Queensland election 2017: Treasurer says $81b debt doesn’t add up

TREASURER Curtis Pitt has dismissed the state’s projected $81 billion debt bill as a “magical or mythical” figure that Queenslanders should ignore.

Queensland Treasurer Curtis Pitt. Picture: AAP/Glenn Hunt

TREASURER Curtis Pitt has dismissed the state’s projected $81 billion debt bill as a “magical or mythical” figure that Queenslanders should ignore.

Mr Pitt said the projected figure — which has been targeted by the LNP to slam the Government’s fiscal credentials — was misleading, as he spruiked a $2.8 billion final operating surplus for the 2016-17 Budget.

He insisted the more appropriate measure was government sector debt, which excluded the borrowings of government-owned corporations.

“The metric has always been that general government sector debt – that is the debt that we as Queensland taxpayers all pay, not the debt for non financial corporations including our GOCs,” he said.

“They keep talking about this magical or mythical $80 billion debt.

“That figure is not the one you should be looking at; you should be looking at the general government position.

“It is mythical to talk about the other $80 billion because that is not the debt the men, women and children of Queensland are paying as taxpayers.”

Treasurer Curtis Pitt says the $81 billion debt figure is a figment of the imagination.

The 2016-17 Report on State Finances released by Mr Pitt yesterday showed government-sector debt fell from $35.5 billion to $33.3 billion.

The report credited Labor’s Debt Action Plan – which included raiding public service superannuation and long service leave funds and flick passing debt on to the books of the GOCs – for the fall.

Despite saying the overall debt figure was irrelevant, Mr Pitt slammed Opposition Leader Tim Nicholls, saying the former treasurer left $75 billion behind in borrowings in 2015.

Mr Pitt defended using a figure he had earlier insisted was “magical” because it was Mr Nicholls’ “preferred method” of analysing debt.

“What I am showing you is that under any measure debt is lower under the Palaszczuk Labor Government than it was under the LNP,” he said.

Rising coal prices were largely responsible for the surplus, the biggest recorded in Queensland for a decade.

However, Mr Pitt credited Labor financial management for the result.

“We were already forecasting a big surplus well before we had an improved price of coal and of course this came along with it,” he said.

However, the 2017-18 surplus is forecast to be just $146 million with revenue to decline as the coal price boom subsides.

Originally published as Queensland election 2017: Treasurer says $81b debt doesn’t add up