Federal election 2016 analysis: Dollar Bill’s risk in latest backflip

LABOR has taken an enormous political risk in announcing a range of spending cuts, including a hit on family payments, just three weeks out from the election.

• Labor has students in its sights

LABOR has taken an enormous political risk in announcing a range of spending cuts, including a hit on family payments, just three weeks out from the election.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has rolled the dice on showing he can manage the economy but, in return, risks losing credibility when it comes to “putting people first” — as his campaign slogan goes.

The announcement was designed to blunt the attacks that came after Labor confirmed there would not be the same degree of “fiscal consolidation’’ under Labor over the next four years that there would be under the Coalition — code for more red ink.

Opposition leader Bill Shorten has rolled the dice on showing he can manage the economy. Picture: AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

Labor has found another $900m in new savings, mostly tinkering around the edges of some lower-profile funding areas.

But controversially, it has decided to accept around $1 billion in spending cuts from so-called zombie measures, which have been blocked in the Senate for years but refuse to die. These include family payments — previously a virtual no-go area for Labor.

Given the state of Australia’s Budget bottom line, new savings were required, and Labor did the right thing by acknowledging this. But it has undone two years of campaigning work where Mr Shorten and Labor railed against the “unfairness’’ in the 2014 Budget and blocked large slabs of it on this basis.

On Friday, Labor was quietly stripping down its advertising, getting rid of its petitions and websites which urged people to get angry about cuts Labor has now embraced. And the person who took the biggest hit for the team was surely shadow families and payments minister Jenny Macklin.

A true Labor warrior, Ms Macklin, from the Victorian seat of Jagajaga, has led the charge to establish Labor’s “fairness’’ narrative.

She was even installed on the shadow cabinet’s expenditure review committee, to balance efforts by the fiscally conservative treasurer Chris Bowen, who’d aimed to rein in this type of spending.

Until now, she’d been successful.

Ms Macklin was nowhere to be seen On Friday.