Our closest neighbour has one, which might be a possible model if New Zealand chose to introduce a similar watchdog.
The Herald interviewed Sam Reinhardt, who runs the Australian Parliamentary Budget Office (APBO), to find out more.
“The Parliamentary Budget Office in Australia focuses primarily on doing costings for Opposition parties,” Reinhardt said from Canberra.
“Any member of Parliament, including Government members, can request costings as well. That happens all through the parliamentary term.
“And then at the end of the parliamentary term, just after an election, we release an election commitments report, which has all the costings for commitments made in the election.”
A report then summarises those costings in terms of their overall fiscal impact for each party.
The APBO was set up in 2012.
In the last parliamentary term, it did more than 2500 costings.
“Some of those are really straightforward and can be turned around quite quickly. Others require us to completely build a new model if they’re quite innovative ideas or they’re not sort of incremental changes on the current system.”
Reinhardt says in some ways, the office has been a victim of its own success.
A recent independent review found the office “has matured into a highly regarded, credible and authoritative source of assistance on Budget costings, analysis and the understanding of fiscal developments”.
The report, presented to MPs, said: “Across Members of Parliament, the APS, the independent experts and members of the media, the message was consistent – the PBO is held in high esteem, its work is regarded as insightful and highly credible, and it is seen as making a major contribution to better policy-making in the interests of all Australians.”
But it pointed out the rising demand for PBO assistance cannot be met from its current budget.
“Unless this is addressed, and addressed quickly, the support provided to parliamentarians will decline in terms of both quantity and quality.”
The popularity of the independent office is at odds with the reluctance in New Zealand to establish one.
A nine-year battle to establish an independent costings unit was shot down by New Zealand First and Act last year.
Former Finance Minister Ruth Richardson (left) and former Prime Minister Helen Clark are both supportive of an independent costings unit. Graphic / Paul Slater
Former Finance Minister Ruth Richardson has called for a Office for Budget Responsibility, like the one in the United Kingdom.
Across the political divide, former Prime Minister Helen Clark agrees.
Reinhardt, who has been in the role for nearly two years and previously worked at Treasury, said juggling the workload for a relatively small organisation is always a challenge.
“We actually have a prioritisation framework online which parliamentarians can see,” she said.
“Because of the confidentiality of our work, we don’t talk to anyone about any of the individual costings, but we are going to work on how do we make sure we communicate really regularly with our parliamentarians about where their particular request is up to, because as the demand has grown substantially, we have to do more of that prioritisation.”
They also carry out quite a bit of research and provide an educational role of sorts, providing information to MPs and Senators on how to understand the Budget, how to read the Budget and producing analytical or educational reports.
In New Zealand, some of the criticism of the idea is how to ensure any costings unit is strictly independent.
“The way we were set up under our legislation, we worked to a parliamentary committee, and that’s a joint standing committee … made up of both Senate and Reps members from across Government,” Reinhardt said.
“We present our work programme to that committee and I appear before them regularly to talk through the work we’re undertaking.
“That committee then has the ability after each election to call for a review of the PBO, and they appoint someone to undertake that review.”
The estimates are not shared between parties, or even individual MPs.
“In some cases, we might be doing similar costings for people from the same party and they may not always be aware of it, but we treat that confidential confidentiality aspect very, very seriously.”
It’s not compulsory for parties to get their policies costed.
“At this stage for Australia, we’re in the early stages of the parliamentary cycle, we’ll often have very large requests … you might have 16 options in this particular area of the tax system or the health system or the education system,” Reinhardt said.
The unit will then work through, with parties, on why particular assumptions are being made.
“We have a very strong, clear idea that we aren’t providing policy advice, so it is just factual information.”
Recent costing advice to MPs includes the cost of property investor tax breaks and the cost of increasing the size of Parliament.
Any advice for New Zealand?
“For us, the big things are that we have really good access to data and models, from departments,” Reinhardt said.
“We’re a relatively small organisation. And that kind of organisation costing everything from health, education, tax, social security, that’s a huge number of areas, we couldn’t do it with such a small group of people without access to the data and models from departments.”
“So, the things to consider are what is useful for New Zealand, what’s the gap, what are the things that parliament will find most useful.”
Katie Bradford is a Senior Correspondent at the Herald. She has been a broadcast journalist for over 20 years and was based in the press gallery for 10 years. She specialises in politics, business and Auckland issues.