FREEDOM OF INFORMATION DOCS EXPOSE NEXT TRANCHE OF TREASURY POLITICISATION

24 July 2018

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 sees the nations 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 Labors announcement and theres 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 Labors 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 Labors announcement on 13 March this year and Scott Morrison should explain why. Treasury doesnt 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.

Treasurys 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 Morrisons choice for Treasury Secretary.

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

Mr Morrison thinks its 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.

Its just the latest in a growing list of examples of Scott Morrison and the Liberal Party politicising and attempting to wreck Treasurys reputation as Australias 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.