The WA Liberals’ complete disregard for a transparent and robust costings process was on full display once again, with billions worth of commitments missing from their sham costings briefing today.
Despite making election commitments worth $6.3 billion, the Liberals claim the cost will only be about $4 billion, while they also plan to cut about $700 million from critical programs.
It means mystery surrounds more than $2 billion worth of election commitments that were simply missing in the WA Liberals’ briefing today.
Despite excluding billions from their election commitment costings, the total cost of the Liberals’ and Nationals’ commitments are still about $7 billion, double the cost WA Labor’s commitments.
The level of spending presents a significant risk to the Western Australian economy and finances.
Based on the level of spending being proposed by the Liberals and Nationals, net debt would be on track to reach $45 billion by the end of the forward estimates.
It’s also been revealed the Liberals relied on a former Liberal staffer who was the right-hand man of former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, to “assess” their costings.
Once again, it appears the “assessment” included no critical analysis of the commitments and was simply a process of adding up what the Liberals thought their commitments might cost.
The election commitments and projects the Liberals and Nationals have now walked away from include:
The WA Liberals also failed on health with no disclosure of how much taxpayers will be slugged for their reckless plan to rip up the contract for the new Women and Babies Hospital, nor the additional cost of building the hospital on a significantly constrained site.
The costings briefing also showed the WA Liberals’ plan to invest just $5 million towards their so-called “rebuild” of Royal Perth Hospital, while they will walk away from the critical Canning Bridge interchange redevelopment, abandoning the people of South Perth and Bateman.
Comments attributed to Treasurer Rita Saffioti:
“The Liberals and Nationals have not learned any lessons since they increased WA’s debt from $3.6 billion to $43.7 billion."
“What we saw today was a complete farce."
“It’s absolutely clear why the WA Liberals have again waited until 48 hours before polling day to release their costings, and outline who was doing the analysis."
“This is a Liberal Party that has been running around the State promising the world, but now we see more than $2 billion worth of commitments missing."
“Given they’ve gone to the right-hand man of former Prime Minister Scott Morrison to ‘assess’ their costings, I am not surprised there was no scrutiny about this enormous black hole of missing commitments."
“Even when you account for the missing billions, the Liberal and National commitments are still double WA Labor’s commitments, which poses a significant risk to our economy and finances."
“The Shadow Treasurer was pushed today on how they would reconcile the commitments across the Liberals and Nationals, and he had no idea."
“How can the Liberals and Nationals claim they want to form a coalition government when they don’t even talk to each other about their costings?"
“Today's performance just highlights the inexperience and risk the Liberals and Nationals pose to our State and way of life."