Andrew Leigh

ANDREW LEIGH SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Thank you for coming along. My name is Andrew Leigh, Shadow Assistant Treasurer and Federal Member for Fenner. We've discovered today that the ACT Liberals have a $7 million hole in their election costings. This is a result of the ACT Liberals not following the instructions on the first substantive page of the ACT Government's Standard Costing Parameters. Those Standard Costing Parameters say very clearly that the estimate of the cost of a nurse should be $173,000. That's a figure which includes on-costs, worker compensation, superannuation leave and so on. 

But we see that the ACT Liberals put in a costings request on 29 September 2016 in which they cost 16 nurses at $1.7 million. That works out to just $107,000 per nurse. In other words, the ACT Liberals are using estimates of a cost of a nurse which are simply wrong.

This raises two fundamental questions. First, with a $7 million hole in their costings, what will the ACT Liberals have to cut next? We know they want to cut walk-in clinics but now they're going to have to cut even savagely in order to make up for their $7 million black hole.

Second, how can the ACT Liberals be trusted to manage the ACT economy during these challenging times if they can't even add up? If the ACT Liberals can't get their costings right, they can't be trusted to govern the ACT.

Canberra is already suffering as a result of a group of Liberals who got into Government based on economic falsehoods. We can't let that happen again. The ACT Liberals want to use the same playbook that Tony Abbott used, economic lies, numbers that don't add up, promises before the election that won't be delivered after the election.

Their $7 million costings black-hole exposes the ACT Liberals for the economic frauds that they've always been. They simply can't be trusted to manage the ACT economy.

Any questions? Thanks very much.

ENDS