Labor Covid policies an extra $81bn hit: Simon Birmingham

Labor’s pandemic policies would have cost taxpayers an extra $81bn and increased the nation’s record deficit bill by 20 per cent, according to new government analysis.

Anthony Albanese will face detailed costings of Labor’s pandemic pledges on Wednesday. Picture: Jeremy Piper

Labor’s pandemic policies would have cost taxpayers an extra $81bn and increased the nation’s record deficit bill by 20 per cent, according to new government analysis putting price tags on Anthony Albanese’s Covid-19 promises.

Finance Minister Simon Birmingham will outline detailed costings of Labor’s pandemic pledges on Wednesday, as the Morrison government seeks to shift pressure back on the Opposition Leader’s economic management credentials.

Amid frustrations in Coalition ranks over Labor using rapid antigen test shortages, the vaccine rollout and JobKeeper to score political wins with limited costings or detail, Senator Birmingham said Mr Albanese’s spending proposals would have put “unnecessary pressures on our budget and pushed future deficits even higher”.

Labor’s alternative pandemic support packages were headlined by $300 cash incentives for double-dosed Australians, free rapid antigen tests, an expansion and extension of wage subsidies and maintaining higher levels of coronavirus supplement payments.

“The $81bn of unnecessary spending that Labor would have had us incur is demonstration that they lack the strength to say no and lack the judgment on where to draw the line,” Senator Birmingham writes in The Australian.

“It’s the same old Labor way of big, wasteful spending, where every noisy special interest is greeted with largesse and any perceived problem warrants more cash being thrown at it. The last time Labor was in charge of Australia’s purse strings we saw billions wasted on unnecessary school halls and a disastrous home insulation program.

“Labor’s big-spending missteps during the Covid-19 pandemic show that they’ve learned nothing from their previous mistakes, which only lead to higher debt and higher taxes.”

Opposition finance spokeswoman Katy Gallagher said Labor would not take “lectures on fiscal responsibility from the most wasteful government since Federation”. “We won’t be lectured by the Finance Minister who has delivered a trillion dollars of debt with not enough to show for it,” Senator Gallagher said.

Senator Gallagher accused the Coalition of becoming “increasingly desperate, cooking up scare campaigns to try and distract from their nasty internal divisions”.

The government analysis covers Labor’s pandemic policies since 2019-20 and says the $300 double-dose vaccine payment, based on 18.9 million eligible Australians receiving both jabs by December 1, would have cost $6bn. The free rapid antigen tests promise, made as the Morrison government came under fire over summer shortages sparked by a surge in Omicron cases, was estimated to cost $5bn.

Around $337bn has been spent by the commonwealth on economic and health supports during the Covid-19 crisis, fuelling a $134bn deficit – the largest hit to the budget in peacetime history as a percentage of GDP. The government claims that when Labor’s spending commitments are added to the cash pile, deficits would have increased by $10bn in 2019-20, $28bn in 2020-21 and a projected $42bn in 2021-22.

With debt levels on track to exceed $1 trillion, Senator Birmingham said the federal government had contained spending during the pandemic by “making emergency responses temporary, targeted and proportionate”.

“Any parent knows the importance of being able to say no,” he said. “Sometimes you say no ­because something is unsafe or unwise. Other times you say no because it is unaffordable or a waste of money. Often it’s a combination of reasons. Where we have had the strength to say no, or to scale back emergency support as conditions improve, the Labor Party under Anthony Albanese has nearly always called for more spending.”

The two prominent political attacks prosecuted by Mr Albanese following vaccine and RAT shortages have riled senior government figures, frustrated by the lack of accountability and costings to back up Labor’s alternative policies. Senator Birmingham described the $300 vaccine incentive as a “$6bn thought bubble” when millions of Australians had had a jab.

Senator Gallagher said the government had “failed on the vaccine rollout, haven’t delivered one new single federal quarantine facility, didn’t order enough rapid antigen tests, presided over a crisis in aged care and disappeared when workers and small businesses needed help the most”.