Labor have been forced to reissue their election policy costings after releasing them with half a dozen unnoticed errors, in what the Liberals have labelled the “most embarrassing campaign failure of the last two decades”.
Labor Treasurer Shane Broad made the document that allows for $1.7 billion in election promises over the next four years public on Thursday, just two days before Saturday’s state election, with mismatching ‘Capital savings and reprofiling’ numbers.
Liberal Treasurer Michael Ferguson said the “humiliating budget disaster” was the “greatest work of fiction since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”.
“How can Labor expect to keep control of the state’s budget if it has to make significant changes to its official costings document after being caught out having numbers that don’t add up,” he said.
“$2 billion in promises are missing from Labor’s costings, including the $400 per household energy rebate … free school lunches … 60 additional police and firefighters … new Child care centres [and] housing promises.”
“Dr Broad does admit he is planning more than $2 billion in cuts, including a cut to health services of $172.9m.”
Broad said the updated costing brochure, which includes more than $2 billion in ‘savings, offsets and reprofiling’, shows what can be achieved by “focusing on the right priorities”.
“We will return the budget to a small surplus by 2027-28 by focusing spending in the areas that matter,” he said.
“That means less waste on consultants, less waste on travel and it means changing the fact the government currently spends four times as much on ads to promote itself as it does on childcare.”
“We’ll also be investing in services, like regional hospitals, that will save money elsewhere. If we can treat more patients close to where they live, that means less cost at our major hospitals.”
Broad is reportedly attributing the initial document oversight to a ‘software error’.
