Territory Alliance backflips on policy costings as CLP gets extension
TERRITORIAN voters will not be able to find out the cost of Territory Alliance’s big-spending policies, despite previously committing to do so
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TERRITORIAN voters will not be able to find out the cost of Territory Alliance’s big-spending policies because the party won’t get them analysed by Treasury, despite previously committing to do so.
Meanwhile the CLP submitted its paperwork to NT Treasury at close of business on Wednesday, five days after the original deadline and hours before the department was due to publish its findings.
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Territory Labor won’t be costing anything, with the party arguing all its announcements, such as $20 million to hire 131 extra police officers and staff and millions of dollars in additional pandemic stimulus measures, had already been worked into the government’s bottom line through the COVID-19 fiscal update released in late July.
Territory Alliance leader Terry Mills, in a statement, confirmed the party had opted not to take up Treasury’s offer to look at election commitment costing because it had “chosen to use our scarce resources” on getting its policies right instead of taking up requests from “a government agency that doesn’t have a 2020-21 budget”.
On July 31, when asked if he knew when parties were due to submit their policies to Treasury, Mr Mills said he didn’t know but “we’ve made a commitment to do so”.
Territory Alliance has announced at least $665m worth of commitments before its revenue-reducing policies such as payroll tax and stamp duty suspension are factored in.
The Northern Territory’s budget, just like those of other jurisdictions, has been delayed as governments can’t write one up before the federal government releases its own. The commonwealth’s budget has been delayed until October due to COVID-19.
Unlike in a standard election, the NT Government has not released a pre-election fiscal outlook, which is used by parties to see what the current state of affairs is.
Opposition Leader Lia Finocchiaro, while criticising other parties for showing “contempt” to the community if they didn’t submit their policy costings, could not explain why the CLP had missed the deadline, saying she had been made aware in the “last couple of days” that the party had received the Treasury’s instructions.
Treasury department boss Craig Graham, during the final parliamentary hearing into the government’s COVID-19 response, told the parties Treasury would write to them in the first week of caretaker mode, which came into effect on July 30, giving them a week to respond before publishing Treasury analysis in the second week.
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The NT News can confirm Mr Graham wrote to each party on August 4, gave them a deadline of August 14 and said Treasury would publish costings on its website on August 20.
It is understood the CLP was given a deadline extension by Treasury, with Ms Finocchiaro saying the party would submit its paperwork by close of business on Wednesday.
With the analysis due to be released on Thursday, a spokeswoman for Treasury said the department “endeavours” to publish the costings within the original time frame.
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