Labor’s budget reply demonstrates Ms White’s inexperience and inability to stand up to vested and minority interests.
Yesterday, Labor left nearly $300 million of spending promises out of their financial statement, on top of promising to spend twice as much as they’re saving.
Today, new glaring errors have emerged, including the dramatically underfunded northern prison and ambulance promises, a ridiculously low cost for creating an entire new government department, and worst of all, a wages policy blowout.
In their so-called direction statement, the inexperienced opposition claim they will be able to build an entire prison for the bargain basement price of just $40 million. Embarrassingly, when in Government, Labor actually requested a detailed costing on a northern prison and was told in 2013 that the cost would be at least $137 million to construct, and $30 million a year to run.
This is a $100 million dollar clanger that shows Labor can’t be trusted with money and are too inexperienced to deliver on their so called economic direction. This one bungle alone has punched a massive black hole in their budget reply and has wiped out any claim that Labor could even go close to delivering a budget surplus.
But it doesn’t end there.
Ms White, who is still Labor’s health spokesperson, claims that two new 24/7 ambulance crews would cost just $1.1 million per year. The actual cost of two new ambulance crews is $2.8 million per year. Over the three years in Labor’s budget reply, the shortfall is over $5 million.
Worst of all, Labor has also been captured by the unions on public sector wages policy. Yesterday they refused to commit to a wages policy of increases of two per cent per annum for public servants saying they would negotiate with unions. Everyone knows that Labor will give the unions whatever they want. Unions have already raised wage increases of up to 3.75 per cent, which would cost more than $40 million per year.
You can’t credibly claim your wages policy is two percent, and then claim you will negotiate around it. It’s either two per cent, or it’s not.
Labor’s budget reply is a train wreck and demonstrates just how inexperienced they are.