Rudd and Labor lied

There's only one political story in Australia today; Kevin Rudd and the ALP have been telling lies; the Sydney Morning Herald reports:

Labor's campaign is ''in tatters'', leader of opposition business Christopher Pyne has declared, as Labor defends its release of Treasury and Finance documents to claim there is a $10 billion black hole in Coalition savings.
The war of words over Labor's black hole claims escalated on Friday, with a defiant Treasurer Chris Bowen and Deputy Prime Minister Anthony Albanese insisting the government's claims were correct – despite the secretaries of Treasury and Finance taking the highly unusual step late on Thursday of publicly denying that they had examined opposition policies.

The scenario really is quite simple. Labor claims that Treasury has found a large black hole in the Coalition's election spending promises. But two of Australia's most senior public servants, Treasury Secretary Martin Parkinson and Finance Department Secretary David Tune have emphatically denied that; read on:

On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Martin Parkinson and Finance Department Secretary David Tune issued a public statement advising that neither had examined the opposition's policies, and any modelling used for costing government policies before the election could not credibly be applied to opposition policies.
The statement said that the departments had been asked by the government to cost various ''policy options'', and: ''at no stage prior to the caretaker period has either department costed opposition policies''.
Late on Thursday the head of the Parliamentary Budget Office, Phil Bowen, also weighed in to the political stoush, issuing a statement that advised: ''Unless all of the policy specifications were identical, the financial implications of the policy could vary markedly.''

There has been a huge backlash over here, and Labor is copping it big-time. If this was Kevin Rudd's magic bullet, all he's done is taken careful aim at Tony Abbott then shot himself in the foot.

We'll have more fallout tomorrow, but for now, it's dinner time!