Nationals to break ranks with Liberal colleagues and get election promises costed by treasury

The WA Nationals will break ranks with their opposition alliance colleagues and have their election commitments costed by the West Australian Treasury.

The country party confirmed to WAtoday it would submit its costings to the treasury next week, marking a deviation from the WA Liberal’s defiant stance against using the agency to cost its commitments.

WA Opposition Leader Shane Love.Credit: Holly Thompson

Liberal leader Libby Mettam has refused to use the treasury to cost her commitments citing concerns about its impartiality, which mirror concerns from Labor when it refused to lodge commitments to the treasury from opposition in the 2017 campaign.

Opposition and Nationals WA leader Shane Love told WAtoday the party would give it a go and “see what happens”.

“Most of our policies are fairly straightforward – a straightforward amount of money,” he said.

The revelation came as the party made its second $1 billion, decade-long commitment this campaign to build 1000 government regional houses (GROH) for frontline workers and 500 new social housing properties in regional WA under its Building Regional Homes Program.

The Liberals have pledged to have their costings done by an independent firm, but have not revealed who that will be or the date those costings will be made public.

Election costings are a sore point for the WA Liberals after the shambolic costings saga of its 2021 election promises.

Labor has been submitting its costings to treasury since late January and Treasurer Rita Saffioti has been hammering the Liberals for the past month for not using the government agency.

“They’ve chosen not to use treasury. That’s their decision, but they’ve got a responsibility to tell us who’s actually doing it and we’ve got some suspicions that they’re embarrassed by this firm,” Saffioti said on Thursday.

The Liberals revealed their costings to the public the day before the 2021 election, a practice which Labor also did in opposition.

Saffioti said that needed to change with the surge in pre-polling.

“More people are voting early, so that practice needs to change, and the second thing is, we had, by this time, at every election, outlined who was undertaking our costings.”

Shadow treasurer Steve Martin hit back at Saffioti’s criticism, citing the government’s refusal to provide details about a deal in negotiation with the NRL to establish a team in WA.

“Every single Liberal policy, when we announce it, we tell the public of Western Australia what it’s going to cost,” he said.

“What’s the rugby league team going to cost? The Premier is now embarrassed that it’s leaked out of New South Wales. The deal’s been done. They’re just not telling Western Australians what it’s going to cost.”

In 2017 Labor promised to introduce an independent parliamentary budget office that would verify election costings, but that promise never came to fruition.

According to WAtoday’s election tracker Labor’s costings have exceeded $4.8 billion, the Liberals $5.8 billion – minus several promises that the party has not disclosed beyond announcements on candidate social media – and the Nationals’ commitments have reached $5.3 billion.

The Nationals’ housing promise includes $100 million annual spending over the next decade to build the 1500 new homes and for every two new GROH homes built an existing GROH home will be transferred to social housing for 15 years.

“This is a long-term plan to deliver a long-overdue expansion of GROH housing, providing high-quality, affordable accommodation for key workers like teachers, police and healthcare professionals which are desperately needed in our regions,” he said.

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