Labor is now standing in the way of nearly $40 billion of Budget savings out until 2017-18.
This adds to Labor’s debt and deficit disaster after their six years in office. Labor’s debt is costing Australia more than $1 billion in interest alone every single month.
Labor has already stood in the way of nearly $20 billion of savings over the forward estimates period, including around $5 billion of savings Labor themselves proposed before the last election.
When this is added to last week’s Budget savings Labor is vowing to block, it brings the total bill to almost $40 billion over the next four years. This $40 billion figure includes the impact of public debt interest.
The savings over the next decade are many multiples of this.
The savings Labor proposed but are now opposing or have opposed are as follows:
- $1.1 billion of Research and Development Tax Changes
- $2.3 billion of Higher Education Savings
- $1.5 billion from the cancellation of the 2015-16 Tax Cuts linked to the Carbon Tax
- $106 million Child Care Rebate save resulting from extending the pause of the indexation of Child Care Rebate (CCR) for a further three years
Labor is also opposing many billions of dollars of savings arising from the abolition of the mining tax. The savings arising from the repeal of the Mining Tax package were meant to be $13.4 billion, but due to the passage of time, around $1 billion in savings have been lost because of Labor’s relentless negativity.
After last Tuesday’s Budget, Labor said they would oppose the changes to pensions, fuel indexation, the Medicare Benefits Schedule changes and higher education reforms.
Labor created Australia’s Budget mess, delivering nearly $200 billion in deficits and $123 billion in deficits going forward. Now is their chance to join with us to fix this Budget mess.