The Turnbull Government has launched a new scare campaign, using spurious “research” from liberal-aligned lobby group, The Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), to scare that 31,000 jobs are at risk in Victoria if Labor are elected. From The Guardian:
The conservative thinktank has labelled its own calculations of “low to medium” reliability and says in the analysis “it is important to note that the estimates of Victorian jobs foregone or at risk, should major federal opposition policies be introduced, are highly conjectural by their nature and cannot be interpreted as definitive”…
The flyer, being distributed in Victorian marginal seats, says the job losses “will” be caused by “a new electricity tax”, “higher taxes for small to medium businesses”, the failure to restore the Australian Building and Construction Commission and scrapping major projects like the East West link.
There’s an easy response to this: that Victorians will lose tens-of-thousands of jobs thanks to the Coalition allowing the car industry to shutter.
Advertisement
The Productivity Commission estimated that the car industry’s closure would cost up to 40,000 jobs, mostly in Victoria but also in South Australia, whereas Allen Consulting Group’s modelling, which used economic analysis from Monash University, estimated that the closure would cost around 33,000 jobs in Melbourne and around 6,600 jobs in Adelaide by 2018.
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
