Labor costings reveal $3.7bn in election promises to be funded entirely in borrowings
Labor’s election promise to hire thousands of new nurses, doctors and allied health professionals will mean Queensland Health will have to save $270 million a year for the next four years.
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More than $1 billion dollars worth of cuts will have to be made from Queensland Health for Labor to afford its signature health policy to hire an extra 9000 doctors, nurses and health staff.
Announcing Labor’s election costings on Monday, Treasurer Cameron Dick outlined that $4 billion in election promises would be funded entirely through borrowings and $317 million from unspent economic stimulus, while others will come from departmental budgets or other funding packages.
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But while attacking the LNP for allegedly planning a massive cuts program to fund its election promises, Mr Dick admitted Queensland Health would need to save at least $270 million a year for four years to allow Labor to hire all the extra health staff it has promised.
“The commitment to additional health staff of 5800 nurses, 1500 doctors and 1700 allied health professionals by September 2024 is to be funded from the existing Queensland Health Funding envelope subject to achieving the existing efficiency and productivity dividends set out in the agreement …” the costings document reads.
Questioned on the planned savings, Mr Dick gave varied answers on how they might be achieved, before stating that the agreement prevented savings being made through staff cuts.
Mr Dick initially said: “There’s no restrictions on Queensland Health on how they deliver their productivity dividend,” he initially said.
Mr Dick denied those savings amounted to “cuts”.
Asked whether staff cuts might occur, he said that was “not the intent”.
“Health can find the efficiency dividend however they wish but it’s not about impacting on staff,” he said.
He then said that QH were prevented from making savings by cutting staff under the funding agreement.
Mr Dick could not detail any examples of how those savings might be made, but said they would be “easily done”.
“Health’s Budget is, I think, $16 billion so how you can find $270 million … is something that’s easily done,” he said.
The Treasurer said the fact the world was in a pandemic would not make finding those savings any more difficult.
An election commitment to employ an extra 2025 police officers by 2025 would be entirely funded by borrowings until 2023-24, with the last year of the promise not costed in the document.
And the commitment to fund 6190 new teachers and 1139 teacher aides over the next four years is funded from the existing Education Department budget.
Mr Dick said the Budget would be in deficit for “four or five years”, but would not commit to a date when Labor would bring it back to surplus.
He has slammed the LNP for saying it intends to bring the budget back to surplus within four years, saying they will have to cut jobs to achieve that promise.
He also admitted Queensland’s total debt could further rise past the $101.9 billion in 2020-21 in the Budget Labor intends to hand down later this year if it wins power.
Meanwhile, the Treasurer said he was still committed to the government’s “fiscal principles” laid out in its Fiscal and Economic Review just last month, but yesterday admitted he will only be able to achieve half of them.
He said the government could not target ongoing reductions in Queensland’s relative debt burden or target net operating surpluses so that new capital investment was funded primarily through revenue rather than borrowing during the downturn.
And it could not meet its promise to maintain a sustainable public service by ensuring growth in workers did not exceed population growth while migration was so low, he said.
“Population growth hasn’t been this low since the end of the First World War,” Mr Dick said. “So, we’re not going to smash the public service and gut the public service to match that fiscal principle, particularly with frontline staff.”
He could not give a figure he wanted population growth to hit before the government would recommit to achieving that public service principle.
Mr Dick said he did not have an updated figure to the $320 million savings made to September from a total promised savings target of $3 billion over the next four years.
He said an update would be in the Budget, expected in the week beginning November 30, should Labor win re-election.
Originally published as Labor costings reveal $3.7bn in election promises to be funded entirely in borrowings