The markets did not plummet last week. There was no flight of foreign capital. The long-term bond rate did not go through the roof. There was no sudden sell-off of government bonds. This rather surprised me, because I thought all those things would have been inevitable after the Opposition leaked the details of proposals for budget cuts to the public at large. For so long we have been told that deliberations of the Treasury and Department of Finance (and indeed all departments) must be kept secret in the national interest.
We have been told that budgetary deliberations must be kept secret until Budget day because the markets could toy with the information to the national detriment. Well, last week’s leaks should have put paid to that nonsense. The floor did not fall in. Besides, the markets toy with us anyway _ Budget leaks or not. Rather than the Opposition leaking this information, surely the Government should be publishing it as a routine part of the Budget process. Who paid the bureaucrats to piece the material together? Whose information is it, anyway? It’s the public’s.
Only someone versed in perverse bureaucratic logic would argue that it is in the public interest to keep publicly funded information from the public. We know in whose interest it is to keep the Department of Finance’s Budget-cuts deliberations secret _ government politicians. It is not in the public interest. Indeed, to the contrary. Last week’s expose was to the general good. It has helped expose the corruption of the modern Budget process. Budgeting is no longer about raising and spending for the general good. Rather it is about bribing various classes of voters with various goodies from the government trough.
When this list is laid bare by the three economic departments of course it is embarrassing. The three departments _ Treasury, Finance and Prime Minister and Cabinet _ are saying here’s a list of expenditure items (bribes for voters) that we think are unnecessary. Each item is unnecessary because it is money for people who do not need or deserve it or because it is ineffective, but no doubt each item is helpful in getting the government elected. Surely, if all these expenditure items were just and sound the Government would have no difficulty in defending them or the public would see their self-evident worth and the leak would be of no consequence. The political damage of the leak should not have been that the naughty Opposition got some information from a naughty public servant, but that there are such a huge number of expenditure items that three departments say can be chopped. The issue goes wider than merely the Budget preparation, though Budget time _ cloudy in secrecy _ does present an interesting challenge to leakers and a leakees. The question of the necessity of secrecy of government deliberation goes across all fields of government except, perhaps, defence. We have seen in the past week that the sky did not fall in upon the publication of deliberative processes in what have been told is the very sensitive field of budget framing. Is there any ground for secrecy in any other field of government? Presumably not. Openness can only improve government and indeed might help the government of the day. In the Budget context, people might think: “”Gosh, what a difficult task the Government has choosing which to cut of all those eminently worthwhile programs. I don’t envy them at all.” There might be community sympathy, perhaps applause, for a government willing to do the task openly. And having seen the job done in the open, the public might be less willing to listen to the pressure groups after the event. However, if the Budget process and other processes are to continue in secrecy of course people will be suspect when the Government pulls the decision out of a hat. Freedom of Information Acts around the country generally give exemptions for documents that reveal the deliberative process of government on the spurious ground that exposure would prevent public servants giving advice with candour. Nonsense. Secrecy breeds a lack of candour. Openness breeds honesty. The publication of departmental pre-Budget advice to the voters at large should be an annual event. After all, it’s our