Labor’s pre-election promises “single biggest risk” to SA’s finances: Treasurer Rob Lucas

Treasurer Rob Lucas has lashed SA Labor’s pre-election pledges ahead of the state election, saying the only way they can pay for them is by raising taxes.

Labor’s “reckless” pre-election spending spree is “the single biggest risk” to the state’s economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, Treasurer Rob Lucas says.

However, Labor says Mr Lucas has artificially inflated the cost of its pledges by adding bogus promises, such as providing free rapid antigen tests and cancelling land tax aggregation, to which it never committed. He said Labor’s commitments so far amounted to more than $3bn, describing it as a “reckless pre-election spending spree of a scale and magnitude I’ve never seen before from an opposition in my 40 years in parliament”.

“SA families and businesses are not stupid. They know if you promise billions in extra spending and, at the same time, promise to keep budget surpluses, then the only possible result is they pay much more through either increased taxes, charges, levies or other decisions which increase costs to them,” he said.

Treasurer Rob Lucas says Labor’s pre-election spending is reckless. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Mariuz

Mr Lucas described Labor’s level of spending as being “the single biggest risk to our state’s finances and our economic recovery as we emerge from the global pandemic”.

But Labor said is had only made pledges totalling $1.82bn, taking into account that it would scrap the Liberal’s $662bn Riverbank Arena. It said the Liberals had made more than $1.6bn worth of pledges so far.

“We have already made a commitment that we will not be increasing taxes (and) we will not be introducing new taxes,” Labor’s treasury spokesman, Stephen Mullighan, said.

He said Labor would release the total cost of all its election commitments, and how it will pay for them, once all its pledges had been made.

Originally published as Labor’s pre-election promises “single biggest risk” to SA’s finances: Treasurer Rob Lucas