Oppn audit goes further than Swan plan

THE federal opposition says its proposed commission of audit and other processes will go further than Treasurer Wayne Swan's new policy costing plan.

Mr Swan proposed on Friday that the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) provide, 30 days after the September election, a detailed report on the costings of all parties' policies.

He says the independent report would ensure the coalition would be "caught out" if they try to fudge their costing figures.

However, shadow assistant treasurer Senator Matthias Cormann told AAP on Friday Mr Swan's effort to turn up the heat on the coalition was "laughable".

"Wayne Swan couldn't turn up the heat on a barbecue let alone over coalition policy costings," Senator Cormann said.

He said the coalition was committed to increased transparency of policy costings post-election because "unlike the Labor Party we have nothing to fear from it".

"We will stick to our timetable and to our methodical and structured processes when it comes to the release of our costings pre-election and to ensure we have cut all the Labor waste out of the budget post-election," he said.

"Obviously the job of the commission of audit is much broader than what Wayne Swan has announced as part of his latest bit of political spin today."

Senator Cormann said the coalition had had a large number of policies costed by the PBO to date and would submit more over the next few months.

"Obviously we can't make final judgments on our pre-election costings until we know what the true position of the budget is, which we won't know until Treasury and Finance have released the pre-election fiscal outlook (PEFO)," he said.

"Given Wayne Swan's past untrustworthy performance, no reasonable person could expect us to rely on his budget numbers to finalise our pre-election costings."

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