Jackie Trad’s pre-election Budget coming six weeks early

Treasurer Jackie Trad has confirmed her important pre-election Budget will be delivered much earlier than usual and has outlined her reasons why, denying it was to give Labor an advantage over the LNP.

JACKIE Trad will hand down her final Budget before the October 2020 State Election in April, six weeks earlier than expected.

The Treasurer said the move was designed to give business and industry more certainty heading into the election year, revealing her third Budget will be heavily focused on stimulus and infrastructure spending.

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“This is in light of the fact that we have nationally stubborn economic conditions that are of concern to our state economy (and) the fact that the Morrison Government won’t heed the calls of the Reserve bank or the Australian Business Council or the Australian Industry Group and use their levers to stimulate the national economy,” she told The Courier-Mail of the decision.

“We will be working very hard over Christmas and early in the new year to give business and industry the confidence they need in 2020 to get on and hire more Queenslanders into jobs.

“There’s no doubt that in an election year there is a lot of uncertainty generally in the business community about what’s going to happen.

Deputy Premier Jackie Trad has confirmed her pre-election Budget will be delivered early. Picture: AAP/Dan Peled

“By bringing forward the Budget and locking in a program of infrastructure spend, a program of industry assistance, a program of regional economic support, we know that will give businesses and industry a lot more confidence going forward than waiting out another six weeks and then heading into estimates before finally facing an election in October.”

Ms Trad insisted the move was not designed to give Labor an electoral advantage over the LNP.

“This is not about an electoral advantage. In fact it gives people more time to scrutinise the Budget decisions,” she said.

“This is actually about indicating to small business owners, to regional business particularly that we want to make the spending decisions, the revenue decisions that are necessary to give them confidence in the lead up to the election.”

The Budget will be brought down on April 28 rather than in June as expected.

Estimates will be brought forward to the second and third week in June.

Parliament itself will resume on February 4.