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The Labor Party has published its economic plan, but it has a typo of $ 140 billion.
Grant Robertson’s just released “fiscal plan” suggests that the government would have less debt at the peak of the Covid-19 debt crisis than the government started in 2020, a difference of nearly $ 140 billion.
The problem comes from the Labor chart illustrating debt levels – the axis of the chart says it shows how much debt there will be in dollar terms, not as a percentage of GDP.
That means Labor would be in about $ 56 billion in debt in 2025-26, a remarkable effort, considering that on the eve of the Covid-19 crisis in 2019, the government was only $ 56 billion in debt.
The bug was quickly recognized and fixed with a new draft plan posted quickly after Stuff Labor alerted.
READ MORE:
* Election 2020: No matter who wins the election, the belt will have to be tightened
* Coronavirus: How Covid-19 will hit government books
* Grant Roberston and the budget of his life
ROBERT KITCHEN / Things
Labor finance spokesman Grant Robertson has released his party’s draft budget.
In reality, the government is expected to increase borrowing to $ 200 billion, or 55.3 percent of GDP during that time.
Stuff has confirmed that Labor was wrong on that axis: a typographical error.
The chart is meant to show that Labor wanted to reduce debt to between 48 and 45 percent of GDP (not $ 48 billion or $ 45 billion) as a percentage of GDP, a $ 150 billion typo. .
The rest of the budget has been telegraphed well in advance.
As Labor is currently in government, the fiscal plan is essentially what has been outlined in the most recent set of Treasury forecasts, with some electoral commitments included.
The biggest change is a slight increase in operating allocations over the next four years. The operational allocation is the amount of new money available to spend on each new budget.
The current government set the operating allocation at approximately $ 2.4 billion in the next two budgets, $ 2.6 billion in the 2023 budget, and $ 2.1 billion in 2024.
But Robertson said the Labor Party will now increase those appropriations to $ 2,625 in each of those four budgets, for a total of about $ 1 billion of additional spending during that period.
Robertson says that is paid for with changes to the tax system, including a new upper tax bracket of 39 percent for earned income above $ 180,000, which is expected to bring in $ 2.37 billion over the next four years.
Labor has cost its new policies $ 4.38 billion over the four-year forecast period.
This includes small changes, such as the Business Connect scheme, which is expected to cost $ 10 million, and larger ones, such as the party’s health policy, which is expected to cost $ 1 billion over the four years.
Robertson also invaded the $ 14 billion he left in the Covid-19 recovery fund for $ 2 billion. Now there will be $ 12.1 billion left in the fund after Labor is done with it.
More to come …
