Election day is very nearly upon us and today the Coalition is vowing to improve the budget bottom line by 14 billion dollars over the forward estimates. At the centre of the Coalition's policy costings is a 17-billion-dollar cut to the public service and a proposed vaping tax.
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TVTranscript
00:00The Coalition releasing its costings. We've got two days to go before the polls come to
00:10an end on Saturday. As is traditional, these things come late in the peace. The Coalition
00:15making a virtue of the fact it says its budget over the four year forwards will be $14 billion
00:22better off. Now the surprise is that in the first two years it'll actually be $8 billion
00:28worse than Labor's proposed budget trajectory and that's in large part to two things. One is
00:35the fuel excise discount, the $0.25 a litre cut that Peter Dutton is promising and also a $1,200
00:43tax offset for low and medium income earners. Both of those things have come at some cost
00:51and that's the reason the Coalition's budget deficits will be larger in the short term,
00:57in the near term over that two year period. Angus Taylor, the Treasurer, is arguing that
01:02he is solving essentially for two budgets. One is the household budget, which is under
01:07pressure from cost of living. The second is the Commonwealth's budget, which is a longer
01:11term proposition he's suggesting. Certainly from today's numbers it's clear that the Coalition
01:17has raised the white flag on a surplus in the next four years. That's not a promise they
01:22are taking to the electorate. They are however suggesting that they've done the work. Here's
01:27what the shadow Treasurer had to say earlier.
01:32This is the biggest improvement in the budget position since the current costing conventions
01:39were put in place almost 15 years ago and outside of the time when Labor decided to impose
01:45$389 billion dollars of economy wrecking taxes. We know that if productivity and growth were
01:52to get back to where they should get back to, and to where they historically have been but
01:57not under Labor, we'll see a faster improvement than what we've laid out here.
02:02So, Jacob, has there been a response from the Government?
02:06There certainly has, and among the things they're saying is picking up on what Angus Taylor said
02:12at the end of that grab, which is the assertion that one of the Coalition's aims is to lift
02:19productivity growth back to 1.5 per cent. There is no detail in the budget costings about how
02:27that's done in practice. Industrial relations is one area which might have some levers for
02:32the Coalition, but there's no descriptions there about how they might lift that. But
02:37the, as you said, the Government has certainly jumped on these numbers. They've criticised
02:42the costings. Here is what the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, had to say.
02:46They haven't provided anywhere near enough for their nuclear reactors. They've got their numbers
02:52wrong on their job cuts in the Australian public service. They've got their numbers wrong on
02:58their long lunches policy, on their petrol policy, and on their mortgage deductibility policy as
03:04well. It's hard to imagine that Angus Taylor has had three years to come up with this, and
03:10he's come up with at least five substantial black holes.
03:15So, as you can see, very much on the front foot, jumping onto those numbers, and that
03:21is the traditional pantomime. With these costings, this close to Election Day, Labor left it until
03:28the Thursday of the final week, three years ago. The Coalition has followed in that tradition,
03:34and it is now up to voters to decide who has set up the best budget policy. Both sides are
03:42avoiding returns to surplus at great speed, prioritising the need to spend money on household.
03:49Lorna, back to you.