Queensland Election 2017: Cross River Rail axed to pay for LNP campaign promises
THE LNP will scrap vital Brisbbane infrastructure project Cross River Rail and reallocate money from Labor programs to pay for its $4.3 billion election spending spree if elected, Scott Emerson says.
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THE Cross River Rail will be scrapped and more than $2.3 billion clawed back from government programs and the public service under an LNP plan to help pay for its election commitments.
Shadow treasurer Scott Emerson yesterday revealed how the LNP would manage the books and pay for its $4.3 billion in promises should voters return the party to power after three years in opposition.
That includes a $1.6 billion public service efficiency dividend that Mr Emerson insisted would not include forced redundancies.
About $704 million would be reallocated from Labor programs, including $150 million from a program to transfer 17-year-olds out of adult prisons, and $42 million from the Skilling Queenslanders for Work program.
It also includes ditching Labor’s plans to build the Cross River Rail by 2023, with about $2.56 billion in funding set aside for the project diverted to other projects.
“The LNP is not walking away from Cross River Rail, but we won’t be rushing through a $15 billion project because Labor wants to save a few seats in inner-city Brisbane,” Mr Emerson said.
“This project is too expensive to get wrong.”
He said the public service would be asked to save “less than one cent out of every dollar they spend ... an achievable and responsible approach, which means we can reinvest extra funding”.
The public service would not be allowed to grow at the rate it had grown under Labor, he said, and added that the LNP would maintain the existing wages policy.
“We also would expect the public service will grow, but we don’t expect it will grow at the kind of levels we are seeing under this Government ... at four to five times the population rate,” he said.
Mr Emerson took aim at Treasurer Curtis Pitt’s revelation that Labor would introduce four new taxes should it be returned to office, saying: “There are no new taxes here.”
The LNP failed to spell out any significant debt reduction plans, only shaving about $679 million off the estimated $81.1 billion debt the state is hurtling towards by 2020-21.
Under the LNP, that debt figure would come in at $80.468 billion instead.
“What we said all the way through this campaign is that we will move to stabilise debt over the economic cycle,” Mr Emerson said.
It would be in the following term of government that the LNP would start to significantly pay down debt.
The LNP would introduce a cash bidding process for some resource tenures, in a move that’s expected to raise about $9.52 million over two years. And a virtual racing product fee would be introduced to raise about $7.5 million in fees from UBET in 2018-19.
The plan to delay Cross River Rail was met with disapproval from southeast Queensland mayors Alan Sutherland and Luke Smith yesterday.
“We need governments of all persuasions to get on and build the big infrastructure we need to take southeast Queensland forward,” Cr Sutherland said.
Originally published as Queensland Election 2017: Cross River Rail axed to pay for LNP campaign promises
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