Are all the Libs born stupid, or only Hockey?

[IQS.RLOW]

Comedy Gold!

The ALP thinking they can lecture anyone on budgets and costing when they have been completely wrong on every budget and are writing them down 3 months after they release them and continue every 3 months after that.

[Black Orchid]

Senator Penny Wong says the Coalition would have to make $70 billion of cuts to pay for the election promises it has made so far. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, in announcing the September 7 election date, also warned about the Coalition's ''cut to the bone'' plan, using the same number.

It's Labor's number, not the Coalition's because the Coalition says it won't release one until later in the campaign. As it happens it's curiously similar to one the Coalition has used in the past.

Its treasury spokesman, Joe Hockey said two years ago, ''finding 50, 60 or 70 billion is about identifying waste and identifying areas where you do not need to proceed with programs''.

Its finance spokesman Andrew Robb said he would ''need to identify up to $70 billion over the next four years if we are to get this economy back in some sort of shape''.

Supporting evidence

Labor has backed it up with an eight-page document that goes line by line through what Senator Wong says are the 19 Coalition promises announced so far. But the biggest ($19.7 billion) isn't a promise at all. Labor calls it ''2010 savings no longer available to offset policies''. In its words: ''To fund policies announced in the 2010 election the opposition put forward a number of savings. However, many of these savings are no longer available.''

Some of those savings are no longer available because the timeframe has passed, others because they were promises to abolish programs that Labor has since abandoned.

Does it stack up?

It is hard to see why this historical footnote should be regarded as a cost to be added to a claimed net $50 billion of other costs for policies the opposition is actually proposing.

Mr Hockey says its ''double counting''. As he puts it, ''there is no sense in which the lapsing or adoption of old savings measures damages the budget bottom line''.

Senator Wong's office defends including the figure by saying Mr Hockey has regularly referred to his previous savings target. But he isn't referring to it now. In recent days he has merely promised to deliver a better bottom line than Labor.

Which is how Senator Wong framed her statement: ''The Coalition, to return the federal budget to as a good a position as the government's, at minimum, would have to make $70 billion worth of cuts.''

It wouldn't. The $19.7 billion budget cost, the biggest in Labor's list, shouldn't be there.

The Coalition would need to deliver about $50 billion of savings to pay for its promises, not Labor's claimed $70 billion – and that's if the rest of its costings are accurate. Not all of them are.

Labor has costed Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's promise to lose 12,000 public servants through natural attrition over the next two years. It says it'll only save $2.8 billion.

That's a total that implies an implausibly low cost per public servant. Mr Hockey's office has shared with PolitiFact a costing from the independent Parliamentary Budget Office that finds the saving more like $4.8 billion than $2.8 billion.

And some of Labor's other estimates are guesses. For instance, the Coalition hasn't released its dams and water management policy. Labor says it will cost $2 billion.

Finding

Frustrated by the Coalition's reluctance to release a thorough costing of its election promises to date Labor has come up with one of its own.

Conveniently it totals $70 billion, which is a figure the Coalition itself has tossed around in the past.

But some $20 billion of it shouldn't be there, and billions more are the result of guesses, not all of which will turn out to be right.

Politifact rates the statement "false".

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politi ... z2b3wiPTPi" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Oh dear!

[Jovial_Monk]

Oh dear indeed, 5 weeks to the election and the Libs have no costings or policies to release!

[Jovial_Monk]

[Rorschach]

What evs Kev's not lookin' too happy these days...

[Jovial_Monk]

Having crucified Labor for abandoning its own foolish "come hell or high water" promise to return the budget to surplus this year, the Coalition is now saying it won't be making any budget bottom line promises at all.

Tony Abbott is telling voters if they want to get a feel for what kind of deficit or surplus a Coalition will deliver, they can do their own maths.

The Coalition will cost its policies – what it will spend and what it will save – but it will not add them up to get a forecast, or a promise, for the budget bottom line.

As a policy decision it is understandable. The extreme volatility in budget forecasts that saw revenue projections fall by $3bn a week between the May budget and last Friday's economic statement make any hard-and-fast pledge about a future budget outcome unwise. Just ask Wayne Swan.

And the shadow treasurer, Joe Hockey, is also concerned that in these economic circumstances the projections beyond the next two years, although calculated in the normal way, do not look realistic.

Chris Bowen tried to avoid putting himself in the same invidious position that Swan did last December when he had to confess that he wouldn't be delivering a surplus after all, by refusing to say the budget forecasts for deficits and then a surplus in 2016/17 released last Friday represented "pledges" or "promises".

But in an expedient move, the Coalition is going a step further. It's not going to commit to a bottom line figure at all.

That same volatility the Coalition is now worried about is the main reason Labor was unable to meet its surplus promise and had to reveal bigger deficits last week. But Abbott and Hockey said that was evidence the government had completely "lost control" of the budget, and that we were now facing a "budgetary crisis".

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/a ... ey-deficit" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Libs are using the same costings as in 2010! No policy work AT ALL! Not ready for government!

[Rorschach]

The Labor party has been sooooo successful... and Swan was such a good Treasurer...



How long have Labor stunk?