
"(But) divergent Australian and US fundamentals are so stark that we think it's just
a matter of time before we push through parity," National Australia Bank's head of
research Peter Jolly said.
Opposition finance spokesman Andrew Robb told The Australian Online the government
should urgently consider a mini-budget to rein in its "reckless spending" which is
attributing to higher interest rates and in turn a higher dollar.
Treasurer Wayne Swan said such calls were "ridiculous" when the Mid-year Economic
and Fiscal Outlook is due before the end of the year.
"Mr Robb can carry on with this rubbish all he likes, we'll go on responsibly
managing the economy and getting back to surplus well before any major advanced
economy," a spokesperson for Mr Swan said.
But Mr Robb said while a rising dollar is good for those travelling to the US, it
was penalising manufacturers and farmers who export, and tourism operators.
"We've got nothing to celebrate if we're causing the exchange rate to be higher
because of poor government performance on the productivity and spending front," he
told ABC Radio.
Queensland independent Bob Katter agreed that parity, combined with interest rates
450 per cent higher than European rivals, risked destroying the metals and sugar
industry.
"Our country is going broke at a hundred miles an hour," Mr Katter told ABC radio.
In a joint statement with opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey, Mr Robb
vehemently denied that the coalition misrepresented the process surrounding the
verification of its election costings.
Fairfax media said documents showed the federal directors of the Liberal and
National parties signed a letter to Perth accounting firm WHK Howarth confirming its
work for the coalition was primarily "not of an audit nature".
This contradicted a claim by Mr Hockey on the day the costings were made public,
that Australia's fifth biggest accounting firm was "auditing" its books.
"This is a semantic argument about the definition and use of the word audit," Mr
Robb and Mr Hockey said in a statement.
"We absolutely stand by the veracity of our costings," they said.
Finance Minister Penny Wong accused the coalition of not telling the truth about the
nature of its costings.
"They weren't telling the truth in terms of their costings and we know that that led
to a $10.6 billion costings con job," she told ABC Radio.
"And they weren't telling the truth about the checks that they'd done that they
trumpeted about these costings."
But the opposition said Senator Wong's first noises in her new cabinet job were an
attempt to "score cheap and belated political points".



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