Professor Sinclair Davidson isn't surprised the Coalition is suspicious of the Treasury, which has performed badly under Labor: It was [Treasury secretary] Ken Henry who advocated the "Go early, go hard, go household" mantra that the first Rudd government adopted in its response to the GFC. The cash handout that was mostly saved, instead of being spent, was wasted money. The perfectly good school halls that were demolished only to be rebuilt made for fine Keynesian economics but poor policy... The 2010 budget papers provided an analysis "proving" that those economies that had adopted a "go early, go hard" approach to stimulus had performed well during the crisis. Unfortunately for Treasury I was able to show that the data in that analysis had been cherry-picked and there was no evidence to support the "go early, go hard" fiscal stimulus. During the 2010 mining tax debate Treasury - through the Henry review - advocated a massive tax that it didn't understand. This left the government arguing that banks would lend mining companies money on the basis of vague government promises. Treasury also didn't know how much tax the miners paid. They relied on an unpublished PhD student's paper to argue that miners paid 13 per cent in tax when public ATO data showed they paid close to 28 per cent... The minerals resource rent tax was expected to raise $2.4bn in 2013-14 but raised only $120 million. This is a consequence of the design features of the tax - again it appears that Treasury didn't understand how the tax would work. Yet the revenue forecasts were included in the budget and the money spent... While politically dishonest, it shouldn't have mattered much that the government fudged the books in an election year [2010]. The Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook should have corrected any government bias in the budget papers. But ... the PEFO made things worse... The PEFO forecast a deficit of $10.2bn for 2011-12. The actual figure came in at $43bn.