This use of the National Broadband Network was the centrepiece of the party's campaign launch on Monday.
And the department is also demanding further information on Labor's proposed sale of radio spectrum as the government heads to tomorrow's poll with several promises that have not been independently costed. The government is running late with the submission of several policies, with six worth a total of $233 million filed yesterday, six days after the deadline had passed.
The $146m paid parental leave policy for fathers, announced yesterday, has not been submitted and is unlikely to be costed before the polls open tomorrow.
Coalition finance spokesman Andrew Robb yesterday queried the funding for this policy.
"Where is the money being sourced from?" he said.
The government has attacked the Coalition's refusal to abide by the Charter of Budget Honesty, with none of its policies submitted to Treasury and the Finance Department for costing since August 9. The Coalition objected to an alleged leak of a Treasury assessment of the savings it claimed from scrapping the NBN.
When Labor was in opposition before the 2007 election, it submitted its policies so late that 135 were untested by Treasury before polling day. The Coalition had nine policies that were unverified.
This year, the government met the Treasury deadline for the bulk of its policies, although 19 were submitted at the last moment of 5.30pm last Friday.
Included among these was the $342m electronic health policy, which was announced by Julia Gillard at Labor's campaign launch on Monday.
The policy would provide Medicare rebates for online consultation with doctors in remote, rural and outer-suburban areas.
The Finance Department said it needed further information before the policy could be costed. It provided the same response to the government's plan to raise $200m from the sale of radio spectrum in 2012-13.
A spokesman for the department said last night the government had responded to its request on the e-health policy, but not on the sale of radio spectrum.
Policies the government has provided late include its $40m plan to support private sector investment in renewable energy, $8m for a football stadium in western Sydney, $80m to pay for local councils and community organisations to improve energy efficiency, $10m to improve children's financial literacy, and a $45m funding cut to the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute.
Of the 102 savings and spending promises made by the government, only its "cash for clunkers" policy has been materially challenged by Treasury and the Finance Department.
The government claimed that its plan to offer a $2000 rebate to people selling their pre-1995 vehicles for scrap would cost $394.2m.
However, the department of finance costed it at $429.7m, arguing that the cap on the scheme of 200,000 vehicles would be reached.
The department also commented that all but 35,000 of these vehicles would have been sold for scrap anyway without the scheme, putting the cost of reducing the pre-1995 fleet at $12,250 per vehicle.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): David Uren
Quelle/Source: The Australian, 20.08.2010
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