Ken Henry's estimates grilling: senatorial wheel spinning
Wednesday, 22 October 2008
Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:-
Stephen Conroy, representing Wayne Swan, was there first ... until Treasury officials joined him at the last moment followed, eventually, by Henry himself.
Treasury Dep Sec David Gruen read a fascinating opening statement – if you’re fascinated by such things -- on the current economic environment and the pointlessness of trying to produce meaningful and useful forecasts during a crisis of unprecedented size and speed.
This confirmed what we’d previously heard from Laura Tingle in The AFR – that there were no Treasury forecasts – not even preliminary ones – that formed the basis of the Government’s bank guarantee and economic stimulus measures. Instead, Gruen explained, it was better to consider the likely risks to growth rather than wasting time trying to churn out forecasts that didn’t add anything useful to our understanding of the situation.
But bugger all that, the Coalition Senators wanted to get onto the point-scoring. Helen Coonan and Eric Abetz, at his officious best, led the charge, but that came a cropper against Henry, who seemed tired – surprisingly – and irritable at having to repeat himself every time a different combination of words was tried on him.