NSW election: Dominic Perrottet steps up his wages attack on Labor

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet warns Labor are ‘bunch of amateurs’ who cannot be trusted with the economy.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet. Picture: NCA Newswire / Gaye Gerard

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has stepped up his attacks on Labor, saying its failure to disclose the cost of a flagship wages policy demonstrates it is a “bunch of amateurs” who cannot be trusted with the economy.

The release of both parties’ election policy costings by the Parliamentary Budget Office on Monday afternoon revealed Labor had set aside $0 for their promise to abolish the government’s 3 per cent public sector wage cap.

The omission led the PBO to warn of the difficulty Labor had in limiting pay rises to identifying budgetary savings and productivity gains, saying “the historical experience in NSW is that this has proven difficult in practice”.

As he stressed that employee-related expenses were worth 40 per cent of the state’s budgetary expenditure, Mr Perrottet slammed Labor for prioritising public sector unions over the people of NSW.

“We saw that yesterday, to have $0 cost for their biggest budget expenditure, shows they cannot be trusted to run the largest economy with the largest budget in this country,” he said.

“We saw that yesterday: it is a bunch of amateurs putting together a budget.”

Labor leader Chris Minns denied the lack of dollars set aside for the wages policy represented a “blank cheque”, saying the removal of the cap was an essential first step in pulling NSW in line with other jurisdictions.

Speaking from Warragamba Dam – a multibillion-dollar flood mitigation extension promised by the Coalition – Mr Minns said a failure to allocate money to the project demonstrated that the government was relying on selling off public assets to proceed.

“The only wholly owned asset owned by the people of NSW is Sydney Water, that’s the only one that’s left. It generates an enormous amount of revenue for the NSW government,” he said. “We know private sector interests would love to get their hands on it. It’s next cab off the rank.”

Mr Perrottet has repeatedly ruled out selling off Sydney Water.

The election is on a knife’s edge with the poll three days away, and both leaders headed to the western Sydney seat of Camden, held by Liberal MP Peter Sidgreaves on a 7.3 per cent margin.

While that is usually a safe buffer, Labor MPs said a likely high vote for One Nation – predicted to be near 20 per cent – was eating away at Mr Sidgreaves primary vote, creating an opportunity for the ALP to win the seat.

Labor needs to claim nine seats to win a majority.