Red Rag

In Liberal Governments the Premier is usually also the Treasurer, and Colin Barnett says that tradition would continue if he is elected. That means Barnett’s economic credibility is especially important, but it leaves more than a bit to be desired. His very first policy announcement of the campaign has a black hole of $11 million per year.

Mr Carpenter said Treasury had examined the policy costing and found that instead of $45 million a year, it would cost $56 million a year — a mistake he said cast doubt on the credibility of all Coalition policy costings.

“So this costing is $44 million short of the mark as described to us by Treasury,” Mr Carpenter said.

[...]

Mr Barnett has so far declined to reveal who is carrying out the Coalition’s policy costings, and today Mr Carpenter said that was a problem.

“The first time we have had the opportunity to have the figures that he has released analysed by Treasury, his figures are shown to be wrong which I think shows a major flaw in his whole campaign strategy,” he said.

$11 million per year is a lot of money — a full quarter of the funds allocated by the Liberals. Barnett apparently thinks it’s okay to base your policy costings on data that’s three years old, and if there’s a problem?

Mr Barnett said he would stand by his commitment even if there was a cost blow-out.

That’s right, “Bugger the cost.”

We can’t really expect anything different. When Colin Barnett was Education Minister, he blew out his budget by almost $400 million, and left over $29 million in unfunded commitments.

That was just one portfolio. Now that he’s got his fingers in every pie, we can expect the blowouts to be much bigger.

Since Barnett declared that the on-again-off-again position statements would be election policies, Labor’s gone through them with a fine-tooth comb. From the West (p7):

The Opposition’s 76 position statements contain about 450 commitments, but Labor claims just 42 promises are costed, already totalling $1.768 billion.

This month, Opposition Leader Colin Barnett declared the position statements should be viewed as coalition policies. Mr Barnett has resisted Labor pressure to release the Opposition’s costings, promising an assessment later.

Colin Barnett has already told us what this “assessment” means. “We will add them up for you,” he said. The first policy he tried to add up was out by $11 million a year!

This criticism is not coming only from the Labor side. The Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a strong Liberal Party supporter and which Barnett once ran, says “undisciplined election promises could threaten WA’s AAA credit rating and put upward pressure on interest rates,” and “accused Mr Barnett of making promises with no regard to the budget.” Even his own side doesn’t trust him with the economy!