It costs how much? Costings have once again become a debacle for Tony Abbott, after official Treasury figures found a whopping $7 billion — with talk it could be as high as $10.6 billion — hole in Coalition policies.
Despite the “end the waste”, “stop the debt” slogans, the budget would be improved by somewhere between $860 million – $4.5 billion, not the $11.5 billion promised by Abbott.
The figures emerged when the three independents gained access to official Treasury costings documents. With the independents noting that the economy and economic management were amongst their key concerns, how will this play out?
So far, they seem unimpressed. Tony Windsor told ABC “‘We probably understand now why he wasn’t interested in releasing the numbers and so I think we all await an explanation of where these significant differences are in terms of interpretation.”
If you want to do a little compare and contrast for yourself, you can view the Coalition’s costings here [PDF] and Labor’s costings here [PDF].
But is this a vote-changer? Here’s how the pundits reported the news.
The Australian
Dennis Shanahan and Lanai Vasek: Treasury finds $7bn hole in Tony Abbott’s costings
Treasury added that if some of the assumptions that the Coalition had used to come up with the figure did not hold up, the net benefit of its policies could be as low as $500 million.
The Age
Michelle Grattan and Carol Nader: $7bn hole in Abbott’s policy costings
The figures have dealt a blow to Mr Abbott’s hopes of securing the support of the rural independents to form the next Australian government on the grounds of being a responsible economic manager.
Sydney Morning Herald
Phillip Coorey: Treasury wipes $10b off Lib costings
The Coalition is wrangling with Treasury over discrepancies in its policy costings believed to total up to $10.6 billion.
Herald Sun
Phillip Hudson: $10b Treasury blow to Opposition Leader Tony Abbott
Tony Abbott’s budget credibility was under fire last night with Treasury saying there was an error of up to $10.6 billion in his election promises.
The Green / Labor alliance was as securer bet as death and taxes. Seeing slimy Swan bow to the independents last week and to Bob Brown yesterday made my skin crawl.
The minority result will be good for Government and process, but if Abbott is PM, Labor will self implode and it will be ugly. They know that and Gillard has approval to do whatever it takes.
It is interesting Rudd is staying low. There can be no effective Government with him the poison / get square man in cabinet.
what was Peter Costello’s comment about Abbott’s economic credentials?
was it something about not being able to trust him with the penny jar?
no, that was the other bloke
remind me again which member of the Opposition was an accountant – was it Joe?
Barnaby? really?
Big blow for the Coalition. You can’t “stop the waste” or “stop the debt” if a) your own economic management is a bit dodgy; and b) you went to great and transparently deceptive lengths to prevent this from becoming publicly known. Unless photos of Gillard eating the babies of aspirational voters appear over the next few days, she’ll probably get the nod from the independents (no matter how much they’re holding their noses. The true test is going to be how well Labor can push their agenda, whilst mollifying the independent’s hobby horses. Mind you, the parliamentary reform hobby horse is one Australia is going to be glad is mollified.
I cannot help but think that there is more to this.
If there was a black hole in the Coalition numbers, but they were still better than Labours figures, why hide them? It doesn’t make sense because no matter how you spin it according to these Treasury run numbers, Australia would have been better off.
I think there is something dodgier still in the Coalition’s Damn Lies and Statistics story. I can not help but think that not all of their election promises were made made public. Possibly more to their agenda than they were prepared to discuss prior to the election?
It’s hilarious to listen to Joe Hockey lying his barge ass off this morning how the Coalition couldn’t access the same data the Government had prior to the election
Under the Charter of Budget Honesty Act 1998 ,the Treasury and Department of Finance release a Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook (PEFO) about week after the writs for this general election was called that updated to the fullest extent possible, all decisions taken by the Government before the issue of the writ and recalculated wherever necessary all economic forecasts based on the March Quarter National Accounts.
Toxic Tony and Joe Fat Back simply made a conscious to neither rework their own figures based on the Treasury update and nor submit those figures to Treasury under the Charter of Budget Honesty lest the mistakes and flat out lies were exposed prior to the election
Even more cynically though, the coalition indeed use the updated figures from the PEFO to attack both the Government and Treasury over the improvement in the budget bottom line in the update that flowed mostly projected higher commodity prices
THIS IS WHY TONY WINDSOR KNOWS WE CANT TRUST THEM
Toxic Tony’s nauseating negativity, devious duplicity and systematic smear campaign is finally coming back to haunt him.