Coalition economic incompetence a risk to Australian families
Wayne Swan
posted Friday, 20 August 2010
Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey’s daily economic incompetence demonstrates why they are a risk to the Budget and to the future of Australian families.
Throughout this campaign Federal Labor has released daily updates of the impact of our policies on the Budget.
The information released this morning is not new. It simply represents the final consolidation of all of our policies at the end of the campaign.
The figures released this morning show that Federal Labor has offset the impact of all of its commitments over the budget forward estimates.
Contrary to Joe Hockey’s ranting, the Treasurer has already released these details this morning at a media conference in Townsville.
The figures confirm that Federal Labor will be returning the budget to surplus in 2012-13, and that those surpluses will be slightly bigger than projected in the PEFO.
In contrast, Mr Abbott and Mr Hockey have raided the surplus by $1.2 billion in 2012-13 and $2.4 billion in 2013-14 to pay for their unfunded election spend-a-thon.
For a man who wants to be Treasurer, Joe Hockey really ought to know that a Budget is produced over a four year forward estimates period, not two.
Unlike the Coalition, we have fully complied with the Charter of Budget Honesty process and submitted all of our costings to the Treasury and Finance for independent verification.
These submissions included detailed information on the costs of each individual policy, all of which are publically available at www.electioncostings.gov.au and have been for some time.
Mr Hockey in contrast has refused to submit over 90 per cent of his spending policies to the independent experts in Treasury and Finance.
Instead, just days before the election he released what he claimed to be the budget impact of the Coalition’s election commitments, only he failed to account for billions of dollars in spending promises that remain unfunded and un-costed.
Mr Hockey has run around the country claiming that his figures have been signed off by an accounting firm, but that same accounting firm has refused to endorse the assumptions that underlies them.
Mr Hockey’s costings release on Wednesday represents an attempt at one of the biggest economic con jobs ever foisted on the Australian people.
Every day of this campaign, with error after error, the Coalition has shown they are a risk to the Budget, and a risk to the economy.
Tags: Abbott, budget, costings, economy, Hockey, Joe, Swan, Tony, Wayne