FREEDOM OF INFORMATION DOCS

Documents released by Treasury under FOI late on Friday afternoon are the latest example of the lengths that Scott Morrison will go to politicise the Treasury.

 

This is what Scott Morrison see’s the nation’s preeminent economic policy agency as – his personal play thing, there or no other reason to trot out talking points in his latest shrill attack on Labor policy.

 

There is now no excuse for Scott Morrison not to release all of the Treasury advice and documents done on dividend imputation refundability.

 

This FOI release of documents is clear evidence that Treasury did work on dividend imputation refundability before Labor’s announcement and there’s a decent chance – as evidenced by the s47C exemption being sought – that the Turnbull Government has previously considered reforms in this area.

 

This is very similar to what Scott Morrison did on negative gearing, where he commissioned Treasury work on Labor’s reform to negative gearing but then flatly ignored it, preferring slogans over policy substance.

 

The ‘distributional analysis paper’ on dividend imputation paper was clearly put together by Treasury prior to Labor’s announcement on 13 March this year and Scott Morrison should explain why. Treasury doesn’t put together a distributional analysis for the fun of it.

 

That paper shows the tremendous growth of refundability over the years, “from $1.9 billion in 2005-06 to $5.9 billion in 2014-15”.

 

Treasury’s analysis shows massive franking credit refunds going to self-managed super funds with high balances: “more than two-thirds of refunds to SMSFs are to those whose fund balance per member is greater than $1 million”.

 

These documents are yet more evidence of the unsuitability of Scott Morrison’s choice for Treasury Secretary.

 

The documents show that Mr Gaetjens was the coordination point for Mr Morrison in putting together material to attack Labor’s dividend imputation policy.

 

Mr Morrison thinks it’s appropriate that Mr Gaetjens is putting together the ‘Red Book’ on Labor policy an incoming Labor government is supposed to trust to implement this policy.

 

It’s just the latest in a growing list of examples of Scott Morrison and the Liberal Party politicising and attempting to wreck Treasury’s reputation as Australia’s preeminent economic policy department.

 

It will inevitably fall to a future Labor Government to restore the Treasury to its rightful place as a central policy agency.