Have you seen Latham's picture on the ALP website. It sort of reminds me of some of the characters from "V - The Series". And, we all know what ended up happening there!!!
Apart from the shrill dill syndrome that Latham seems to suffer from, the question of costings and credibility remain very much in limbo.
Some of his initiatives are worthy of further consideration, but his costings (and savings) are somewhat suspect, as too are his motives in not submitting his policies to Treasury for independent costing and assessment.
To date, Labor has accused the LIBS of spending their way into deficit.
But is this all that it seems to be?
If one considers the daily graph in the AFR (today's can be found on p9), then true enough.
However, what of Labor?
Up to last night, the ALP had promised the following: 1) new spending of $38.7B (of which $37.0B is in new ALP policies and $1.7B is in Government adopted policies); 2) savings of $27.85B (much of which is as much on the wish-list as was 1996's $800M claim from high net worth taxpayers from Treasurer Willis (or was that Kerin).
Yesterday alone, the ALP spent $3.73B of new money and announced apparent savings of $448M by reducing Government wastage. And this was on top of the $6.0B in new campaign spending announced in respect of its new Enterprise policy on Tuesday, whilst also claiming an apparent $6.0B in savings and offsets.
With a net spend of ~$11B, Labor must now achieve its resulting ~$28B in savings, otherwise the Budget will, well and truly, fall into systemic deficit in the years ahead.
Conversely, the Coalition's net spend is $12.73B, based on new spending initiatives of $13.2B and savings of $500M.
Even with Sunday's campaign launch and "reckless spending with gay abandon" according to Wayne Swan, the Coalition's net spend is only ~$1.7B more than Labor's, up to yesterday’s campaign launch.
And yet, Labor has to find, achieve, implement, secure and obtain $28B in savings going forward.
More than any other time, Labor's credibility is at risk because if they so much as under-achieve their savings' targets by 20% (quite likely), their additional net spend exceed that of the Coalition by ~$4.0B. A near 25% miss on the savings result will push out net spending by $7B to $18B, and if by 33%, by $9.3B to >$20B.
That's the risk with Labor - they will simply miss their target in a very big way, or will take so much longer to get there.
But, to get to the sort of savings that Labor is talking about with respect to Medicare Gold, it has all become somewhat illusory.
Anticipated costs in 2006/07 are $1.35B, vs $1.0B in savings, of which $500M relates to abolition of the Coalition’s 100% Medicare. For 2007/08, the figures are $1.6B in costs, $1.1B in savings, of which $500M again relates to the abolition of 100% Medicare.
However, when I last checked things out, 100% Medicare was a new Coalition initiative which has been added to the outlay equation (and criticized as such, as reckless spending by Latham and Swan).
Now, Labor is claiming 100% Medicare as an actual saving. Yet, it does not exist.
So, is this a phantom saving, or a real saving?
If phantom, then that’s a $1.0B black hole in Labor’s costing of just one policy. Hence, why they won’t permit for their policies to be costed by Treasury.
If, however, real, then that’s $1.0B less in so-called “reckless” Coalition spending, meaning that on that score alone: 1) Labor has promised $38.7B, and plans on saving $28B (if real), or $27B (if illusory), for net new spending of either $11B (if real) or $12B (if illusory); or 2) The Coalition has promised $13.1B (if illusory), or $12.1B (if real), and plans on saving $500M, for net new spending of either $12.6B (if illusory), or $11.1B (f real).
So, on that score alone, Labor could already be promising a greater amount of net new spending initiatives than the Coalition, and that’s before they miss their actual savings’ targets.
