The final tally is in and some credit is finally due to the big political parties: we have had one of the most parsimonious campaigns of recent times.
Over the last five weeks, Labor has committed to just $12.1b of new spending over the Forward Estimates, and found offsets for all but $2.3b of it.
The Coalition has spent a whole lot more — $24.6b — but offset all but $700m.
However, the Coalition’s figures are clouded by unrebutted claims of costings blowouts due to their failure to submit them to Treasury. The biggest of these are an $800m overestimate of the interest savings from cancelling the NBN, a $300+m underestimate of the cost of its expanded education rebate, and a missing $500m in the final year of the Coalition’s proposed expansion in hospital bed numbers.
There’s also the Coalition’s failure to include the likely $100+m cost pa cost of its offshore processing centre. If correct, these would suggest the Coalition, similar to Labor, will increase the pressure on the Budget by about $2.4b over the next four years — plus whatever Nauru costs.
Even so, by the standards of previous elections, it’s a downright miserly outcome and testament to the change in Australian election culture wrought by Kevin Rudd when he famously declared “this reckless spending must stop” in 2007.
Indeed, after producing a further round of savings this week, the Coalition briefly look on track to go to the election having actually saved money — until they finally unveiled the extensive pork-barrelling and industry welfare the Coalition has committed to in the bush and to industry during the campaign.
Commitments like a “Biosecurity Flying Squad” (there’s your next Border Protection-style reality TV show right there), feral animal control and $250m worth of industry welfare in the Innovation portfolio chewed up the Coalition’s savings and sent them well into the red.
Labor has insisted all along that its spending is all fully offset but its refusal to identify specific savings against new spending means it has racked up over $2b in unfunded commitments, despite Julia Gillard’s declaration that Labor wouldn’t add anything to the Budget bottom line during the campaign.
Wayne Swan announced a final $95m in savings on Wednesday, mainly from carbon capture and storage funding, a well to which both sides have gone and drunk deeply during the course of the campaign.
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Go to the Crikey website for the full details of the released Labor and Liberal policies
This campaign wasn’t miserly. Hot-shots journos made it so.
What this campaign illustrates more than anything, is the inability of the ordinary punter to have any clear-sighted and untrammelled view and appreciation of the issues, which are profound, and which prejudiced journalists obscured. It was their bounden duty to clarify, but none managed to rise above their partisan prejudices.
Journalists, many of whom can’t actually write, made this campaign a dog’s breakfast, not the poor voters or even the benighted politicians.
Special mention for Labor’s most expensive single promise, the Parramatta-Epping rail link, which (a) linked federal Labor to the discredited state party (b) reminded voters that the link had been repeatedly promised and repeatedly cancelled (c) was so successful it formed the subject of a Coalition attack add.
Spend $2 billion to p*ss off Western Sydney, one of the critical areas for the election? I’d like to know which genius came up with this one…
And I still haven’t heard one journalist query why, when the Coalition have been bleating on for months about the debt blah blah, they then go ahead and commit another $30 Billion of spending – by savings I hear you chant? We’ll see won’t we? What poor underfunded struggling group of people are going to be even worse off? Pensioners? Carers? kids? Perhaps higher prescription costs? Increase the GST? Well, they didn’t say they wouldn’t? And was I the only one who heard Abbott say that he’d once again remove unfair dismissal protection for “small business”? I recall Howard saying prior to 2004, that it would only be for workplaces with 20 or less employees, only to up it to 100 after the election!
And of course how many so-called journalists pointed out, that the citizens of this country owe more money collectively on their plastic credit cards than the govt’s borrowed! Another reality ignored by the disgusting group who call themselves journalists!
If Abbott wins, don’t say you weren’t warned! I’ve joined the ABBA party – Anyone But Bloody Abbott!
I was having a hard time trying to discern why the boat people, budget deficit, and that entire line of thinking was even considered hot election topics, when largely people are more traditionally interested in ‘what is in it for me’. This is typically about keeping your family safe and secure, by keeping your job, having a top education for your kids, having enough money to house, feed and clothe your family and keeping them healthy. Yet no-one was looking at the election from this point of view and the strict examination of actual policy detail.
I was also trying to figure out why the messages from the Labour party were failing to find any traction, which I believe started when Rudd was PM and later Julia. When I started to scrutinise the media I realised with alarming fear that the MEDIA had set the agenda’s for this election in the weeks and months prior to the election and that the MEDIA had been deliberately using highly emotive, negative language in the reporting of anything Labour.
I also noted the highly emotional, almost hysterical, nature of the voting decisions people were making. It totally scarred the living daylights out of me. Something has got to be done to minimise the influence of the media during an election campaign. I fear any government who has been voted in by emotionally charged and ill-informed Australians. Australians as a whole deserve better than this.
Bernard, that is concerning, so the left is wrong and the right so lateral, your straight O.K. either your scary( but can I please have your dealers phone number) or lucid like me.