During the caretaker period for a general election, parliamentary parties and independent parliamentarians can request costings of their publicly announced election policies. The PBO publish these requests, complete the analysis and publicly release the costing responses as soon as possible, as per our legislation.

The Charter of Budget Honesty Act 1998 outlines arrangements under which the Secretaries of the Treasury and the Department of Finance (Finance) may be requested to cost election commitments during the caretaker period for a general election. Caretaker costings completed by Treasury and Finance are available at www.electioncostings.gov.au.