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WA Libs submit costings to Treasury

The WA Liberals have thrown down the gauntlet to Labor by submitting their election costings to Treasury.

The WA Liberals have submitted nearly $3 billion in election promises to be costed by Treasury as Labor refused to do so for its own $5 billion in pledges.

The costings should be publicly released by Wednesday - three days before the election - and show a $10 billion reduction in debt over the next few years and a path back to surplus, Premier Colin Barnett said.

The Liberals say they submitted 70 election policies to Treasury, including some yet to be announced.

Mr Barnett said there was a "new standard in public accountability" that the Liberals were meeting by submitting their costings to Treasury and Labor should do the same.

Key Liberal commitments include selling 51 per cent of utility Western Power in an $11 billion deal to wipe out part of its record debt and help fund promises, including a new suburban rail line, the Roe 9 highway extension and tackling crime and other problems related to the drug ice.

Mr Barnett denied the Liberals couldn't be trusted because their pledges were dependent on the success of the Western Power sale.

Those contingent on the sale, such as the rebuilding and refurbishment of schools, were identified and those budgeted for or to come from consolidated revenue were marked, he said.

Treasurer Mike Nahan said Labor's claims about how much revenue it would have access to were "dodgy", such as counting on the diversion of federal funding meant for the Liberals' $1.9 billion Perth Freight Link to its big-ticket items such as the $2.9 billion Metronet rail system.

Labor defends its refusal to submit figures to Treasury, citing the fact it did in 2013 but a staff member from then Liberal treasurer Troy Buswell's office was present when he should not have been during the meetings and Liberal Party promises were also wrongly given a tick.

Opposition leader Mark McGowan is defending Labor's use instead of two former senior public servants, David Gilchrist and Mike Wood, to assess its costings with Mr Barnett claiming the latter was connected to Labor during the controversial WA Inc years of Brian Burke's government.

However Mr McGowan pointed out the Liberals had in 2008 had its policies costed by an accounting firm run by former Liberal premier Sir Charles Court.


3 min read

Published

Source: AAP



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