The Liberal Party’s overhauled Paid Parental Leave scheme has sent it well into the lead in the campaign commitments race but it still has plenty of wriggle room for spending commitments.
Its new PPL scheme, starting a year later and with a lower PPL levy, will end up costing taxpayers half a billion dollars over four years (click on the table below to see a full, detailed list of Liberal promises).
Labor, however, is now nearly a billion dollars in the red on its commitments after its $670m electoral bribe to Family Tax Benefit A recipients on Monday, which was followed up by another $50+m this morning in handouts (click through for a full list of Labor commitments).
Labor continues to insist its commitments will be “full offset” but it appears to have abandoned identifying where offsets will be found.
Earlier this week, it offered up a further $360m in savings, but these were made up of a special dividend from Medibank Private and $60m worth of cuts to Government advertising. The Coalition, too, claimed it would be able to achieve big savings in Government advertising after the election.
They’re both lying — watch for advertising to continue as normal under either party once they’re safely back in office.
Crikey will be regularly updating the two major parties’ spending commitments throughout the campaign here and here.
Running the eye over the two lists one can’t help but be underwhelmed by the largesse promised to the nation’s seniors or for aged care. Obviously, no Oz politician intends growing old, nor do they have any elderly friends or maturing family members – or, if they do, they simply don’t give a rat’s…
Still haven’t seen an explanation for “Oppn Budget reply budget savings”
Oh Bernard…you are so brilliant I wish you would run for Parliament…we need geniuses like you running the country!!!!! But instead all you do is write your critiques for Crikey…what a waste of brilliant talent…..between you and Andrew Bolt and the Age journo’s you will be ideal because you know everything, see everything, hear everything…oh why oh why dont you run?????
A point which I haven’t seen discussed yet is the funding of Abbott’s parental leave scheme and how it interacts with the axing of the NBN. Abbott has effectively culled the corporate tax which was going to fund the leave scheme by offsetting the increased levy with a 1.5% reduction in the company tax. Therefore you can only come to the conclusion that it’s the axing of the NBN which is funding the leave scheme.
Now unless the Libs are going to axe the leave scheme after 2 years, it is reasonable to assume that the leave scheme is going to cost Australia over 3 billion dollars a year. Over the 10 year planned build of the NBN, this is almost as much money as the NBN is going to cost.
But with several large differences. The NBN will eventually make back the money which is invested into it, and it will provide valuable infrastructure. The parental leave scheme will do neither. And you could also argue that the productivity benefits of the leave scheme will be negligable, because it is replacing the one Labor has already put in place. Additionally, once the NBN is built the cost will stop but the revenue will keep going. The parental leave scheme will continue to cost us billions until it is scrapped.
Basically, Abbott and Hockey’s version of “economic responsibility” is to scrap an already in progress infrastructure project so they can give away the vast majority of the funds away as middle-class welfare! It really does beggar belief.
@ Bernard, who never responds…..why do you describe the Coalition making ‘ spending committments ‘ and Labor making ‘ bribes ‘…..WTF ?