Big black hole in Coalition costings
Labor HQ posted Friday, 3 September 2010
This week Mr Abbott, Joe Hockey and Andrew Robb are running fast to explain the $10.6 billion black hole in their election costings.
Despite refusing to get their policies properly costed by Treasury during the election campaign, this black hole proves what we knew all along, that Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey had something to hide and are not fit to manage the economy.
The last week of the campaign showed the Coalition’s last minute bungle on their election costings which were conducted by a private accounting firm, because the Coalition was afraid of submitting their policies to the impartial scrutiny of the Treasury and Finance Departments in accordance with the Charter of Budget Honesty – a process that Peter Costello started when he was Treasurer.
In a previous blog on Labor Connect, Craig Emerson questioned Tony Abbott’s “lack of explanation on how their policy commitments will be funded” and Chris Bowen also reiterated that the Opposition should submit their policy costings under the Budget of Charter Honesty – “to truly independent arbiters who pull together the annual Budgets of the Commonwealth of Australia – the Departments of Finance and Treasury”.
This latest saga demonstrates once and for all that Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey pose too big a risk to the management of Australia’s $1.3 trillion economy.
In contrast, Julia Gillard and Labor are committed to forming a stable and effective Government with a strong record of economic management, consistent with their commitment to return the Budget to surplus by 2012-13.
This week’s National Accounts data release shows that the Australian economy grew strongly in the June quarter and continues to outperform most other advanced economies despite renewed uncertainty in the global economy.
Of course, this is only possible due to the decisive action taken by the government through stimulus that kept our economy growing and hundreds of thousands of Australians in jobs while the rest of the world went into recession. This was action blocked by the Coalition. So never forget that had we taken the Coalition’s advice Australia would have too gone into recession.
You can read more in Wayne Swan’s report on the National Accounts.
It is beyond doubt that the Liberal Party cannot manage a budget, and if you can’t manage a Budget you are not fit to run the economy, and if you can’t run the economy you are simply not fit to form a Government.
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