Labor’s double the surplus no more reliable than Coalition’s

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Via ABC:

Labor will release its policy costings today, which are expected to outline $154 billion in savings to the budget over a decade, due to its contentious tax changes.

The Opposition’s plans to curb negative gearing, capital gains tax concessions and dividend imputation have been a central battle in the federal election campaign.

Labor will set out how those changes and a crackdown on multinational tax avoidance would allow it to fund spending promises on education and health care, while also bringing the budget back into surplus.

The ABC understands Labor’s costings will show it intends to match the Coalition’s surplus this coming financial year, but promise a quicker reduction of debt.

“We will show bigger budget surpluses over the forward estimates and the medium-term, achieving a surplus of 1 per cent of GDP by 2022-23, four years earlier than the current Government trajectory,” Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen said.

The costings will be released today so when the assumptions are exposed we shall see. Given the PBO will very likely have the same commodity price and growth outlook at Treasury, and the hostile senate confronting any Labor Government, I think it unlikely its surplus pledges will be any more reliable than those of the Coalition.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.