Hockey's $7b contradiction of Abbott
Opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey has contradicted his leader to the tune of $7 billion during today's federal election economic debate with Treasurer Wayne Swan.
Mr Hockey declared the coalition has announced $25.7 billion worth of spending measures during the campaign - just hours after Tony Abbott declared total spending would be under $18 billion.
Mr Hockey also provided an "absolute guarantee" that a coalition government would roll out its $8.8 billion paid parental leave scheme exactly as promised.
The coalition's parental leave scheme would be funded through a 1.5 per cent "temporary" levy on big business in line with the coalition's promised company tax cuts.
"Yes, I give that absolute guarantee," Mr Hockey said when asked if the scheme would be introduced untouched.
"We will roll out the paid parental leave scheme as it stands.
"It is affordable - we have indicated how we'd do it."
Mr Hockey debated Mr Swan at the National Press Club in Canberra this morning.
He said the coalition was only making promises it could deliver on.
"So far this election campaign, we have announced expenditure of $25.733 billion," he said.
"We've announced savings of $28.534 billion.
"So, so far we have $2.8 billion of net savings on the announced policies."
However, earlier today, Mr Abbott said the coalition's promised expenditure was less than $18 billion.
Mr Abbott said his election pledges were affordable because the coalition had identified $18 billion worth of genuine savings from recurrent expenditure, excluding the mining tax.
"Our promised expenditure is well under that ($18 billion)," he said.
"We will get back to surplus in 2012/13, and it will be a bigger surplus than the one that the Labor party is promising."
Asked to clarify that - "So you'll be spending under that $18 billion figure?" - Mr Abbott said, "Yes, that's correct."
During his opening remarks, Mr Swan said Labor had saved Australia from a "savage recession" by rolling out stimulus packages in the face of the global financial crisis.
He said there had been no choice but to go into deficit to save jobs, but Australia would be back in surplus "ahead of every single major advanced economy".
In response, Mr Hockey said the coalition had experience in paying back Labor-made mountains of deficit and debt.
"We have done it before, we will do it again," he said.
"In this election campaign we are only making promises that we can deliver."
The most contentious point of the debate revolved around which party had delivered lower interest rates.
Mr Hockey said a quick look at the Reserve Bank’s website showed the coalition had won that battle.
‘‘It will prove that even taking into account the economic downturn of the last three years, interest rates are lower under the coalition over 11 years of government,’’ he said.
Mr Swan dismissed the claim as one of the more incredulous claims he’d heard from the opposition treasury spokesman.
‘‘For Joe to say when the cash rate is 4.45 per cent that somehow interest rates are always lower under the coalition is one of the bigger distortions I’ve heard from him,’’ the Treasurer said.
At its peak, the official cash rate hit 6.75 per cent under the coalition’s watch.
But Mr Hockey countered, by saying that no-one was ‘‘out there’’ borrowing at the RBA cash rate.
Instead they were borrowing at an ‘‘effective interest rate’’.
That rate, under Labor during the past three years, was 7.41 per cent, while under the coalition it was 7.27 per cent.
Mr Swan said the coalition liked to pretend that the global recession never happened.
On housing, he said Labor had begun the hard work to solve a shortage by implementing reforms through COAG, while it would continue to ‘‘refine the settings’’ to keep the sector afloat.
But Mr Hockey rubbished his rival’s bid to talk up the government’s efforts on public housing.
He said a recent visit to projects in Cairns at Bluewater and Palm Cove confirmed the worst of his fears.
‘‘They will become signature examples of the waste of the stimulus package,’’ he said.
Mr Hockey also was asked what the coalition’s proposed debt reduction taskforce would achieve that couldn’t be done by the auditor-general, the finance department and cabinet’s razor gang.
He said the taskforce would focus ‘‘on identifying in particular if Labor has not told us the truth about their programs’’.
‘‘What we’ve identified recently is a whole lot of programs the government has announced which, oops, have turned out to cost more or be failures.’’
Mr Swan said the taskforce was designed to hide the coalition’s real agenda until after the election.
‘‘So far 98 per cent of that (coalition) $27 billion of spending commitments has not been submitted to Treasury and finance,’’ he said.
‘‘And that shows they do have a hidden agenda and what they will do after the election is take a savage axe to all of the services that they’ve not been prepared to admit to before the election.’’
Mr Hockey responded by saying the coalition introduced the charter of budget honesty.
At the last election Labor lodged 85 per cent of their policies for costing just 12 hours before polling day, he said.
‘‘We have already submitted 36 policies. We will get our policies - all of our policies - to the Treasury before polling day.’’
Mr Hockey said the coalition would meet finance’s deadline.
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