Lenore Taylor, political editor Monday 2 March 2015
Some of the measures in a list of savings worth $19bn over the next four years are yet to be put to a Senate vote almost a year after the government’s first budget
Tony Abbott during question time in the house of representatives on Monday. The prime minister has been buoyed by the Coalition’s improvement in the opinion polls. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
Savings worth almost $19bn over the next four years – and $112bn over the next 10 years – have been announced but not legislated by the Abbott government, parliamentary budget office figures reveal.
The updated budget costings were requested by Queensland Liberal backbencher Andrew Laming from the independent parliamentary budget office (PBO) and sent to all MPs and senators.
Some of the measures in the list of savings have been blocked in the Senate by Labor, the Greens and crossbench senators but others are yet to be put to a Senate vote, almost a year after the government’s first budget was brought down.
Laming, who backed last month’s leadership spill motion, said he had requested the updated costings because he was looking for a summarised costing of the savings measures not yet passed, and was told the PBO’s estimates were not up-to-date.
“I asked if they could update them,” he said. “It was an innocent request. I knew the intergenerational report was coming and it was useful information. I don’t see why this kind of information should be confidential if it is available for the debate.”
Labor claimed it was the kind of detailed information an MP would request to assist in planning for an alternative budget.
“Malcolm Turnbull’s supporters have requested this information to help pull together an alternative budget in case they can knock Tony Abbott off before May,” a Labor spokesman claimed.
Tony Abbott was buoyed on Monday by the Coalition’s improvement in the opinion polls, and remarks for the cameras at the start of a cabinet meeting where the government’s recent difficulties were high on the agenda emphasised to ministers that voters did not want to hear about the party’s internal divisions.
“Every day we are focused on doing the right thing by the people of Australia and that’s what they expect. They don’t want people in Canberra worried about themselves – they want people in Canberra worried about them,” he said.
Putting a positive slant on the long-term figures to be released in the intergenerational report on Thursday, Abbott said over the weekend that it would show Australia faced a “big challenge” but also that a “substantial start” had been made by the Coalition’s first budget.
He said the document would include a comparison of what the budget would have looked like under the former Labor government’s policies and how it stands under the current government’s policies – something previous intergenerational reports have not done.
“The intergenerational report will show where we would have been under the policies of the former government, where this government is attempting to go and how far we have already gone,” the prime minister said on Sunday.
“What the intergenerational report will show is that, yes, we have a big budgetary challenge – a very big budgetary challenge – but a very substantial start has been made ... I guess the challenge for all of us in these times is to show our typical Australian optimism and, yes, we can look at it and say the glass is half empty, I would always prefer to look at it and say the glass is half full because I am really pleased with the very strong start that this government has made to sorting out the budgetary mess that we were left by our predecessors,” he said.
Among the measures on the list are the government’s higher education reform package, which the Senate opposes and has set up a committee to go “back to the drawing board’ to look for alternatives to deregulation and changes to Medicare that the government has been progressively abandoning. Cabinet was on Monday night considering a plan to abandon the proposed $5 cut to the Medicare rebate as well as the already-abandoned cut to the rebate for short consultations.
Also on the list are plans to freeze eligibility thresholds or rates of most government payments and the plan for a less generous indexation rate for the pension and carers payment.
Liberal backbencher reveals Abbott government’s $19bn budget gap | Australia news | The Guardian
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