Queensland Treasurer Cameron Dick’s $17bn trick a miracle or illusion?

Queensland Treasurer Cameron Dick. Picture: Liam Kidston

Cameron Dick wants us to believe he is a magician.

Two months ago, in an unprecedented sleight of hand ahead of Tuesday’s budget, the Queensland Treasurer revealed total government debt would hit a whopping $188bn in the next four years.

It was seemingly a rare moment of candour for the self-assured but usually guarded Labor veteran as he prepared what most in his party suspect is the government’s last chance at holding on to power ahead of the October 26 election.

The “preliminary forecast” of the rising debt level, as he described it at the time, was odd; these sorts of figures are never “preliminary” and only ever appear in budget papers or in the official mid-year fiscal updates of the government of the day.

“We will be working hard in the coming months to make the debt numbers as low as possible,” Dick said solemnly as he also heralded the coming of a raft of handouts for voters struggling to make ends meet.

In the past few weeks, Queenslanders have been gifted $1000 electricity rebates, 50c fares on public transport and stamp duty concessions as part of a suite of “cost-of-living” measures.

And now, on the eve of the budget, the Treasurer has announced he has managed what he and his predecessors over the three terms of Labor government have consistently failed to do: cut debt.

Since April 17, when he warned of the “preliminary forecast” that debt would rise to $188bn by the 2027-28 financial year, Dick says he has slashed the final figure by $17bn.

It is an extraordinary amount of savings.

In the first term of the government, his predecessor, Curtis Pitt, moved billions of dollars in debt off the government books and on to the ledgers of the state-owned corporations.

Later, billions in payments to the public service superannuation entitlement schemes were deferred to another day, with the money purportedly used to reduce government borrowings.

But it was just paper shuffling, and the real debt remained.

In the past few years, the cost of all of the government’s major projects have blown out and the state is facing pressure from booming interstate migration.

But in just a matter of months, Dick claims to have cut spending over the forward estimates to the tune of $17bn?

If he is this good at keeping a lid on things, why is he only now showing his magic, or was the $188bn debt figure just an illusion?